This paper describes a method of estimation of stress by speech analysis technology for evaluation of speech interface. First, we conducted an experiment of evaluating a speech interface and observed participants' action and speech with some troubles in use of the interface. Some participants seem to feel anger and anxiety in using the speech interface and we focus on 'anxiety' which derives from the problem of timing to speak or designing of system functions. Then, we collected utterances which were spoken in condition of 'anxiety' on the simulated environment of a speech interface. We made a decision tree from the collected utterances and confirmed the high accuracy of 'anxiety' estimation. Finally, we applied the tree to the utterances in the experiment of evaluating a speech interface. The accuracy was high (71.9-90.0%) and it was confirmed that our method of estimation of 'anxiety' by speech analysis technology is effective to find out problems on use of a speech interface.

This paper examines what is a psychological factor in an actual usage of interactive product. It is thought that a psychological factor influences use frequency and product evaluation. In order to clarify a psychological factor, it is conducted a depth interview and a qualitative analysis. The depth interview is carried out to ten subjects, and interview protocol data is analyzed using Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA). M-GTA is an analysis method of extracting a lurking concept from common phenomenon in protocol data. As a result of the analysis, twenty one concepts which are summarized to nine categories are extracted. It is shown two psychological factors in use; 1) Self-efficacy to usage of interactive product, 2) Product involvement to a product for use. Although self-efficacy is a fundamental attitude of motivation for using a product, it is strengthened by the intensity of product involvement, or weakened by it. These two psychological factors clarified by qualitative approach are due to be verified by quantitative research.

This paper describes development of a system which collects the operation logs of interactive products using infrared remote controller like a HDD recorder. The system is able to be additionally installed in existing home appliances, acquires the signal of an infrared remote controller and records it as an operation log. In the conventional technique, only an infrared signal (Ir-signal) was recorded as an operation log, therefore it was not able to analyze which was chosen and performed in the GUI. In addition to the above problem, it was not able to grasp the gap of the number of signals which an appliance received as an input and the number of signals which transmitted from Ir-remote control. In order to solve these problems, we propose a new method which records automatically Ir-signal from remote controller of the appliances and pictures of TV output from the appliances simultaneously. The system acquires the Ir-signal and the pictures without particular interfaces or modification of appliances. Usability engineer is able to review the users' operation by playing back the signals and the pictures. It is conducted the evaluation experiment (6 subjects, 6tasks) applying a usability test. As a result, it is shown that user operation is correctly recordable and reproducible.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mental workload of increasing driving speed, from 60 km/h to 180 km/h, when operating a driving simulator. The evaluation, based on changes in facial temperature and electrodermal activity, showed that the difference between nose and forehead temperature increased, that the skin potential level decreased, and that the skin conductance level increased. Monitoring facial temperature and electrodermal activity were both found to be effective in evaluating the mental workload involved.

This paper discusses a method for evaluating effects of assistive technologies through long-term fluctuations in user dialogue and experienced self-efficacy. A study was performed with 15 physically disabled interviewees who were working from home and using personal computers. Interviewees were asked to rate self-efficacy at particular times coinciding with their introduction to an assistive technology, training and employment. Based on dialogue with each user, these turning points and time fluctuations were drawn on a graph with time as the x-axis. The results showed that fluctuations were influenced by a combination of time-sensitive factors rather than by a single static factor. This method of building a time-line graph of user experience is proposed as a way to evaluate assistive technologies more thoroughly, documenting success and failures associated with the introduction of assistive technologies, and providing some sights into why those successes and failures occurred.

We built a help system for a DVD recorder that tries to anticipate the user's target function. The system has an interface where all functions are ranked depending on the menu items selected by the user (through trial and error), before the user pushes the help button on the remote control. If the precision of the reasoning method is low, then the interfaces of the help button are not available. Therefore, we built a conventional hierarchal interface and determined the precision that is necessary for the ranking function interface to compare with the time taken to locate a function using the hierarchal interface. First, we estimated the average time taken to explore all the functions with the conventional interface using the Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) and experimental values. Second, we examined the time needed to develop the precision that is necessary for the ranking function interface, and compared it to the estimated average time taken to find the target function in each rank. As a result of the experiment, we found that the ranking function interface must find the target function within 19 (using KLM) or 15 (using experimental values) candidates in 116 functions in order to achieve the needed precision.

This paper proposes a method for extracting clues of usability problems that the desired (expected) interaction sequences for a task are not sufficiently clear for users in Web contents/applications. The method extracts inconsistencies between user interactions for a task and desired interaction sequences for the task by logging and analyzing mouse-clicked points. The method models an operation as a two-dimensional directed line segment from a clicked point to the next-clicked point on the screen. Thus, a sequence of operations is modeled as a sequence of directed line segments in the click order. To detect inconsistencies in user interactions and desired sequences, each directed line segment from user logs is compared with each directed line segment from desired logs. The authors have developed computer tools for the proposed method and applied the tools to evaluate a web-based system for browsing and searching assembly minutes of local governments. The system should be sufficiently easy for users to access public information in the assembly minutes. In our study 23 problems could be found in three vers. of the system, which shows the applicability of our method to finding problems of unclearness in the desired sequences.

The number of public equipment by which users and operators can communicate through video connection over long distances has increased along with the development of Internet technology. However, this remote communication function was not easy to use and required personnel near the machine to assist the user. Since inexperienced users will use the equipment, usability becomes an important design factor. For this, designers often rely on design framework of usability, which consists of general principles and detailed guidelines and is based on international standards and de facto standards. However, there was no design framework of usability for remote communications. Based on principles and guidelines for remote communications which the authors constructed, this paper proposes a design matrix and examines its practicality.

Our goal is to point out problems in web pages with low usability in order to improve the web usability. We investigate the relation between user interaction behaviors in web-viewing and evaluation results of web-usability by subjects, and extract discriminative patterns for user interaction behaviors in viewing of web pages with low usability by using the PrefixSpan based subsequence boosting (Pboost). In the experiments using 63,000 records of the user interaction behaviors in viewing of 263 web pages which include 20 pages with low usability, we show that 76 discriminative patterns of user interaction behaviors are effectively extracted.

This paper introduces the framework of "Bibliobattle", which we constructed as a human-human and/or human-knowledge interface. The knowledge and people are mediated by book reviews generated in a local interaction field. Originally, "information" itself cannot be disconnected from human beings as interpreters in whom semiosis goes through. However, a misinterpretation of information that information can be transported and stored as baggage spreads together with internet society these days. This misunderstanding leads us to a confused knowledge management in an organization. To overcome such a problem, how to construct an organic knowledge management system or information sharing system to promote human-human communication and emerge innovation in a community becomes an important problem. In "Bibliobattle" we focus on a difference between a locality of a real community and a globality of an internet space, and construct social interaction framework. We also evaluate a characteristic of "Bibliobattle" by comparing it with an ordinal approach to broadcast book reviews on the web by using semantic differential technique.

We propose a new tourist navigation system which does not provide detailed route information. Most of conventional navigation systems provide the optimal and shortest route from the current location to the destination. This function often changes sightseeing stroll into an act to trace the recommended route. For tourists who like to stroll the city, accidental encounter with new ways, visitors and inhabitants, shops and spots. In our approach, users are required to make a sightseeing route plan, by deciding which spots to visit and how to reach the spots. They use the icons to specify the spots, and draw routes freehand on the digital map system. When they start sightseeing, the digital map is not displayed on the mobile computer, and they can only refer to spot icons, freehand routes and the real-time location data from the GPS system. The freehand route is expected to create accidental encounters. The experiment showed that the system accelerated the interaction between the users and the environment, and induced accidental encounters.

In this study, we propose handwrite training device applying auditory stimulation support. Concretely, we developed the device which regulates the temporal characteristics of writing motion by presenting the artificial draw-stroke sound to the user. As the result, this training is effective for not only to regulate the temporal characteristics of writing motion but also configure the spatial characteristics of the written figure. That suggests the effectiveness of our training paradigm with the auditory stimulation support.

In our daily mobile environment, we often want to take notes to remember ideas or events. For such note taking, notepads or mobile phones are commonly used now but these tools are not so suitable to take note quickly or immediately in mobile environment. Users need their both hands to take notes with notepads. They can use mobile phones with single hand but it is usually time consuming work to take notes with key pressing on such mobile device. This paper introduces an efficient note taking method for mobile environment with single stroke drawing by user's forefinger. This method records the trajectory of the finger-tip on the arbitrary surface. In order to trace the trajectory, an optical sensor is put on the finger-tip. The experimental result shows that the input speed of the proposed method is as fast as that of the handwriting and is significantly faster than that of note taking with mobile phone. It is also found that showing a temporal change of drawn trajectory or showing a context while note taking improves the correct recall rate of the input text.