The asymmetry of alpha wave power in frontal regions of the brain has been considered to be associated with the state of mind (positive or negative affect). Substantial research has focused on the relations between emotion and EEG changes in the frontal area. The present study examined changes in alpha wave power in left and right frontal areas during the presentation of odor, and compared them with the results of comfort level evaluation by the Yoshida method. Eight subjects having no abnormalities in the sense of smell participated in the experiment. Subjects smelled the odor for five minutes with their eyes closed, and EEGs and heart rates were recorded before, during and after smelling the odor. EEGs recorded at Fp1 (left) and Fp2 (right) were used in the analysis. The results suggest that the state of mind in subjects who have greater left than right activation shifted more from “unpleasant” to “pleasant” mood while the opposite pattern was observed in another subjects with greater right frontal activation.

In a highly developed industrial society, the meaning of design is the core of corporate management strategies and furthermore, it is a major issue that determines the national competitiveness. It is also a means to acquiring a continuing competitive edge. In addition, there is a growing importance for design procedures according to the expansion of the design development field. The effective management of design procedures plays a crucial role of both reducing time and expenses, as well as for gaining a competitive edge. However, due to the variousness and complex designs of consumer classes and users, it is difficult to make an objective and feasible evaluation for measuring whether a completed design will be successful. In addition, it is not an easy task for designers to accurately identify the various demands of consumers based on the data provided in the marketing field. Therefore, designers require studies on the methods and techniques for properly identifying the consumer needs and applying them to design.
The objective of this study is to present a new design method to used a user evaluation analysis system. The design methods utilizing the user evaluation analysis system, a greater sense of satisfaction can be granted to users through the final design and it is expected to bring about procurement of market information to the company and designers, while also resulting in lowered expenses in the design development procedure. The aim of research is to get a actual design with the concept derived from consumer’s preference between Korean and Chinese, but there is no meaning to get design concept of each nation that have same results with factors of preferences in experiments. Therefore, to make questionnaire in detail enable to clarify the characteristic of consumers and users use with mobile phone and apply to design process as results in further research.

This paper explores what facial expressions humanoids in certain contexts should have and what kinds of emotional spaces should be developed to realize those expressions. Most research regarding the facial expressions of robots have attempted to embody all expressions of human without taking the robot’s use context and function into account. In this study, we focused on educational humanoid robots and elicited 60 kinds of emotion related adjectives by applying contextual scenarios where users were asked to envision possible interactions in over 74 given scenarios in different context. Doing so can overcome the limits of research which does not consider a robot’s use context when it is specialized for particular uses and context. Appropriate facial expressions were derived after frequency analysis, and an emotional dimension was found by MDS (multi-dimensional scaling) on 23 adjectives with high frequency. The result showed that educational humanoid robots should dominantly express emotions related to ‘happiness’, implying that their facial expressions should be designed to express ‘happiness’ more diversely. Finally this study suggests that emotion of ‘happiness’ can be segmented into three intensity groups: high-arousal happiness, mid-arousal happiness, and quiet-arousal happiness; thus, facial expressions should be designed correspondingly in order to enrich human-robot interaction.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological responses of customers to beautiful versus preferred product designs. Neurological activation was recorded by fMRI while subjects attended to beautiful product design and preferred product design. Results show that lingual gyrus was activated when subjects attended to beautiful product designs. Insula, paracentral lobule, superior temporal gyrus, precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus, and precuneus were activated to the preferred products. That is, to win the consumers’ hearts, preferred product design places emphasis on what customers may imagine and feel about the product. On the other hand, beautiful product design itself is an object and cannot lead any emotional responses.

This study examined the relationship of what kind of creative thinking has related factors for emotion design products in order to let consumers focusing on the successful cases of emotion products. For the design creativity attribute used in this experiment, the design evaluation creativity tools revealed by Kim Eun-Ju’s 2007 design creativity evaluation tool development were used mostly and of the 12 most common emotion products and single products, MP3s, which have various forms, functions and sizes were selected as the target for experiment. Results of the experiment showed that for design creativeness items of all emotional products, vision creation, favorableness, convenience, practicality and being purchasable were relevant, while for MP3 as single products, uniqueness, favorableness and convenience were relevant. Accordingly, the common features of design creativeness items for emotional products were identified. When summing up the contents of the two experiments above, for emotional designs, the interest level of uniqueness for the design creativity evaluation items and the functional items for practicality had a high level of relativity. Therefore, there is a need to examine the common features between the design creativity items for general products other than MP3s in the future.

Purpose of present paper is to investigate whether aesthetically appealing high involvement products are associated with greater interest (tactual experience, flow and recall of product information) than products are not aesthetically appealing. Another purpose is to observe difference of influence to user’s interest (tactual experience, flow and recall of product information) between high involvement product (MP3 player) and low involvement product (Media player). For the experiment, fourteen emotional words were extracted and categorized into 8 aesthetic and 6 usability words. In a preliminary experiment, the subjects freely used three MP3 player and selected emotional words by a 7-point likert scale to distinguish aesthetic and usability and software product value. In the main experiment, it was hypothesized that users have more interest, flow, and recall more information in case of the aesthetically appealing but bad usability product than which has good usability but ugly. Therefore, we measured how much time subjects spent to use the product and asked them to make an assumption regarding the time spent by the group that has the same usability value. We then examined the time they spent and see the gap between the actual and estimated time. We also calculated the amount of menu information recalled via a questionnaire. And also we hypothesized that there are different result of user’s interest, flow and recalled information between High Involvement Product (MP3 player) and low involvement product (Media player). In a previous study we observed user interest of low involvement product (Media Player). So at this time, we observed the gap between two groups of product. Results are discussed with significant influence of user interest in case that product is aesthetically appealing. But we didn’t find any influence of recalled memory of aesthetically appealing product. And results showed that high involvement type of product (MP3 player) makes more interest to user in flow only.

Recent empirical studies have categorized tactile qualities in terms of being rugged, prickly, smooth, tender, etc. The studies manipulated the frequency and amplitude of stimuli and revealed that tactile sensation changed. In this study, the emotional responses to 12 tactile sensations were examined with regard to the manipulation of frequency (4 levels) and amplitude (3 levels) in the pin-array tactile display. The emotional response to tactile sensation was assessed by pleasure and arousal dimension of emotion, and by 6 bipolar scales—6 pairs of texture related adjectives. Based on the empirical results, we described the emotional profile of tactile sensation. Particularly, we adopted Russell’s Circumplex Model in order to define certain areas in emotion space discretely. The emotional responses to 12 tactile sensations appeared to be within a diagonal in emotion space, and the implication thereof is discussed.

The aim of this study is to develop a model of Cage Structure for future soldier system. Future soldier has been supposed to carry various digital devices embedded into the combat uniform. The combat uniform must be developed to be fit to soldier’s body and movement, and can be felt comfortable to soldier. The Uniform must be studied in ergonomic and physiological component because it is different from the present one. It has many devices inside, so there are some unknown barriers to set the devices on to the body. For making the ergonomic aspect of future combat suits clear, the movement of the body was researched. The sizes of arms(3 parts), torsos(4 parts), and legs(3 parts) of people were measured by movement. Many dots were drawn on the testees’ bodies every 3cm. Each time they made compulsory poses, the distances between dots be measured and analyzed. For making the physiological aspect of future combat suits clear, the thermo-map and sweating map of body were made.

The 3 maps - movement, thermo and sweating- were overlapped. The devices for future soldier were arranged on the overlapped map considering relations between devices. The final Cage Structure developed on the arrangement of devices.

In this study, we surveyed memorial colors and pure images for 7 colors based on personality. These colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white and black. Color has always been having particular characters, such as fashion design and craft art, but nowadays the important thing it is not only in the design area but also product market which makes function and technology. So the goal of this study is based on pure colors, not object colors.

Before the experiment, we perform the MPI (by Eysenk) on the subjects. Eysenck mainly analyses people’s temper which defines by the emotion and the neuroticism.

Then the subjects expressed their impression about colors with color pencils. In order to get their pure images, no sample was shown, and they freely pull out the images of color from their own individual impression by experiences. These images which appear purely in the relation between color and human being are called memorial colors. We make a new Kansei category of memorial colors data which had been drawn by the subject’s results of MPI and consider each tendency. Pictures, vocabularies and many other expressions were seen from the subjects’ sketches. We got the data of the sketches that they drew and the colors and the vocabularies used for these sketches and put the results on the MPI map to find out the peculiarities of impression evaluation from each territory. It shared each territory with four characteristics and tried to examine by the analysis method of MPI, various and peculiar tendencies were seen.

The form and function of the in-house design organization, its positioning within the company, and the scope of its activities, are possible major factors that influence the design decision making process. This paper aims at contribution to understanding current situation of design management focusing on design-decision-making in major manufacturers in the global automotive industries and establishing a better model of design management that will promote creation of more competitive design in the international market places. The methodology of research was mainly surveying related reports or articles on books and magazines, interviewing to design managers of the current leading automotive firms in Japan, America and Europe and comparing their system, mechanism, and method of product design development. We identified their differences and understood the structure of “Design-Decision-Making” that has been a very important part of design management in the in-house design organization of each company.

People are making a good use of all the every-day functions of televisions, computers, or cell phones. However, they hardly can get the best of them, that is to say to use all the functions of these devices, which yet are inseparable from people’s life. This is especially true concerning the web sites for mobile phone (WEST): there is a huge amount of information per WEST, with an everyday increasing quantity of web pages, contents and functions. In this study, focusing on WEST which is difficult to differentiate, we verify that information presentation influences the user, and show the availability of information presentation for other WEST differentiation. We measure the user’s psychology change by causing the user’s value creation, and it is become clear the subjects passed the 3 classes decision making process from the results.

In the product development, the bad interaction between concept design and creative design is one of the factors of the inefficiency. This paper has proposed emotion design based design approach using a relation of two designs for the solution. Since the role of emotion design is in contraction for a complicated thing, what its attention was paid to the design method is abstraction. However, the abstraction is also expanded by a little information on the other hand. So we decided to use “TORIAWASE (one kind of combination method)” which is in haiku manners known in Japan. The role of “TORIAWASE” is that a little word makes an impressive sight or image. In verification of this model, use necktie as a motif, the method of comparing using this model with not using was taken. As a result, the effect of using emotion design was accepted.

Recently, consensus building has become more and more important in the construction industry. As discussed under the performance design system, it is important to break down performance required under various construction environments and convert them into numerical values, and to represent such values on the performance matrix to be used for consensus building. In this research, we try to expand the use of the performance matrix so far discussed under the performance design system such that the matrix indicates aesthetic performance useful for consensus building. We propose specification rules based on the required level of performance, and review and verification methods. This research also shows the method of creating the aesthetic performance matrix used for consensus building regarding several aesthetic words converted from the design concept. Finally, we make verification aiming at consensus building among concerned parties based on the aesthetic performance matrix.

Transmission of traditional knowledge in general has spread from it’s classroom environment into the possibilities presented by the growing distance learning system. With this in mind and the successfully developed system of lessons, an e-learning system for Buyo lessons applying the bases of the system with some original development into the transmission of traditional short dances such as Komai, which is part of the traditional Japanese play Kyogen. Using an IT system, it will be possible to make a connection between the Master and student disciple. Reproducing a practice room, the master in real time and space transmits the art of the Kyogen legacy to the disciple through action and movement. At an international level, the results of this work will be developed for the teaching of other traditional arts such as Flamenco and Samba dancing.

The aim of this paper is to present the project undertaken by the authors to describe Kansei and to structure Kansei design studies. Indeed, the current fuzziness on Kansei research structure complicates the global comprehension of this field and seems to be a hindrance to Kansei design education and internationalization. To improve both of these aspects, this paper proposes a comprehensive description of Kansei and Kansei Studies, explains its specificity compared to “classic” research fields, and introduces a list of 131 Kansei Study Keywords which will be used in further projects to structure Kansei sources of knowledge and improve Kansei knowledge development, Kansei research, and Kansei education.

When human beings describe an object in terms of color, they seem to express the color in their own memories of experience, which can be earned not only by education but also recently, by media such as Web and television. Moreover, people are getting familiar with variability of color impression through websites or blogs. In other words, unspoken human beings do memorize information about color in different degree for each individual, and have their favorite colors. Non-design experienced people have less understanding on color and an ambiguous standard in using colors compared to design-experienced ones. Sometimes Non-design experienced people just apply colors instinctively or insist on using certain color. Such sense of color is likely to be obtained through individual learning from the environment. Unlike simple color application, coloring has more difficult parts to apply colors. It is difficult for the Non-design experienced to color in consideration of brightness and saturation even when choosing one color for arrangement.

We investigated how auditory information affected the speed of silent reading, using sentences extracted from Japanese novels. Subjects were instructed to read the sentences silently presented on a display while hearing the voice of reading through headphones and we measured the reading time and eye movements. The speed of the reading voice varied over the range of a factor of eight to examine whether auditory information affects reading speed. The results showed that the speed of reading and saccade length increased approximately in proportion to voice speed and the number of fixations decreased with the increase of voice speed. The increase of saccade length can be interpreted as the increase in the range of characters to be processed during a fixation (or effective visual field size). From these results, we suggest that the voice information may increase the effective visual field size for reading.

Shape grammars have been developed from the analyses and creative designs of architecture forms to generate the product forms as a computational method recently. All the shape grammars presented in the literature lack explanation about how they were constructed. So trying to create the shape grammar for product becomes very challenging, since it is difficult to induce rules from thousands of models of a particular product without any guidance. The objective of the paper is to propose a systematic approach which enables us to construct the shape grammar for the form of a particular type of a product. A scooter case study illustrates the proposed process for constructing the shape grammar of products.

This paper studies on the adaptation of Kansei multimedia data retrieval system to the user’s mood. In this paper, pictures are chosen as multimedia data because pictures are easier to be evaluated than the other types of multimedia data. Happiness and sadness are adopted as moods because it is easier for the subjects to be in these moods than the other moods. First, the effects of moods on the Kansei retrieval of pictures are experimentally examined. The experimental result shows that there are some effects of moods on the impression of pictures. It also shows that there are two action types in retrieving pictures. One is the action tendency emphasizing the current mood. The other is the one canceling the current mood for subjects to be cool. Next, a method of adapting Kansei retrieval system to the user’s mood is proposed. The proposed method uses the personal adaptation method based on the matrix transformation. The method uses two kinds of information obtained through the experiment. The first is the average scores obtained in the moods. By using these average scores, the impression space can be changed according to the mood. The second one is the impression words used in the retrieval. These are the impression words that the subjects want to use in retrieving pictures in the moods. As the impression words used in the retrieval are decided a priori, the retrieval can start only by specifying the user’s current mood. The prototype system based on the proposed method is constructed. The behavior of this prototype system is demonstrated.

In the special issue on KANSEI Robotics (number 027) of Kansei Engineering International, Vol.8, No.1, 2009, there appeared an article by Ken Tomiyama, entitled ‘Robot with KANSEI? or KANSEI with Robot?.’ In that issue, one of the authors of the featured papers has been incorrectly spelled as T.Hiroi. The correct name is Y.Hiroi. We apologize for any difficulties inconveniences this may cause Prof. Hiroi.