As our country is facing a rapid increase of aging population along with a huge amount of people with disabilities striving to live an independent life, the chances of wheelchair users going out are increasing significantly. Based on this social background, the Barrier Free law was in place in 2006. Although Barrier Free public facilities in city areas are being improved nowadays, there are still lots of voices from wheelchair users that these facilities are not easy to use for them. It appears that such facilities still need to be further improved in order to provide better access to wheelchair users. With such background, the purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate how wheelchair users can access those facilities safely when going out in their daily lives. Focusing on roughness of road surfaces, the relations between vibrations, comfortability and centroid fluctuation of wheel chair users in their daily uses are investigated.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the Kansei (sensibility) of the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) during his journey to the east (1911) concerning ‘Window’ through the text analysis according to the viewpoint of Kansei-philosophy. At first, we analyze Le Corbusier's descriptions extracted from Voyage d'Orient carnets (Carnets as field note) and Le voyage d'Orient (Voyage as travel literature). We find that Le Corbusier describes various themes for ‘window’ concerning ‘form’, ‘material’, ‘color’, ‘light’ and ‘view’, particularly ‘light’ of the inside is common to Carnets and Voyage and ‘view’ toward the outside is described only in Voyage. As a result, we can say that, Le Corbusier's architectural Kansei (sensibility) works in the depth between the body on the inside of window and the view on the outside of window.

View full abstract

In order to avoid the problem of mismatch between the questioner and the respondent at Q & A sites, we have experimentally evaluated the impression of 60 question and answer statements posted at Yahoo! Chiebukuro by using 50 impression words. Nine factors as to statements have been obtained by applying the factor analysis to the scores obtained through the experiment. Factor scores of any other statements have been tried to be estimated by using multiple regression analysis. This paper tries to estimate those factor scores through the multiple regression analysis by adopting such feature values as syntactic information, word imageability and closing sentence expressions. As a result, estimation accuracy for every factor is overall well and drastically improved by focusing on closing sentence expressions as well as syntactic information and word imageability. The validity of estimation is also confirmed by inspecting important feature values.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the Kansei of the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965), concerning the change process of the architectural concept on “garden” from the viewpoint of Kansei-philosophy. Le Corbusier defines the natural garden on the ground as “liberated land (le sol libéré)” and the artificial garden above the ground as “conquered land (le sol conquis)”. According to his definition, we can classify several types of Le Corbusier's garden; “front garden”, “courtyard”, “piloti”, “terrace”, “hanging garden”, “loggia” and “roof garden”. As a result of our analysis, we show that Le Corbusier's architectural concept on garden preserves the natural and the artificial.

View full abstract

This paper aims to consider the effectiveness of icons in the environmental proposition by the fifth grader from the view point of Kansei philosophy. We have executed with the children the workshop of estimation and proposition of the life environment (home, home- school route and school), using the five senses' icons. And we analyzed the process of the three proposition types. As a result, we could show the valuable tendency in the home and the school environment except the home- school route. The use of the icons promotes the extension of the targets of the propositions and the diversity of their contents.

View full abstract

Streaming views of stable video images are now available to any household thanks to today's widespread Internet use and faster speeds. Seminars that combine moving images with documents are now proliferating, particularly in markets that target user education. The POWERLIVE GigaCast online seminar system was developed based on an overall system design that focuses primarily on user interaction. With a balance of stable basic functions and optimized interactive functions, the system supports large-scale communications at a significantly reduced cost. Throughout the development of GigaCast, we have identified the following 3 elements in regards to the user interaction: 1) information which should be synchronized with user actions; 2) information which provides the illusion of being synchronized as long as kept within a certain timing in order; and 3) information which does not require to be synchronized. Especially, for the above 2) and 3), we have discovered that it is possible to free up some space in design by dispersing the load required to the server system through providing explicit control while taking advantage of their characteristics.

View full abstract

In recent years, many farmers' direct sales shops have built by JA or local associations in rest stops. The farmers' shops are used as places of communication between agricultural producers and customers. In this research, we carried out the questionnaire about satisfaction of market to producers and customers at 2 famous farmers markets in Yamanashi Prefecture. Exploratory factor analysis of the maximum likelihood method and covariance structure analysis were applied to the data. The results are as follows; (1) for farmers and customers the satisfaction in communication at the market is the important factor, (2) farmers are interested in the communication with customers but customers are interested in the products, (3) farmers become more active to the agriculture through the direct shop business experience at the market, (4) customers are cultivated the germ of the spirit of “the local consumption of locally produced”.

View full abstract

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of the Japanese Government has concentrated heavily to promote the creation of the environment where aged and disabled people are able to enjoy tourism safely and comfortably. Tourism regarding the handicapped has not been studied sufficiently and their needs are not well known. Therefore, it is inevitable to conduct investigations on tourism barrier free project and its development in order to resolve currently faced problems. Based on the survey on the development and maintenance of the barrier free of the traffic and its associated facilities and also from the perspective of tourists (the disabled), both hardware and software infrastructure aspect will be investigated broadly. This study will attempt to suggest agenda to tackle with problems and challenges on the vitalization and enforcement of policies of the tourism resources. A new style of tourism for visually impaired persons will also be suggested based on the survey.

View full abstract

We investigated the effects of pre-preferences for CG characters (avatar), gender of CG characters, exposure frequency, and the concordance between CG characters and the background on the impression formed about CG characters. During 8 sessions, 36 participants were shown a succession of CG characters presented against concordant or discordant backgrounds. During sessions 1, 3, 5, and 7, participants evaluated each CG character in terms of post-preference, intelligence, and reliability using a 7-point scale. Session 8 involved a delay condition. The results showed that post-preference evaluation scores in the high pre-preference condition were associated with better first impressions of CG characters, and increased with exposure frequency. However, background conformity influenced the impressions of CG characters when pre-preferences were medium or low. In addition, post-preference and reliability evaluation scores were higher for female than male characters.

View full abstract

This paper presents a simple font search method using an interactive genetic algorithm and similarity search. We see various types of fonts are used in many graphic designs. Various choices are available when selecting suitable fonts for presentation slides or website designs. However, the existing methods used for selecting fonts become tedious as the number of fonts increases. Our method provides an effective font search process based on visual similarity. In two experiments, we affirm that our method is effective in searching for a desired font, helping users to obtain a font suitable for an alphabetic (or non-alphabetic) character. In particular, our method allows users to search a font suitable for some words in less than half or one-third time that the user selects a font from a font list.

View full abstract

The situation of the field has changed hour by hour every day, not like photograph. Therefore, many of the fieldworkers frequent the field, and discover a new issue in every time. However, does this experience apply only to investigators? The resident in all regions tries to make future generations succeed the regionality. For example, there are festivals and ceremonies. The youths carry out various activities like see, hear, touch, taste, describe, and more, and try to understand about the object. The youths in my research area BAYAN tries to do these works, to discuss in the camp and the study meeting, and to understand the object. Their works appear to be similar to the works of the fieldworkers who go to field and try to consciously understand the object. Therefore, on the point “Fieldwork”, there is very no difference between investigators and the residents try to understand the object. In this paper, I would like to discuss how does Bayan young people succeeds KANSEI for cultural-preservation, through the experience of my fieldworks.

View full abstract

The expression “simplicity” has diverse usage and understanding in product design. For clarification of such simplicity, this study considers the problem of analyzing simplicity by using two-dimensional visual images composed of some geometric shapes. The first purpose of the study is therefore to extract factors of how people perceive simplicity and the second one is to clarify the combined effect of the factors. In preliminary survey using eighty sample images, thirteen factors are extracted for three categories of shape, composition and tone. With these factors, the first part of the main experiment is carried out to clarify the decision rules in determining simplicity, while in the second part the combined effect of the different factors is evaluated.

View full abstract

Customer's impression for corporate logos is very important on management strategy. Building up strong VI produces a large amount of profit to corporations. This study considers what impression the customer has, based on a questionnaire survey data. We focused on the logo evolution of Japanese corporations. We used 3 Japanese corporations' logos as stimulus. These logos are categorized into 3 typical Japanese logo designs. We proposed a questionnaire to the university students to investigate what the impressions of the logos of the 3 Japanese corporations. As the result of Factor analysis, 2 factors were gained. Factor 1 was named F1 Reliability-confidence and Factor 2 was named Innovation-invention. And we gave consideration on the combination of the logo designs and participants' impressions. The combination of (1) figurative designs and (3) logotype has the tendency that both F1 Reliability-confidence and F2 Innovation-invention. The results of our study are useful in VI strategy.

View full abstract

By the development of the information-oriented society, it became very easy even for beginners to make collages out of photographs by means of computer software. In old days, those photograph collages could be simply distinguished from true photographs because the photograph collages was made by hand. However, it became very difficult to differentiate the true photograph from the photograph collage by digital Image processing. And then, that kind of collage has many problems concerning copyrights or social ethics etc. On the other hand, the photograph collages seem to be accepted as one of the art technique in the recent photograph world. We show three solutions. First, limit of the copyright use by having All rights reserved or not. Second, the detective technique of an unjust reproduction and modification develops. Third, media literacy education is strengthened.

View full abstract

We constructed a graphic model using structural equation modeling so as to study the relation among the variable groups with time sequence. The model was applied to a set of experimental data obtained facial packs to investigate the relation of the skin conditions and the impression questionnaire. The characteristic of this graphical model shows relationship among the variable groups which change with time. The model used the features of skin images as one of the variable group, and used the evaluation impressions as another variable group. The variable which was observed with the time elapse was linked with the directed path among the variable groups. The path coefficient between each observation point showed change of the strength of the relation between the serial variables of each variable group. Furthermore, the path coefficient showed that the strength of the relation between variable groups was different in each observation.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the kansei evaluation data between the patterns on Kutaniyaki porcelain and the products which use the patterns. We investigated how the kansei evaluation data change when those patterns are used to develop products. The analysis was conducted using the SD profile and factor analysis in order to compare the kansei evaluation data between 30 kinds of Kutaniyaki porcelain panels and 38 kinds of Kutaniyaki sinks. As a result, it was found that the kansei evaluation can change if the size, shape and number of the patterns painted on the porcelain panels are changed when they are made into products. The above results indicate that it is necessary to pay attention to the change of size and number of the patterns when developing products by using the patterns of the porcelain.

View full abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the sound symbolism of Japanese morae. Japanese sense the Japanese morae integrating their visual and sound image, and foreigners cannot fully integrate those. Therefore, two surveys were carried out. On the first survey about the image of 46 Japanese morae (conducted on Japanese) three principle sound symbolism characteristics were extracted - “inorganic - organic”, “comfortable - uncomfortable” and “tranquillo - rough”. On the other hand, the second survey for foreign students indicated clear difference between visual and sound image. I report some interesting findings on Japanese sound symbolism characteristics, such as the high correlation with visual and sound image on “inorganic - organic”.

View full abstract

In this paper, we propose an estimation of reader's emotion towards news articles using Twitter, and apply this method to the access log analysis of a news website. The proposed estimation method is divided into 3 steps: 1) The system collects tweets about news articles from Twitter. 2) The system tags each tweet with an emotion. 3) The system estimates the reader's emotion towards the news articles using tweets obtained in the second step. The system can tag an article with one or more of 11 emotions (anger, dislike, excitement, fear, like, joy, relief, sadness, shame, surprise, nothing). The experimental result shows the effectiveness of this method using Twitter for estimating the reader's emotion. For access log analysis based on emotion, we collected the access log of a self-produced news website. The system tags each collected news article with emotions using the proposed method. We analyzed the access log by using Hidden Markov model (HMM). As the result of access log analysis, we obtained some interesting findings such as that the users tend to read the article which causes excitement or surprise at the start.

View full abstract

In a traditional environment Object VR virtual object is displayed on the display, the operation is performed with a mouse. Therefore, dealing with like a smooth interaction with real objects in the hand is difficult to say, the immersion fades. This research is no need to wear special equipment users, proposal and implementation of a spherical display the real-world oriented interfaces enables natural view point movement as well as dealing with object in hand for Objective.

View full abstract

One of the most important issues of nature restoration is how to design the process of social consensus building. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method based on “local milieu” (local as vicinity) to build a consensus in nature restoration project. We have extracted the relationship between stakeholder's interests and the milieu of watershed from practices of the management of the consensus building process in the Ten-noh river restoration project carried out on Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture. “Local milieu” is a characteristic of a region whose specific geographical elements underlie both its natural climate and social conditions. We tried to refine the concept through using it for the management of the project and to show its effectiveness and validity.

View full abstract

In this paper, we propose a new evaluation method in the field of sign production, by applying the quantitative methods. We show the results of the evaluation items to extract the sign of improving customer satisfaction, introduces the concept of deviation signs, experiments were conducted practical method to evaluate the new sign. The method of experiment consists of the following two steps. First, we determine the evaluation items of the sign. Next, using the evaluation criteria, we evaluate the before and after improvement of signs of actual improvement. In order to improve customer satisfaction, we introduce the concept of deviation value of the sign here. Our proposal has given a new guideline for the production of the sign to determine the items that should be improved sign specifically, to compare values before and after improvement assessment improvement.

View full abstract

This is a study on affection of display space for evaluating people's buying-intention. In our last study, it was proved that even participants were not aware, the design of the wallpaper and color temperature of the lighting of the display space affected the intention to purchase the chocolate pieces. We noticed that a few participants who were not used to buy chocolates wondered how to evaluate and took more time to watch chocolates than other participants. Therefore, we hypothesized that they were not so affected by the display space because they seemed to evaluate chocolates more logical than intuitive. In the experiment, we divided participants into two groups based on whether they are interested in chocolates. As a result, we discovered that the display space affected the buying-intention of the participants interested in chocolates; and did not affect the decision of not interested participants.

View full abstract

In visual communication media, various symbol-logo marks as plane figures are often presented to viewers. It has been reported appearance of plane figures is varied by psychological influence depending on these layout angles in a field of vision, and the subjective geometric relations of figures are different from the objective relations. In our previous research, we have examined about relationship between the apparent size of a basic geometric form and its layout angle. When vertexes of a square were close to vertical or horizontal lines, the apparent size of the square tended to be larger than these of the other layout angles. In this study, we examined how apparent sizes of various geometric forms changed proportion were influenced by difference of the layout angle. Results show that there are some regularities on the relationship between the apparent size and its layout angle.

View full abstract

Various robots had been developed lately, not only for industrial use but for home use too. In our previous study, we had developed a playmate robot system that is designed to play with children. Child personality observation is important during play situations for smooth interaction, in order to sustain the child's interest. Therefore, we considered that the robot system should be able to distinguish children's personality types or tendencies. As a result, the relationship between the child's personality test score and head movement observed during the robot play interaction was found to be significant. This suggests the possibility of an adaptive robot system that plays with children in accordance to each child personality.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether peppermint and orange reduce psychological stress and enhance concentration of attention during mental arithmetic. Ten male students participated in this study performed mental arithmetic test two times. We measured oxy-hemoglobin concentration in cerebral blood flow (ΔO₂Hb) in frontal and temporal lobes, blood pressure, and the number of answers and mental impressions for the test and presented aromas. The aromas and non-odor were presented during 9th minutes from beginning the test. Peppermint and orange remained and significantly increased ΔO₂Hb in left and right temporal lobes, respectively, while the aromas did not change the number of answers. Principle component analysis for mental state and behavioral data as well as for the measured all variables showed the aromas contribute to enhance concentration and inhibited sleepiness, and the aromas separated psycho-physiological response, respectively. The findings indicate that temporal aroma presentation mainly changes brain activity and thus improves concentration of attention.

View full abstract

This study focuses more on Kansei value manifestation and communication strategy rather than Kansei value creation that conventional researches mainly focus on. Albeit Kansei products imply craftsmanship, histories and endorsements those of which define personalities of such items, we cannot commercialise them sustainably regardless of the delivery of Kansei value through a combination of various media such as newspapers, magazines and the Internet. In this study, the flow of Kansei value delivery that induces sustainable profits for mid-small businesses is indicated after the analysis of communication strategy in Komaruya Sumii, Japanese long-standing company in Kyoto. The case of Komaruya Sumii embodies the contemporary processes of Kansei value delivery that helps develop invisible value communication in many mid-small enterprises that produce Kansei products, but have limited ideas of Kansei value communication for the customers.

View full abstract