Gamification improves workers' motivation and performance by implementing entertainment elements into a task. The different entertainment elements such as competition or collection may have the different effects to the task performance; hence to evaluate each entertainment element provides useful knowledge for the development of effective task support system. In this paper, authors evaluate the effect of three entertainment elements; 1) Contest with others, 2) Improvement from previous, and 3) Collection of the achievements. To measure the task performance and motivation of the participants, authors developed seven systems which implement the combination of the three elements respectively. The result of the experiment showed that Improvement and Collection increased 9.2% task speed of participants who had the slow performance at tasks without any entertainment support. In contrast, increase of the task speed by the combination of Improvement and Collection is lower (4.2%) than each respective element. All combinations of the entertainment elements including the Collection decreased the task speed of the participants who had the fast performance at the task without entertainment support.

We developed a system that provides tactile stimuli to enrich the music experience in the bathroom by controlling the water flow of the shower. Hardware evaluation, namely bandwidth, latency and operating volume showed that the device has sufficient capacity for enriching music experience. Then two user studies were conducted to verify the enhancement of the music experience by the system. The results showed that the music experience while taking a shower was enhanced, particularly when the music has characteristic beats or melody.

Haptic feedback in current consumer game machines is limited to symmetric vibrations and impulses except for few types of controllers dedicated to certain types of games. Force display technology based on asymmetric vibration is of particular interest in enriching the feedback due to its capability of producing illusory sensations of directional forces by portable miniature vibrators. Here, we introduce a novel fishing game based on this technology. When participants approached virtual fishes displayed on a touchscreen with a contactor hung from a pinched vibrator, asymmetric vibrations were applied to the fingertips to give a sensation that the fish nibbled and pulled the string. Subjective reports collected at exhibitions confirmed that the vibration successfully induced pulling force sensations with minimum numbness. Experimental results further suggested that perceived strength of pulling force, roughness of vibration, reality as pulls of fishes, and impression of fish size can be modulated by systematically controlling the gain and frequency of the vibration, and that variations in the latter two are explained by the former two factors. Our study sheds light on the possibility of representing kinetic interactions with live creatures by portable miniature vibrators, and suggests its application to games with such interactions.

Many capacitive touch panels detect the position and contact area of the users' fingers, and can estimate vertical force by the change of the contact area. However, they cannot estimate the tangential force. We have proposed methods of tangential force input for touch panels using elastic layer on touch panel. This paper reports a development of the device, a new method to distinguish between force input and swipe input, and evaluation of the method. We also evaluated how elastic materials effect on the discrimination accuracy or subjective impression of the users. The results showed that using elastic materials gives good effects on both accuracy of the operation and subjective impression. Furthermore we proposed some applications that utilize the two inputs; swipe and tangential force.

This study proposes a gamification method which promotes the Pro-Environmental Behaviors (PEBs) on the target of young men. It utilizes game user's favor to the virtual agent, and it promotes user's reports of actual PEBs. In this paper, the game based on the proposed gamification were developed and a trial use was conducted with 25 participants for 28 days. As the result, although 11 participants answered "they hold a favor to the virtual agent", it was not clear that "intention to be honest" improved reporting actual PEBs to the virtual agent. Therefore, a psychological model was constructed and analyzed by a covariance structure analysis. As the result, it was found that "felt favor" and "felt to be honest" to virtual agent decreased the desire of false reporting in the game.

In this study, we focused on the pinch motion of thumb and index finger. An automatic measuring system using a high resolution magnetic motion capture system was developed for measuring position and posture data of receivers worn on the nails of thumb and index finger at the moment targets of different lengths was pinched. Moreover, a novel calculation method was developed for deriving the posture and endpoint of fingers from the measured data. Furthermore, the position and posture data of 10 subjects were measured and analyzed. As a result, by looking at the relationship between the positions of the thumb and index finger for the pinch motion of different length object, we found that the opposition of thumb for the thumb and index finger can be classified into two patterns. In addition, from the relationship of postures between the target and each finger, we found that the index finger is extended and the thumb is flexed. Moreover, we also found the distribution of endpoint to be within a circle of 6mm diameter (The position of the circle is 7mm and 4mm for the thumb and index finger respectively from the palmar towards the finger tips) regardless of the position and posture of the fingers.