In recent years, the movie industry has become more diversified, with DVD rentals and Internet streaming becoming popular means of watching movies and target audiences expanding to include women and the youth. Consequently , obtaining viewers’ impressions is crucial to increase DVD sales. An assessment framework sets and makes clear the relationship among the color of the DVD cover, viewers’ impressions. This study focuses on viewers’ impressions of a film and its DVD cover to analyze the relationship between their reactions and the color of the DVD cover, thereby revealing a notable relationship between the two. The results of this research can be used in movie production.

In recent years, there has been a trend of caregiving facilities utilizing toys known as “Activity Toys” for conducting rehabilitation activities aimed at enhancing the mental and physical well-being of the elderly. These toys are not exclusively designed for the elderly; rather, they are products meticulously selected from among children’s toys by the Elderly Activity Development Center. Some of these toys, introduced since 2006, have already been discontinued. Nevertheless, due to the anticipated ongoing aging of the population, it is believed that there is a need to quantitatively analyze the rehabilitative effects of these toys and provide explicit guidelines for their effective utilization. Therefore, a survey was conducted involving 42 participants to extract ten representative Activity Toys and elucidate the rehabilitative effects. Furthermore, a statistical analysis was performed to explore the effects from the perspectives of both rehabilitative benefits and the allure of ownership. The results yielded guidelines for the future on-site utilization of each toy.

Nostalgia is a mixture of positive and negative emotions and is defined as ‘a sentimental longing for one’s past’. Previous psychological research has shown that nostalgia has positive psychological functions. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of contour thinness on nostalgia in university students, who spend a lot of time listening while doing something else and are considered to be less affected by the experimental situation. The results of a psychological experiment using cross-modal stimuli consisting of black and white line drawings and piano practice pieces showed that contour thinness induced nostalgia. In addition, it has been suggested that the nostalgia induced by thin contours, as if drawn with a fine-tipped pen, may have a positive impact on the temporal outlook of the future. These results can be used for scientifically based nostalgia marketing.

Not only many aspects of dance performances such as performers’ movements, music, stage design, but also characteristics of observers should have critical roles in enhancing the observer’s pleasure and aesthetic evaluation in dance performances. This study examines how evaluations of dance performance of three different street dance genres are influenced by the total practice time and the recognition of psychical reproducibility between dancers’ specialized and non-specialized genres. We carried out online experiment, in which each participant rated the degrees of beauty, arousal, liking, complexity, and recognition of reproducibility. Using a variety of methods, we analyzed changes in aesthetic evaluation according to expertise and its generalization and segmentation from the perspective of dancers’ specialized and non-specialized genres. The results revealed commonalities and uniqueness between genres, suggesting the universality and the diversity of beauty.

This study proposed to understand the needs of foreign travelers as tourism motivation types in order to realize bespoke services in the tourism industry. 1157 foreign residents in eight countries and regions were surveyed, and the results showed that foreign travelers could be classified into eight tourism motivation types. Preferences for tourism experiences differed among these types. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the tourism motivation types can be used to identify common needs that transcend demographic characteristics. We also developed a test to identify tourism motivation types and a short version of the test. The shortened version is expected to be used in bespoke services. The results of this study will not only enable the planned development of tourism experiences and the realization of tailor-made services, but will also contribute to the creation of new value by linking them.

In this study, we focused on the presented information that influences idea generation at the “idea generation stage,” and aimed to clarify the influence that differences in the quality of expression and amount of information in the presented information have on idea generation. The research methods included the creation of five experimental stimulus videos of varying quality and the operation of an online idea generation workshop for the purpose of evaluating the experimental stimuli. The data obtained was analyzed by evaluating ideas, evaluating impressions of videos, and text mining of speech data from interviews. We have shown as a guideline the influence that five types of presented information with different quality of expression have on idea generation in terms of amount of ideas, creative leaps, quality of ideas, satisfaction level, and concrete improvement. The following conclusions were obtained: “Kamishibai videos have the effect of stimulating ideas,” “Line drawing videos have the effect of improving the quality of ideas,” and “2D videos have the effect of increasing the desire to come up with new ideas.”

In playing video games from a third-person point of view, we sometimes lose sight of an avatar that is occluded by other foreground objects. This kind of occlusion is a problem that should be avoided in game systems. The two measures used to address this problem are to generate semi-transparent occluders (foreground objects) or “semi-transparent silhouettes” of vanished occluders. In this study, we analyzed the differences between the properties of these two measures, thereby demonstrating that semi-transparent silhouettes enhance the overall impression, thereby improving visibility, reducing fatigue and number of blinks. These effects are most noticeable when the moving speeds of the avatar and camera are slow, enhancing the visibility improvement effect of the generated semi-transparent silhouettes compared with the semi-transparent occluders, at the expense of a reduced sense of intensity.