Systems Design Based on the Benefits of Inconvenience

This book is about the "benefits of inconvenience (BoI)", providing a new approach to designing innovative systems and opening an alternative viewpoint to readers for looking at the world. BoI says that convenient living has “black boxed” the processes we used to rely on, while BoI is about looking at the benefits that were originally provided by these actions that have been black-boxed. Consider the relationship between humans and artificial objects, or things, newly created by engineering technology. In the past, things were “extensions” of people, but before we knew it, things began to substitute for people. BoI can be a keyword for thinking about the relationship that should come after “substitution”. It is a principle of systems design, one that requires time and effort rather than being convenient without any bother. Leading system scientists, technology creators, service producers, and product designers have contributed to this volume. In the first half of the book, manyresearchers describe their theory of BoI from the perspectives of systems engineers, value engineers, designers, and innovators. In the second half of the book, examples of implementing BoI are introduced in various fields, such as product design, service design, social robotics, tourism engineering, and human activity support systems. They will support innovations in systems or services. It is generally said that necessity is the mother of invention. In that belief, inconveniences should be eliminated, which can be a motive force for new technological development. On the other hand, this book shows that inconveniences are not something to be eliminated, but, on the contrary, are essential to obtain some benefit, and shows us how to create beneficial inconveniences.

Hiroshi Kawakami is a professor at Kyoto University of Advanced Science, in Japan. He received his Bachelor, Master, and Dr. Eng. degrees from Kyoto University. He started his career at Okayama University as an assistant professor. He joined Kyoto University, where he was an associate professor of Graduate School of Informatics and a program-specific professor of Design Unit. His research interests include systems design, where he has proposed FUBEN-EKI that stands for designing systems based on appreciating "benefits of inconvenience." He received best paper awards of Transactions of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineering (1990, 2001, 2013), the Transactions of Human Interface Society (2009, 2018), and Journal of Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan (2014).