Score reading is a part of training for piano playing skill acquisition. When provided with a score, a piano player is able to mentally simulate how to play it with the piano by just reading the score without actually playing the piano. To date, it has not been clearly understood how piano players visually scan the scores while mentally simulating playing the score with the piano, and how visual scanning patterns, or strategies, would change depending on the difficulty level of the scores for individual piano players. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for visualizing score reading strategies and discover differences between the strategy that is applied when the score is easy for the piano player and the one when it is difficult. Eye tracking experiments were conducted for nine participants, one skilled piano player and eight non-skilled piano players, using scores with six different levels of difficulty. The results showed a strategy for reading easy scores and another for reading difficult scores; the former is characterized by smooth horizontal scanning suggesting relatively large reading span, on the other hand, the latter is characterized by frequent vertical scanning.

Sharing information can be easy, but sharing emotion is much more difficult[1]. One approach to sharing emotion effectively is to present the receiver with past similar experiences of his/her own. This study proposes an emotion sharing model by identifying the receiver's experience that best matches that of the sender as indicated by the message being sent. Experiences are found in life log data and structured to permit quantitative comparisons. In this report, the target that the sender wants to share with the receiver consists of "contents", "experience", "emotion". This paper describes how to structure experiences and identify equivalent experiences. To achieve this, it elucidates the cross-correlation relations of the equivalency of experiences and the equivalency of emotions. Trials confirmed its accuracy in terms of experience matching.

We have designed and developed a technique for use of back-of-device interaction to enhance holding the device of one-handed text input on touch screen mobile devices. In the system, user selects a Japanese kana using the slide operation from the touch points on the back-of-device. User may select a Japanese kana by the amount of slide of finger in the Travel technique or by the direction of slide of finger in the Direction technique. We conducted experiments to evaluate the performance and error rate of text entry. As a result, the stability of the terminal retention has been demonstrated.

Today, cars and PCs are prevalent in our daily lives and have reached high levels of function, performance, and accessibility. In addition to the product itself, user experience (UX) has become important. However, the methods to assess UX in real applications and effectively use UX to develop new products are not established. Therefore, this study aimed to establish and verify a design planning process based on UX using a wireless car key as the model application. Particularly, this paper focuses on a method to extract UX. First, we surveyed how users interact with cars and determined the types of positive experiences users have in daily life, especially related to wireless keys. We first divided the car driving experience into six steps from the user's departure to their arrival at the destination. We let the users describe their actions, positive feelings, and emotions at each step. From 84 users, we collected 397 UX data as sets of actions, positive feelings, and emotions (scores). These UX data were arranged by the KJ method, and 25 categories were formed based on the type of experience. We also established a method to perform the above UX data collection more effectively through a mobile application, and put it to practical use.

In this paper, we described the process that users approach to interactive digital signage and interact with it. We conducted a field study of an existing interactive digital signage. Based on the finding, we developed two hypotheses on how users interact with interactive digital signage. To test the hypotheses, we designed and developed an application for interactive digital signage. We installed the interactive digital signage on university campus and conducted observational study. In addition, we conducted a controlled laboratory experiment. Finally, we developed a set of design guidelines for interactive digital signage.

Mutual-support Internet communities are Internet community services for users to support each other. For instance, Q&A sites are most notable, but these users' mutual support promoting systems are also anticipated to be, not only an information exchange media, but also an approach to solve social issues. However, despite the fact that mutual-support Internet communities are systems that depend on supporters' altruistic willingness, it has not been revealed how the altruistic willingness of supporters can be affected by differences of the systems. In this article, we will verify, by experiments, whether the differences of systems can affect the degrees of I'll-do-it-for-you willingness of those who offer supports. In the experiments, we conducted comparison assuming the bulleting board type such as Q&A and the message type similar to email communication between friends. In the actual difference between these two was limited to the difference of how to instruct the subjects. As a result, it was revealed that the message type encouraged the supporters' willingness to help more effectively. In terms of their judgment whether they would help or not, the message type had significantly lower numbers of people who chose 'not going to help' without checking the requests. This indicates that the message types do not tend to diffuse the sense of responsibility and encourage 'I'll-do-it for you' willingness (altruistic willingness) relatively more. This article presented possibility to control the users' altruistic willingness by the differences of the systems and the interfaces.

This study investigates an evaluation method for the riding skills of motorcycle riders. The method of this research is to represent three viewpoints of the evaluation by an instructor with state value of the motorcycle and the head movement of the rider. From measurement of the riding of 15 riders, three viewpoints were represented by 9 evaluation indexes based on the state value of the motorcycle and the head movement of the rider. Moreover, through principal component analysis, these 9 evaluation indexes were aggregated into three evaluation indexes (Stability, Course confirmation actions, Efficiency of cornering). Using the three aggregated evaluation indexes, the riding skills were evaluated accurately. Furthermore, we also considered an evaluation method for the riding skills without using the head movement of riders. As a result we also showed that this method can evaluate the riding skill accurately and simply.

In order to evaluate intellectual productivity such as the efficiency of performing mental works, several studies have been conducted where the operational logs of mental tasks were evaluated. However, it is also necessary to analyze Cognitive Load in mental workers so that the productivity can be evaluated accurately. The authors therefore have proposed a Performance-Cognitive Load model which deals with both task performance and Cognitive Load. By using the model, they have also developed the inference method of the cognitive working states which can evaluate intellectual productivity in more detail than conventional methods. The operational logs of mental tasks as well as pupil diameter and heart rate of the worker were employed as input of this method. As the result of the subject experiment, the authors found that the feasibility of this method so as to evaluate cognitive working states could be suggested and this method could well explain the detail changes of their states. This method is expected to be the novel evaluation method of intellectual productivity.

It is very important for designers to ensure safety and usability of products. In this paper, a gap model between designers and users is first proposed as a framework to detect problems in safety and usability and to analyze the causes. Then methods to describe operations on a product, simulate its behavior as state transitions, and detect unsafe and invalid gaps based on temporal intervals and their qualitative relationships are proposed. The proposed methods are implemented in a gap analysis program (GAP), which is used to analyze the operations of a tractor by six general participants and two employees of a tractor-manufacturer. As the result, potential safety and effectiveness gaps are correctly detected.

We developed a framework for developers themselves to clarify ambiguous customer needs in the upper phase of mobile enterprise application development. This framework has a scheme to tailor processes according to projects' various characters and a scheme to execute processes efficiently in role models by developers who have many tasks. The tailoring scheme was built by analyzing actual projects which has different characters. In this analysis we specified factors to effect development processes which included purposes and period of development, and features of each development process which included contents and timing of agreement. The role model scheme was built by analyzing examples of mobile enterprise applications and specified typical usages, users and tasks of them. We confirmed that the framework was able to be adapted to projects different in character by tailoring it, and it has effects to make a proposal which involves specific screens without expiring and to reduce risks of developing unnecessary functions.

The aim of our study is to develop a multimodal tactile display for barrierfree access to information for elderly people, people with visual and/or hearing disability, and people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. In this study, a new multimodal tactile display system is constructed based on sensory evaluation for sense of materials. The tactile display consisted of a pressure sensor, a Peltier device, and a speaker based on the Haptic Map model for representing any tactile sensation by combining of the following three physical stimuli; weight (static parameter), vibration (dynamic parameter), and temperature. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed display. A total number of eight participants evaluated the haptic sensation generated by the Haptic Map model. Each of the eight participants were instructed to place the third finger on the display; then the various stimuli presented to the third finger. The participants were not informed regarding the tactile stimuli, which were combined by the method. The results indicated that the participants perceived the tactile sensation, such as titillate, sore and itch. For instance, such as combined the static stimuli; 1 kgf/cm2 and the dynamic stimuli; 140 Hz, a volunteer perceived the surface texture and four volunteers perceived the sore for their third finger. In conclusion, the tactile display system is able to present multimodal tactile sensation.

In this paper, we propose a viewpoint switching method on HMD action game to realize both low motion sickness and high immersion. The viewpoint switching method is that first-person perspective with high immersion is used as usual, while thirdperson perspective by a fixed camera is used in the act of strenuous action. The proposed method is applied to an original HMD action game and evaluated by comparing to the case with always first-person perspective and always third-person perspective. The result indicates that the degree of motion sickness and immersion was comparable level with the case of first-person perspective.

We are developing a method of emotion expression with blinking pattern. Our previous study confirmed that emotions expressed by blinking pattern are perceived correctly, and are able to elicit prosocial behavior from those who see the emotion expressions. In the present study, we investigated whether our artificial emotion expression reinforces perceived emotion when people listen to short stories from a robot. Experimental results showed that, for some stories, blinking colored eyes of a robot reinforce the subjective perception of the target emotion and weaken the other emotions.