Faceted search is becoming popular as a dynamic navigation method that allows users to interactively explore and search complex information spaces. Since the faceted search, which follows predefined classification categories, is not necessarily easy for users to express diversifying search needs, a dynamic term suggestion or auto-suggest interface would be of great help to formulate better search queries. We have proposed a term-weighting method that does not rely on existing domain vocabulary in our previous stuty. In this study, we conducted experiments to evaluate the proposed method under the practical condition where faceted search and dynamic term suggestion can be combined in any order. In particular, the experiments were made by using two faceted-search systems available in public for multilingual school documents and course materials. As results of the experiments, it was concluded that the proposed method was effective in terms of search precision for the initial query as compared with a previous method that relies on a particular domain vocabulary at hand. Although the auto-suggest method by itself had limitation in the search success rate, higher success rate was achieved when the users were provided with faceted search as well as auto-suggest function. Finally, on the basis of the results, an auto-suggest function with the proposed weighting method was integrated into the real-life systems, and was opened to the public.

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The human-machine interactions represented in science fiction (SciFi) films have a possibility to indicate a big suggestion to our user interface design in the near future. This paper introduces the special interest group named SF-SIG (SIG-SciFi) organized in HCD-Net, in which members try to find some hints for their ideas in SciFi films. SF-SIG has performed an examination about the role of a new human centered design, by assessing the famous SciFi movie “Minority Report.” This paper reports two types of work done by SF-SIG and their results, which can be useful tools for HCD business activities.

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User-centered design (UCD) is an effective method for understanding users’ needs and improving usability. Introducing UCD to the existing development process increases new development activities, so it is important to analyze the cost benefits of UCD, but it is not clear how to measure the effectiveness of these benefits for actual projects in companies. We propose a pragmatic method for analyzing the cost benefits of UCD. We validated the method by analyzing 22 software, hardware, or IT solution projects that were in accordance with our company’s business domain.

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Design thinking is one of the notable keywords regarding innovation promotion. Since design thinking has been gradually acknowledged among universities and industries in the United States, a few universities have launched design thinking programs to foster innovation designers who are capable to raise innovations in industries. In addition, a new type of consulting firm, design consulting firm, has been emerging in the US; design consulting firms hire innovation designers and promote their clients’ innovation. By sorting out the competencies of innovation designers from these universities and firms, this paper describes a way to develop and utilize innovation designers.

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In this paper, we propose an interface system which uses characters and pictures in a paper. An idea and a concept of the interface system was derived from a workshop based on “Design thinking” and/or “Human centered design process”. The workshop was conducted about two months by eight researchers of which research fields were different. Operation concept of the system is that when user touches characters or pictures in a paper, the system displays information regarding the touched characters or pictures. The system is successfully demonstrated using a touch-pad, a video camera, a liquid crystal projector and a PC.

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Reporting methodologies and design patterns required to designing for mobile devices.

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It takes too much time and cost to conduct the usability test by the corporation and the individual. In addition, in order to improve usability, it is important to evaluate making prototype better and finding the problem at the target system in particular on system planning stage and design stage. Therefore, not only expert of usability evaluation, but also beginner about usability evaluation like a developer of user interface have to conduct the usability evaluation from early step on the development. So beginner of usability evaluation face to situation he has to conduct the evaluation. As procedure of the proposal, we review problems previous study got usability evaluation method by beginners. Then we considered about the method to focus on the Retrospective Method and the Pairing Method. This paper proposed a “Method of Awareness Sharing by the Inserting comment in the video”.

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We propose two Collaborative UX design Methods for Enterprise System between UX designers and engineers. These Methods were designed to allow UX designers and engineers to supplement each other’s knowledge and experience. In this study, these two methods were applied to internal projects, and as a result, both Methods effectively promoted collaborative development of UX designs by the UX designers and engineers.

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I have developed a system for verifying the web accessibility from the perspective of the visually impaired. This system is possible to output the number of points from 0 to 100, whether the website can uses fully for visually impaired. For example, this system can be verified things such as the following. There are not to validate other systems having a function similar to things. Alternative text that has been set in the image in the website, if it provides sufficient information to visually impaired? Is it possible the website, complete control by using only keyboard? I endeavor to annouce this system to developers and incorporate it into the website development.

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In this paper, we propose a user experience evaluation method called “Experience Feedback Evaluation (EFE)”. It expresses a subject's subjective experience using a curve based on the video which recorded the situation of task operation. We performed a trial evaluation about the validity of EFE method. Trial evaluation was carried out to university students who are studying the design and collected the questionnaire of 35 samples. As a result, from a subject’s position, it shows that it is able to express subjective experiences and emotions accurately. On the other hand, validity was shown from the Investigator's position.

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