The Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau of MLIT conducted the second Design Thinking training course for its younger staff. The authors report the detail of the program and evaluate it through participants’ questionnaire survey, the proposed business design outputs, and retrospective reviews to derive possible improvements for the next occasion. The findings include the need for a short-term intensive course to allow full participation, a theme that reflects their daily duties, and a discussion on how HCD can be implemented in the workplace where “for all the citizens” is an unargued premise.

This paper describes a project that applied several HCD methodologies to the development process of a new product brand. First, we applied the HCD method to clarify usage scenes and customer value. Next, based on the customer value analysis results, the relevant parties agreed on the appealing points of the brand and defined the brand identity. Based on this, we developed a brand name and logo, and conducted a demonstration experiment to develop services in multiple areas with the established brand.

For a successful co-creation project, it is important to make employees motivated for a cooperative attitude and behavior by effective explanation about the project at the beginning. This paper introduces the results of web survey that was conducted to investigate explanation items expected by the employees of several occupations in a variety of industry. The analysis to compare those results with another questionnaire survey at a real co-creation project with a nursing facility showed the difference of expected explanation as well as the hypothesis of expected explanation items and intrinsic motivation.

This paper introduces the person-centered care principle, which prioritizes individuals’ values and preferences, and employs it to build a methodology for designing a novel person-centered care service. According to the person-centered design principle, we designed the processes of empathy and definition in design thinking which focus on unexpected behaviors and the backgrounds of care recipients. Those processes were conducted with care workers as a series of workshops. Though the workshop design had problems of comprehension of the unexpected behaviors and empathy with the backgrounds, the qualitative analysis on the workshop participants’ comments revealed the two effects: verbalization and visualization, and shared viewpoints among the workshop participants. This study contributes to a design field by the following three values; the employment of the person-centered care principle to a design field, the practice of the person-centered designed processes with care workers as a case study, and the evaluation of those processes by qualitative analysis.

Design-related "academic societies" are expected to serve as an interface for design practitioners and design researchers to exchange mutual knowledge. However, it is rare for practitioners with "field knowledge" gained from their daily practice to present their research. MIMIGURI, Inc., a facilitation consulting firm, has produced a handbook to support practitioners' analysis of their daily work and research theory culture. This study reviews the process of producing this handbook and examines effective measures to promote practitioners' participation in research activities within the firm.

This study investigates how paper and digital reading affects readers' understanding and UX. In 2020, we investigated the effect of “skimming”. The result, the high-use media had an advantage. In 2021, we investigated the effect of “Reading for light work”. The result, the high-use media had an advantage. The same results as in 2020 were obtained.

This paper introduces the restroom-sign database, which aims to disclose the cultural differences that shape local representations of restroom signage, gender segregation, the impact of cultural differences in public health, and signages as social infrastructures. As of Jan 2023, the database has more than 2,000 entries from 67 countries and regions, submitted by 176 contributors. This paper discusses the database in detail, citing some unique examples. It also discusses additional ways to use the database.