Living Lab (LL) is a design approach to create technologies and/or services through long-term citizens involvement and experiments in real-life environments. LL has the “openness” of the design process, since citizens are involved as “design partners” in its process. LL has been attracting much attention globally in recent years; projects in various fields, for example, urban design, healthcare, and ICT, are being actively implemented in various cities and regions. However, the theorization and systematization of knowledge on LL have not been sufficiently carried out. In fact, research on LL is often presented dispersedly in conferences and journals in various fields; this situation makes it very difficult to grasp the latest trends and overview of LL research arena. In this study, we first summarize the concept of LL. We then conduct a literature survey on LL research published in the last five years to clarify the latest trends in LL research. Based on the results of the literature survey, we present a concept of “building an infrastructure to support LL practices” as a future direction of LL research, and discuss some specific research themes.

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Excellent self-help tools increase the number of activities that disabled and elderly people can do and improve their quality of life. In recent years, the effectiveness of using 3D printers to produce self-help tools has become apparent. A platform for 3D models of self-help tools will increase its effectiveness. In this study, we examined the service contents and construction processes of a 3D model platform for self-help tools that can be properly used in care fields. In order to clarify what occupational therapists in the field of making self-help tools pay attention to, we collected 3D models of self-help tools and asked occupational therapists to evaluate them. And we conducted a needs survey by filling in comments. As a result, the effectiveness of the "parametric service," which allows shape changes by adjusting variables such as size, was revealed. The need for flexible materials was found to be very high, suggesting the need for a corresponding service. The services required for a 3D model platform for self-help tools were clarified. We are now ready for the construction.

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If we can collect a large number of user-friendly user interface (UI) examples, it will lead to efficient UI design and the discovery of new UI design principles. However, since it is difficult for experts to collect examples based on users’ opinions on a large scale, an approach that directly solicits examples from citizens as users is conceivable. In this research, we thought it was necessary to create a platform to solicit user-friendly UI from citizens. However, there is a problem that users are generally unaware of the existence of user-friendly UIs. In order for users to become aware of the existence of user-friendly UIs, they need to know examples of user-friendly UIs and the basic concepts of user-friendly UIs. In this study, we taught these to 47 university students through lectures to make them quasi-experts and collected examples of user-friendly UI and shared them through a website. As a result, we were able to collect 100 reports of user-friendly UI from the students. We confirmed that people with specialized knowledge of user-friendly UI can find user-friendly UI and provide valid explanations. We also confirmed through questionnaires that their view of the product changed.

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The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of graphic recording in the co-creative meetings. We conducted experiments comparing with and without graphic recordings in co-creative meetings. Our experiments focused on 3 aspects of graphic recordings: characteristics of the meeting, how the graphics are used and the purpose of their use, and the effect of graphic recording. 16 subjects were divided into 4 groups and held meetings with graphic recordings which were to design new services. We also had meetings without graphic recordings in which 17 groups (68 subjects) participated, and compared the meetings with graphic recordings. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted before and after the meetings. From the detailed analysis of our meetings corpus, we found that graphic recording reduces feelings of “talking time was not enough”. In addition, it was confirmed that the participants felt that graphic recording helped them to form a common understanding by pointing the graphics. In addition, it was found that there is a possibility of creating motivation to participate in the meetings with graphic recordings.

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This study aimed to estimate psychological utility functions that convert product design into impressions using preference learning methodology, and to construct product shapes that match product concepts based on the estimated functions. Using Elliptic Fourier descriptors (EFDs), we converted the contours of 26 shampoo bottle shapes into Fourier coefficients and performed a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the coefficients to construct shape space. Twelve persons participated in five experimental sessions corresponding to five different product concepts. For each session, participants were presented with a pair of randomly generated images of shampoo bottles from the shape space. They were asked to choose the one that matched a given product concept for 100 trials. The bottle shapes conforming to the product concepts were synthesized based on the average utility functions estimated by using Gaussian process preference learning. The synthesized bottle shapes were assessed to determine if they conveyed the intended product concepts. The results suggested that our approach is an effective way to reflect the product concept in the shape design.

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This study investigates the effects of body posture and the direction of acceleration due to gravity on the variance of response distances using a somatosensory system. The participants were blindfolded using eye masks and verbally instructed to alternately identify the initial point as well as spot a point along the semicircumference of a 15- or 25-cm radius with its origin at the distal side using their right index finger. The participants performed this task in five different postures (i.e., standing, supine, right decubitus, left decubitus, and prone). As a result, the response distances tended to be shorter than the target distance, especially for postures other than standing. A moderate positive correlation was observed between the response distance and each velocity in the radial direction and the peak pointing velocity. In postures other than standing, unintentional changes in motion velocity because of arm movement suppression or acceleration were caused due to gravity. This affected the distance perception derived from arm motion velocity.

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Currently, display terminals have become widespread devices for presenting information and the rate of using smartphones and IPads as mobile terminals is increasing. Both the young and elderly use information technology terminals. However, the lens and cornea begin to yellow and darken, with aging eyes becoming less able to identify low-contrast color schemes from devices. This study investigates the effects of color schemes on the performance characteristics of the elderly. The tasks were composed of two eyesight conditions : hard-to-read and easy-to-read conditions. Concurrently, we performed NIRS, ECG, EOG, finger behaviors, reaction time, and subjective symptoms during the tasks. Additionally, we compared the differences between the visibility of the 70s and 20s. The following results were obtained from the tasks : no notable change between the two conditions in the subjective symptoms of the elderly was observed. Compared with the young people, the reaction time was significantly longer for the elderly because of difficulty in distinguishing the low-contrast color schemes. In the hard-to-read conditions, the amount of change in physiological indicators was larger than in the easy-to-read conditions. Therefore, we assert that the applicability of contrast affected the cognitive process and operational efficiency of the elderly. However, since age-related changes in autonomic nervous and cognitive and visual functions affect the psychophysiological states, the amount of change in the physiological indicators was smaller than those in the 20s.

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