All issues
Volume 48 (2012)
- Issue 6 Pages 285-
- Issue 5 Pages 217-
- Issue 4 Pages 163-
- Issue 3 Pages 109-
- Issue 2 Pages 55-
- Issue 1 Pages 1-
Volume 48, Issue 5
Displaying 1-7 of 7 articles from this issue
- |<
- <
- 1
- >
- >|
Contribution
-
Akiko TAKAHASHI, Kan SHIMAZAKI, Toshiro ISHIDA2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 217-225
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn this paper, we study the influence of workers' experience and poor visibility on communication errors in a collaborative work site. These factors were set up as experiment conditions, and communication errors were experimentally induced. One hundred persons participated in the study. Each participant was assigned to a two-person team. Each team was asked to complete assembling toys within its limited work area. At that time, the condition that each team passes the work area of another team was set up. Furthermore, rules for communication within and between teams were established. Deviations from the rules were defined as communication errors. The main findings are as follows: Experience made workers more active and lowered the ratio of senders' communication errors. This means that a team consisting of inexperienced workers cannot obey simple rules during simple work. Poor visibility did not significantly influence workers' behavior or the occurrence of communication errors. There were several significant correlations among the ratios of communication errors.View full abstractDownload PDF (797K) -
Satoshi SHIMAWAKI, Naotaka SAKAI, Masaya OKADA2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 226-233
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSWe measured the angles of the wrist and forearm joints when gripping or rotating a doorknob using a 3D motion analysis system, and studied the influence of the doorknob gripping position and the torque applied to the rotational axis of the doorknob on these angles. Ten healthy male subjects were asked to grip a doorknob with the elbow flexed at 90° and then rotate the doorknob. There were four conditions (upper, upper right, right, and lower) for the doorknob gripping position and four conditions for the applied torque. Based on the measurement results of the joint angles, we calculated the joint range of motion for the gripping and rotational motions. The analysis of the gripping motion revealed adduction in all gripping positions and extension/pronation in the upper and right positions. The analysis of the rotational motion revealed adduction in the upper and lower positions and extension/pronation in the upper and upper right positions. The analysis of the applied torque showed that, in motions other than pronation and supination, there were changes in the joint range of motion as the applied torque was increased. This is assumed to be due to the movement of the body's center of gravity.View full abstractDownload PDF (1049K) -
–A Case of Information Providing Service in Museums–Miwa NAKANISHI, Yuki YASUMA2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 234-243
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSUsers' motivation to use products and services is psychologically classified as intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation based on users' natural interest in various activities that provide novelty and challenge; they do it because they want to do it. In this study, we built a hypothetical model that users' motivation to use a product or service was driven when it involved a proper gap from users' inner characteristics, and aimed at developing the model to a design process model for designing products and services that would induce users' intrinsic motivation. As the first stage, we experimentally examined if a service with such a gap would enhance users' intrinsic motivation. Specifically, we examined the effect of the information service provided at a museum booth on users' motivation. The result demonstrated that users' intrinsic motivation was induced when they were given the additional information with a proper gap from their individual interest compared with when they were given the additional information at random from the observable and subjective data.View full abstractDownload PDF (953K) -
Takanori CHIHARA, Takuya HIDA, Hiroki MINAMI, Akihiko SEO2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 244-254
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSProposed here is a comprehensive evaluation of workload and a procedure for determining a recommended range for workplace design problems. The comprehensive workload evaluation was formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. The proposed method was applied to the pushing task that applied a force perpendicularly to the frontal plane, and the validity of the proposed method was examined.The horizontal position (i.e. the left, middle, and right) and the vertical position (i.e. the hip height, elbow height, and shoulder height) were the design variables, and eight surface electromyograms (EMGs) and twelve joint angles were measured. The measurement result shows that there is a trade-off among the EMGs and joint angles. In addition, the optimum solution for all participants is determined. It is found that the optimum horizontal positions of the participants are gathered around a right position, while the optimum vertical positions of them have a wide distribution. Moreover, the comprehensive workload indicator for the participants was constructed, and the indicator shows that the range from the middle to the right and the hip to the elbow provides relatively low workloads.View full abstractDownload PDF (892K) -
Takeshi TODA, Shinya OZAKI, Naoko IDEGUCHI, Tomoko MIYAKI, Keiko NANBU ...2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 255-265
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSPatient-pharmacist telecommunication systems using a mail function of a mobile phone have been in practical use for a dispensing pharmacy to support outpatient medication. However, in the conventional systems, low usability and interactivity of the system has become key problems of the compliance continuation. In this paper, a user-interface is proposed for a patient-pharmacist interactive telecommunication system. By using the user-interface, patients can easily create medication reports and check pharmacist's response messages, even if they are pediatric patients. The pharmacist can also quickly make responses to the patients while working at the dispensing pharmacy. An experimental system was also developed for the user-interface and its benefit was investigated through a 2-month field trial on thirty-five pediatric outpatients with their parents, and four pharmacists in a dispensing pharmacy. From the quantitative data of operating time, response time, and questionnaire evaluation, it confirmed that the proposed user interface was useful for continuation of compliance. However, for long-term medication outpatients, there was a low evaluation for both usability and usefulness. For this reason, for the long-term medication outpatients, it turned out that a remake of the service and function demands, a reexamination of the system requirements, and finally a redesign of the user interface should be required.View full abstractDownload PDF (1476K) -
Seiji SAITO, Shouko TANAKA, Kazuya MATSUMOTO2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 266-273
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSTo determine how slippers should be designed to prevent falling while walking, we examined how slipper quality was related to differences in walking gait. We asked 20 young adults (10 males and 10 females) to wear slippers of 4 different qualities and walk in them at a free pace for 8 meters. We evaluated their gaits during 3 random paces in each slipper and analyzed electromyograms of their legs while walking. We also performed subjective evaluations of the slippers and their flexibility. Our results suggest that walking in slippers with poor flexibility prevents dorsiflexion of the ankle joints during the single-leg support phase. Furthermore, hip joint flexion should be increased and knee joint extension should be delayed in order to prevent the feet from coming into contact with the floor during the end of the swing phase. Our results also suggest that slippers that are poorly fitting, presumably due to the effect of flexibility of slipper sole, are more prone to shift from the feet during the swing phase. Thus, an appropriate amount of flexibility needs to be determined to prevent slippers from causing elderly to fall.View full abstractDownload PDF (860K)
Short communication
-
Takeo ISHII, Erika SHIBAZAKI, Kunio HORIUCHI, Mitsuo SAITO, Takeshi KA ...2012 Volume 48 Issue 5 Pages 274-277
Published: October 15, 2012
Released on J-STAGE: December 25, 2012
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (828K)
- |<
- <
- 1
- >
- >|