Quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Donald Norman’s “Design
of Everyday Things (DOET)” (The book was originally published in 1988 under the
title of “The Psychology of Everyday Things”). Now we have his newly revised and
expanded edition of DOET. In the 25 years since DOET was first published, technology
has extremely changed and many things have been developed, however, the situation
of people have almost remained the same which means that his essential principles or
rules for design are continue to be valid today. We describe what have changed and
what have not changed in the context of design of everyday things.

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How should we save our personal memories? Many people keep diaries and take
pictures for that purpose. In this study, we kept things of personal significance in a
time capsule for 9 years and examined whether personal memories could be saved in
a time capsule and how they might possibly change over time. We held a workshop
in 2003 when participants put something that they had possessed which had personal
significance at that time of their life. They were interviewed to explain what kinds of
significance these possessions had for them, and these interview sessions were recorded.
Nine years after the initial workshop, the participants came together again. Before the
time capsule was opened, they were asked to recall what they had put in the time capsule
and to describe in what ways their possession in the time capsule had been significant
to them. By comparing the contents of the participants’ responses between 2003 and
2012, it was found that a great deal of the contents have been changed from 2003 to
2012. Implications were discussed as regards to the significance of objects themselves
and the narratives that go with the objects in preserving personal memories.

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The purpose of the present study is to illustrate how social networking service (SNS)
such as “Twitter [twitter.com]” works as a tool enhancing our communication between
space and the ground. To do so, by using a text mining technique, we analyzed text
data of an astronaut ’s daily reports, short compositions posted by the astronaut on
Twitter, and reactions from ground to his tweeting (the primary author is the astro-
naut himself. He wrote daily reports during his first space flight and tweeted during
his second long duration space flight). In the analysis, we focused on the frequency
of the use of some specific words and on changes in the astronaut’s verbal expressions
over time. Results suggested that SNS communication had an impact on the astro-
naut’s word choice when he narrated his experience in space and also contributed to
facilitating interaction between the astronaut and ground. Based on these findings, we
speculated that, due to its easiness, promptness and bidirectionality, SNS has great
potential for becoming a powerful and fundamental tool to reduce our psychological
distance to space, and by this token, contributes to developing scientific interests of
general public in space exploration. This implies that, through SNS communication,
we have already begun to experience space as a part of our everyday things on Earth.

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Some people with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) can hardly express their
own thoughts in language. Sometimes, they have been considered as a communication
disorder. However, since the word “communication” is usually defied as an interaction
between at least two persons, it is doubtful to attribute problems happened within a
particular communication to one side. In this study, I collected text data from a mi-
croblog of one person who has been diagnosed as PDD and having difficulty to express
her own thoughts in language, in order to investigate how the microblog had changed
the way of communications. The results of the text data analysis showed that the par-
ticipant expressed what she wanted to say by referring and utilizing remarks of others.
The possibility and implications of removing the difficulties from their communication
through the process of “curation” was discussed.

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Internal and external factors in the process of learning to use new ICT equipment
by older adults were investigated. We particularly focused on the effect of prior ex-
periences in computer use and communication with others who were participants to
the same type. Older adults (N = 21) and younger adults (N = 12) participated in
a four-week, longitudinal usability test of using the android tablet. Participants were
tested twice, at the first and the last week of the study period. Computer experience
and the opportunities for communication during the experiment were controlled. The
results indicated that with time, older adults could learn to use the tablet, and that the
manipulation performance of older adults was consistently worse than that of younger
adults. Results indicated the effect of prior computer experience on learning to manipu-
late, as well as on the subjective difficulty of manipulating during the five weeks. There
was no effect of communicating with other older adults on performance and subjective
difficulty. However, communicating with others in ‘hot-hub’ communication promoted
the frequency of using the tablet at home. The qualitative analysis of protocol data
during communicating with others indicated that such communication decreased anx-
iety about manipulating the tablet. However, sharing concrete operational details did
not take place during ‘hot-hub’ communication.

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The Center for Usability and Aging Research (CUAR) assemble data for over 170
community-dwelling older adults, who volunteered as an informant for usability testing
and research. In the course of database enrollment, they participated in a usability
test for an automatic coffeemaker, as a demonstration of activities in CUAR. In this
article, we analyzed data of 170 people aged 60 and over, for examining relationships
between results of usability testing of a coffeemaker and database items which includes
demographics information, test results of cognitive aging (e.g. MMSE, AIST-CAT),
and subjective evaluation on difficulty of artifacts usage. The results showed the in-
dependence between two errors, which were observed in over 25% participants, and
also errors and the task accomplishment, indicated by statistical independent and also
by comparing the lists of effective items in database. Some research questions which
should be pursued for cognitive aging and usability research.

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In recent years, automation systems that conduct human physical and cognitive tasks
on people’s behalf are coming to join our everyday life. In this article, first, we define
automation systems as a third artifact, compared with primitive tools that support
human physical activities and cognitive artifacts that support human cognitive activi-
ties. Second, we review three branches of researches investigated in the research field
of human-automation system interaction, and show the importance of the function of
trust when making a relationship with automation systems. Finally, we show common-
alities and differences in the nature of trust for human-human and human-automation
system interaction.

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Recent studies of interaction research have revealed that mind in the interaction is
embodied in gesture in the material world as the interaction resource. In this study,
we research interaction of turning pages each other when they decide the order of the
restaurant. Using a virtual menu with 6 pages, 2 participants in the experiment decided
to take one dish for each one for each page. Focusing on when and how the partici-
pants turn each page, we found that both participants touch or follow the page when
it was turned in 64/135 cases. The timing of the turning is organized not only by their
utterance of announcing their order but also the body movement of page manipulation.
They used the spatio-temporal pattern of page manipulation such as moving their hand
from the center to the edge of the page or lifting the edge of the page slightly. These
pre-sequences of turning pages, which were step by step process of sequential move-
ments with pauses and were embodied with material world of the page structure, seem
to project the next movement of page manipulation to prepare the simultaneous page
turning by the participants.

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This study attempted to describe detailed observations of actual developmental pro-
cess of joint attention frame. A case study was conducted repetitive changing processes
of mother and infant’s interaction using the same set of toys between the ages of 7–
16months. 55times of “Build and break block events” were analyzed. The following
results were obtained. First, three type of action building block up by mother and three
type of action breaking block by infant was classified. Second, at each month, there was
change in infant’s action pattern. The results show developmental changes that infant’s
action which was adjusted to single event gradually became to be adjusted to repetitive
events and to be a lower procedure for other acts. Third, arrangement of blocks layout
which the mother brought about gave the opportunity for these changes to arise. This
issue might reveal some of “field of promoted action”, which was presented by Edward
Reed (1996).

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This paper analyzes the relationship between agencies and artifacts represented in
ethnographic case studies of ten female informants aged 20–25 participating in the cos-
play community. Cosplay is a female-dominated niche subculture of extreme fans and
mavens, who are devoted to dressing up as characters from manga, games, and anime.
“Cosplayers” are highly conscious of quality standards for costumes, makeup, and ac-
cessories. Cosplay events and dedicated SNSs for cosplayers are a valuable venue for
exchanging information about costume making. First we frame this work as an effort
to think about their agencies using the concept of hybrid collective and activity theory.
Then we share an overview of cosplay culture in Japan and our methodologies based on
interviews and fieldwork. Using SCAT (Otani, 2011) methodology, we group our find-
ings in two different categories: (1) Cosplayers’ agencies and relationships with others
mediated by usage of particular artifacts, (2) Cosplayers agencies visualized through
socio-artificial scaffolding and collective achievement. We conclude that cosplayers are
producing and standardizing available artifacts for their cosplay objects, and in doing
so, they are designing their agencies. We consider that the activities like them are one
appearance we can observe in the other our mundane communities not apply only to
cosplay one. Not only to cosplay, however we consider that these kinds of activities
apply to other mundane communities.

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Many cognitive scientists have studied people’s use of tools and artifacts, in other
words, resources. However, there are two features of resources that have not been ad-
dressed by cognitive scientists. The first is the configuration of resources. Resources
do not exist scatteredly; they exist in an order. Actions are organized in accordance
with the order of resources. Therefore, it is important to consider the configuration of
resources when studying people’s actions in everyday life. The second feature that has
not been addressed is that people arrange resources in their environment to conduct
everyday life and work well. To clarify the features supporting everyday life based on
these two points, I believe that it is important to examine the adjusted relationship
between actions and resources and its attendant developmental processes. Therefore, I
propose a perspective called the development of functional systems. Functional systems
consist of actions and resources; the relationship between actions and resources adjust
as time progresses. I call this process of change in the relationship between actions and
resources the development of functional systems. Based on this proposal, I examine the
theme of human agency, learning, and child development from the perspective of the
development of functional systems. At the end, I discuss the limitations of this paper
and suggest directions for future research.

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According to the viewpoint of this paper, artifacts can be regarded as a socio-
technological arrangement. Further, agency is not independent from a socio-
technological arrangement but is something emerging from a socio-technological ar-
rangement, while agency has traditionally been defined as a human capacity of having
needs and preferences and of seeing possible actions. If so, the design of an artifact is
not the design of a single artifact but the design of a socio-technological arrangement
and of agency. Thus, in this paper, first of all, we attempt concretely to analyze the
design of an artifact as that of socio-technological arrangement, based on our field-
works concerning the cases of open data and integrated learning. Second, we show how
agency emerges from a socio-technological arrangement, also based on our fieldworks.
Third, we propose some viewpoints for designing artifacts dependent on the first and
the second analysis.

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This paper discusses the design of everyday things from an evolutionary perspec-
tive, by comparing everyday activities in the natural environments in which the human
species evolved and in the environments of the modern cities. It is supposed that, in
the natural environments, everyday activities for securing foods and energy served the
functions of not only these direct purposes but also of constructing human relations,
meanings and communities. By contrast, it is argued that, in the modern environments,
we have lost touch with the globally extended bases that support our daily lives, largely
due to our use of daily tools designed to maximize their immediate utilities.As a result,
we have lost the sense of community in which we support each other by constructing
relations and meanings through daily activities. Some design principles for globally
extending our visions are discussed based on observations in global collaborations in
the World Museum Project and some examples of social design projects.

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