Improvements in road sizes, qualities, and quantities are progressing in accordance with car use, while pedestrian space has been neglected. As typical developed and developing countries, Japan and China are facing the same problem in relation to streetscapes. Because streets are city property, it is important for city authorities to plan and conduct qualitative maintenance together with quantitative maintenance. For this reason, clarifying the importance of physical factors on evaluation of streetscapes and their effective operation is necessary. To date, a vast amount of scholarship has been devoted to evaluate streetscapes in Japan and China. However, the physical factors influencing streetscape evaluation have not been the same in all countries. In this study, the target areas of Chengdu, China, and Tokyo, Japan, were selected and a questionnaire was conducted in both places. Breiman's random forests method was used to analyze the data obtained from the survey. It revealed that the three chief factors affecting evaluation of streetscapes were determined as comfort, beauty, and activity. For comfort, streetscape is strongly influenced by landscape and spatial situation in Chengdu. On beauty, the impact of building usage was stronger in Tokyo than in Chengdu. For activity, the activity score of Tokyo was significantly higher than Chengdu, and the congestion of street had the strongest influence for both Tokyo and Chengdu. The fundamental knowledge about the differences and similarities in the evaluation of streetscapes in Japan and China will be a salutary lesson for the streetscape development of China.

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In this study, we measured the objective and subjective sizes of effective visual fields in game play situations by using a gaze-contingent window method. The peripheral visual field was restricted to an area around the gaze by window masks of various sizes while participants played one of three video games (i.e., car racing, falling block puzzle, and word puzzle). The quantitative relationship between window size and game performance confirmed that the type of video game significantly affected the objective size of the effective visual field. The subjective size of effective visual fields was measured by asking the participants to adjust the window size to the extent they felt their performance would change. The subjective measures of effective visual field were similar to the objective measures for the car racing game and the falling block puzzle game. However, we found that the objective and subjective sizes of effective visual field were not comparable in the word puzzle game. These results suggest that players do not always recognize the size of an effective visual field accurately while playing video games. The present study indicates that the gaze-contingent window method is useful for revealing the spatial characteristics of effective visual fields, and that the method developed for measuring the subjective effective visual field is also applicable for dynamic visual-motor tasks.

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We investigated how a backrest structure influenced a sitting comfort of meeting chair. Sensory values of sitting comfort were measured by the paired comparison method. Subjects were a consumer group and an expert group who worked at an office furniture company. Body pressures and contact areas between the human body and the chairs were measured. The results of sensory evaluation were examined by the factor analysis. The results were as follows: (1) Sitting comfort evaluated by consumers had a positive correlation with that by expert. (2) Two factors “soft at back” and “not tiring” were common and significant in evaluating sitting comfort of meeting chair in both group. (3) The adjectives related to “sitting comfort” had relationship with the body pressure distribution and the bending properties of backrest. (4) “Sitting comfort” of meeting chair could be predicted by the physical properties.

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A comparison of different cultural system is difficult to interpret without a specific cultural criterion. While there are many well-known cultural models such as Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions (HCD), there is none that can be specifically applied to design. Moreover, even though the comparison between the East and the West is often made, a research which focuses on globally spotlighted Asian region is rare. Therefore, this research is to build Cultural Design Framework (CDF) mobile phones based on cultural research and surveys among the 3 countries. This research defines cultural commonalities and differences in the mobile phone usage among Korea, China, and Japan. Furthermore, this study focuses on identifying a relationship between cultural characteristics and mobile phone usage, and on distinguishing cultural discrepancies reflected in the use of mobile phones. In addition, this research provides cultural insights into other cultures and proposes a guideline that meets the needs of mobile industry players that require a fast and inexpensive design and evaluation process within each respective target market.

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