Basic Policy

The Mitsubishi Electric Group engages in universal design under the principle of "creating user-friendly products and comfortable living environments that benefit as many people as possible." To achieve user-friendliness and comfortable living in the true sense of the words, we are committed to providing products and living environments that offer a high level of satisfaction to as many people as possible.

Mitsubishi Electric Group’s Efforts in Universal Design

We have applied the concept of universal design (UD) to home appliances such as air conditioners and televisions, as well as to public equipment such as elevators, through considering the needs of all users. This approach is continuing to evolve.

• Uni & Eco: The Uni & Eco business strategy was developed for home appliances in fiscal 2005 as a philosophy that combines "Uni," or universal design, (the aim of which is to achieve accessibility for all users), with "Eco," meaning ecological soundness that is perceivable, achievable, and communicable.
• RakuRaku Assist: By raising the target demographic to people in their 70s starting in fiscal 2011, we developed the RakuRaku Assist business strategy. The aim is to enable more people to freely and easily take advantage of the latest convenient features.
• SMART QUALITY : We are also advancing the RakuRaku Assist strategy in our SMART QUALITY efforts. This started in fiscal 2013 as an initiative to improve the quality of future lives by connecting societies, livelihoods, products, and people through smart, connected, and waste-eliminating technologies.

Universal Design Examples to Date

Application to home appliances

Mitsubishi Electric has been ahead of the game in applying the concepts of universal design (UD) to home appliances. For instance, we have applied the Universal Design Guidelines to the RakuRaku-IH Cooking Heater cooking equipment.

• Using a simple control plate with few buttons, the design features button sizes and text displays that are both large.
• We made the order of basic controls for IH cooking easier to understand by displaying numbers. Moreover, we clarified the heat-intensity display by adopting simple words like "strong" and "weak."
• Another innovation was adding the benefit of voice-generated control assistance and alerts.
• Human sensors that monitor the surroundings of the IH unit have also been integrated into the equipment. The unit emits spoken alerts if no one is around during cooking or to give warnings of overheating.

"RakuRaku-IH" Cooking Heater CS-G20AKS

Large characters & numerical indicators of steps for use

Safety sensor & audio support

Application to the industrial sector

Even in the industrial sector, where there is a high level of specialization and a relative lack of diversity in terms of operators who handle equipment, the labor environment is changing. Examples of this transformation include the aging of workers, and more foreign and inexperienced workers – changes that have increased the need for universal design. At Mitsubishi Electric, we are applying the concept of universal design (UD) in our industrial products, such as factory automation (FA) equipment and electric power devices, as well as to the installation and maintenance of equipment on factory floors.

We are also employing the Universal Design Guidelines for sequencers in FA equipment.

• Easy-to-understand expressions, such as printed designs that are images of actual objects, make the displayed content more intuitive.
• The unit employs a large UD font display and offers good contrast against the background color, considering people with impaired color vision.
• By showing the text in both English and Japanese hierarchically for easy understanding, inexperienced workers can easily identify the cause of on-site malfunctions.
• Operability has been improved by employing the cabinet design, to feature a larger, more spread-out surface for the enlarged control portion.

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  Print design illustrating the actual wiring

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  Presentation with consideration for persons with impaired color vision

UD-Checker, the universal design evaluation system

UD-Checker is Mitsubishi Electric’s proprietary tool that can be used by both industrial designers and engineers to evaluate for universal design (UD) qualities. This tool shows four quantitative measures of UD, namely recognition, identification, physical use, and safety/usability, indicating specific design aspects for development and improving the efficiency of product development. The UD-Checker is used on a wide variety of Mitsubishi Electric products from home appliances and public equipment to industrial equipment.

The UD-Checker’s four evaluation criteria

1. Recognition: consideration for ease of understanding
2. Identification: consideration for ease of reading and/or hearing
3. Physical use: consideration for comfortable posture and minimum physical load
4. Safety/usability: consideration for usability without danger or operating errors.

Universal Design Guidelines for widespread usability

The Universal Design Guidelines are a set of standards that apply to a wide range of product development, and were formulated based on the expertise gained through using the UD-Checker. To promote greater usability of our products by all users, including children, senior citizens, and people with physical disabilities, we created guidelines on changes that occur to human characteristics with age and that consider disabilities. The guidelines are structured in the same way as the UD-Checker, which incorporates the four perspectives of recognition, identification, physical use, and safety/usability.

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Creating easy-to-understand instruction manuals

Under a campaign to provide first-rate instruction manuals, Mitsubishi Electric Group is directing its efforts to creating easy-to-read and easy-to-understand instruction manuals to ensure the safe and comfortable use of our products. Forming the basis of this effort is Mitsubishi Electric's original "Guidelines for the creation of instruction manuals for home appliances—Instructions." To raise the quality level of instruction manuals, this handbook is distributed to all affiliates in Japan who handle home appliances.

Example instruction manual: Mitsubishi Electric Kirigamine FL Series room air conditioners

Our Quick Guide (Basic Operations) enlarges each button, allowing users to recognize at a glance which button they should push on their remote control. In addition to this, large font sizes and ample margins make the explanations extremely easy to understand.

• Instruction manual for Mitsubishi Electric Kirigamine FL Series room air conditioners: 7.0MB
  (Japanese only)

Award received

In fiscal 2019, following the International Association for Universal Design (IAUD)’s evaluations of Mitsubishi Electric’s developments based on experiments targeting various users, we won a total of eight awards at the IAUD International Design Awards. The accolades included the Gold Award for the "small refrigerator for hospital patient use," "full-color LED displays in railcars," and "Car navigation series: Gathers InterNavi Premium," as well as the Silver Award for the "Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner JXH iNSTICK ZUBAQ."

Mitsubishi Electric aims in fiscal 2020 to continue creating universal design products that take ingenious approaches and consider various perspectives across a broad range of fields.

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  Small refrigerator for hospital patient use

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  Full-color LED displays for railcars

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  Car navigation series: Gathers InterNavi Premium

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  Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner JXH iNSTICK ZUBAQ