Statistical approach to kansei engineering methodology for kansei product development are restricted to explicitly show interactive effects between product elements or kansei words because these use mainly linear statistical model. In this point, a rough set approach to kansei engineering methodology for developing kansei product design is promising. This paper proposes a rough set approach to product development based on kansei engineering and shows its application to car floor mat development. Its advantage is to provide a systematic approach to the process analysis from the clarification of customers' needs analysis to the identification of design elements. As a result, we obtained good design candidates for new car floor mat by using design expert knowledge as well as both results of quantification theory type I and rough set.

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The change in hormonal and immune state of university male students who were engaged in his graduation examination was investigated as a behavioral medicine study targeting on chronic stress. With regard to biomarkers of human hormonal and immune state, salivary secretory substances, Immunoglobulin A (IgA), Cortisol, Chromogranin (CgA), and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), were assayed about a week before and 2 weeks after the day of oral defense of the graduation examination for 20 male students. As a result, the salivary immune substance, IgA, significantly decreased (p<0.001), while other biomarkers showed no significant change. In conclusion, it was suggested that IgA can be a promising candidate for a chronic stress marker.

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The purpose of this research is to clarify an effectiveness and superiority of our new medical information system. The system named mellonet-touch was constructed based on two experiences: One is elderly patients' experience in using information systems and another is our hospitalization experience using special equipments to understand elderly patients' physical characteristics. mellonet-touch helps to check patient's medical information and to support communication between the elderly patient and caregiver or medical staff. The system is to be placed bedside for easy accessibility. For our research, we conducted comparison experiment by using 15 operational tasks between our mellonet-touch and an existing bedside monitor system with three groups (20s group, 30-40s group, and 50-60s group) from 35 subjects. We also conducted impression evaluation of two IT medical systems using the SD method. Our results showed many subjects, including the elderly, could operate the mellonet-touch more quickly and easily than existing systems. Failure rate of the mellonet-touch was lower than the existing bedside monitor system. SD method results also showed that scores of “friendliness” and “refinement” were higher for the mellonet-touch system. From the results, we confirmed mellonet-touch's effectiveness and superiority as a Kansei Medical IT System which is the one allows users including elderly patient to operate new systems through their gained subconscious knowledge based on experience without a special knowledge for operating system.

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Advance development of a system (human friendly system) between humans and computers is more important than the evolution of computer hardware. The problem for the progress is directed to “How do we acquire and process Kansei? How do we produce a user model and a network service using Kansei?”. For prior research, we constructed fatigue models based on a Bayes-ian network using psychological and physiological data [1]. We proposed a convergent inference system framework using multiple Bayesian networks based on the ontology and agent technology [2]. In this paper, we describe the specific ontology for Kansei modeling.

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In our previous work, to extract the KANSEI information received from a landscape image, we investigated the evaluation experiment by the Semantic Differential method. By analysing the obtained data using the factor analysis, we found out 4 factors associated with KANSEI information. In this paper, we consider the KANSEI modeling which is connecting with a landscape image and the KANSEI factors. By using MPEG-7 descriptors such as Scalable Color Descriptor and Edge Histgram Descriptor, the Saliency Map information of Visual Attention, and the KANSEI factors of monochromatic color, we can estimate the KANSEI information using the potential interpolation method. In addition, as an example of image database system applying this KANSEI modeling method, we consider the image retrieval system which used the KANSEI information as the reference key.

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In this paper, we have investigated an interaction between video quality and audio quality in order to develop an objective multimedia quality assessment model of high-quality audio-visual media (high-definition video and multichannel audio) according to ITU-T Recommendation J.148 [3]. For that purpose, we have analyzed the interaction by using the subjective quality assessment test of high-definition video and multi-channel audio. As a result, we have concluded that the following three procedures should be considered for the development of the objective multimedia quality assessment model of high-quality audio-visual media: (1) estimation of A_q and V_q from psychophysical quantity of video and audio media, (2) estimation of A_q(V_q) and V_q(A_q) from A_q and V_q, (3) estimation of MM_q from A_q, V_q, A_q(V_q) and V_q(A_q) as compliant contetns.

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Face perception is important for our social interaction. When we perceive faces, not only face features such as its configuration and contour but also face color might affect our face perception. This study aimed to reveal the effect of the color information on face processing and an event-related potential (ERP) was measured while natural color face and blue color face were presented. As a result, the amplitude of the N170 which deeply correlates with face processing was larger in response to blue color face than in response to natural color face. The result indicates that the color information effects on face processing in similar way with face configuration and that face color might also play important roles in the processing.

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In the 21st century, the Kansei values of industrial products are considered very important. However, since not many studies have focused on the kawaii attributes, we focus on a systematic analysis of kawaii interfaces themselves, that is kawaii feelings caused by the attributes such as shapes, colors, and materials. We have already performed some experiments and obtained some interesting tendencies on kawaii attributes. For example, curved shapes such as torus and sphere have a tendency to be evaluated as kawaii more than straight-lined shapes. However, kawaii colors vary by experiments. Thus, we planned a new systematic experiment for elements of color to clarify the tendency of kawaii colors using virtual objects. From the experimental results, the tendencies of kawaii colors were clarified for each element of color such as hue, saturation, and brightness to some extent.

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A corporation makes many decisions during the course of its operation. These decisions are conducted by different teams of people with different methods to judge the direction of business. Therefore, multiple paths may exist to achieve a final decision. Each choice in the decision process is affected by not only rational judgment but also non-rational human factors (so called KANSEI). In order to recognize effects of KANSEI in the decision process, we have been development a business organization simulator with KANSEI parameter. This simulator is a computer system that enables us to simulate the following situation: if such judgment is made, or if such element acts upon such way, then such result should follow. By using this simulator, it is possible to be understanding risks in advance. In this paper, we describe definitions of functional requirements for a business organization simulator through considering various simulations by using a case study as typical scenario.

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Our previous study demonstrated that the information given by touch altered the appearance of visual illusion despite the dominance of visual experience. In the previous study, wooden pieces with various curvatures were used as haptic stimuli. In the present study, we used stereoscopic print of the Hering and Wundt figures which had various curvatures of test lines. We examined whether the haptic information which was presented on a plane surface (stereoscopic print) can change the seeing of the lines on the visual illusions-patterns. Participants judged the extent of apparent curvature of each visual test figure, with or without touching. It was found that some information given by touch can change the seeing of visual illusions. Moreover, the results showed that the biased tendencies in apparent curvature by the visual information coincided with those given by touch information. However, compared with our previous study, the effect of haptic information on a plane surface was partial. Therefore, it can be concluded that the 2D haptic information doesn't have more impact on vision than 3D haptic information when the touch-oriented perception was determined.

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A person creates value—named “Kokorozashi” in this paper—in his or her mind by receiving and interpreting some emotional messages that affect his or her feelings or will. It can be visibly shown as text which means contribution to others and comparison with the rivals. “Kokorozashi”, which includes a very dynamic context, facilitates action change through its learning, challenges and contribution. In this paper, I propose the “Kokorozashi Model”, which is composed of the processes of value creation and action change. Further, this paper suggests the concept of “Meta Kokorozashi” to comprehend the “Kokorozashi of an organization” as the organization's people subjectively feel it. When a man tells a story into which put “Kokorozashi” by the first person plural, we can assume that it is the “Kokorozashi of an organization”.

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This paper proposes an evaluation method in environmental psychology using evaluator's self describing word and preference data to illustrate relation between the view point of consumer and the recollected images from evaluation objects. The evaluation structures of preference had been analyzed using multivariate analysis adding to the ordinary text mining method. The data used as evaluation scales in multivariate analysis extracted from evaluation words of free descriptions regarding evaluator's preferences. Because the multivariate analysis that uses the evaluation word obtained by the text mining is a sparse data procession, the dimension cannot be factorized well. This paper proposes the method of evading this problem by using cluster analysis beforehand, and using the data of the average of the clusters. To apply the method of the proposal here, the images of several bathrooms had been evaluated and analyzed the relations between preferences and evaluation words evoked from imaged of bathrooms.

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Pictograms are graphic symbols also called picture symbols. They are widely used, mainly in public accommodations. However, it is hard to say that meaning can be grasped quickly from a single pictogram. In most cases, pictograms are accompanied by some explanatory written text. In this paper, we propose a new method of displaying pictograms, displaying two slightly different pictograms successively, using the difference between the two frames to promote understanding. We limit ourselves to two frames because a higher number of pictograms makes it difficult to clearly express difference information and risks to confuse viewers more than help understanding. We experimentally evaluated the recognition properties of our new method. We showed one-frame and two-frame versions expressing the same content to 165 subjects and measured action time, percentage of correct answers, and semantic transparency. Using a Mann-Whitney U test, we found that in some problems, the semantic transparency was significantly (p < 0.05) higher for two-frame pictograms than for one-frame pictograms. Also, two-frame pictograms generally showed a better percentage of correct answers. We conclude that two-frame pictograms making use of difference information may contribute significantly to increasing pictogram recognition.

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The activity of “Local community SNS” is now in the limelight for the reason it is effective to the local revitalization, However, not a few “Local Community SNS Sites” are now in the “landing state”, and are deadlocked at the management, In this thesis, I introduce the design concept and the applying method of “Our Local community SNS” succeeded in developing by using the interdisciplinary study or tying up the knowledge of variegated scientific research, Furthermore, clarify the sustainability of “Our local community SNS” obtained through the social experiment.

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Healing music and Musicotherapy attract attentions recently. They are beginning to be used in the medical treatment. On the other hand there are little practical utilization to relax with video images compared with music. Visual information is said to occupy about the whole of 80% humans receive from five senses. Therefore it has some potential that visual information affects human's mental and physical state as well as aural information does. This paper attempts to investigate the relation between characteristics of video images and mental relaxation. The one of characteristics we focus is motion speed of video images. It is considered that it might correspond to tempo of music. This paper investigates the relaxation effect by using the index calculated by heart rate variability analysis. The experimental results and analysis confirmed that viewing video images might have higher effect of reducing stress than eyes closed state and the relaxation effect might depend on motion speed.

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The present research is related to prototype images carried by people. Usually, with regard to a given concept, people associate groups of real objects which are included in the concept. A prototype image can be regarded as an abstract average value of these objects. In the present research, we investigated how looking at a shape whose aspect ratio has been altered can change the prototype image of that shape. The results indicated that if an altered image is presented to a person for a prolonged time, the prototype image eventually changes. In addition, it was found that this change correlates with a power function.

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The goal of our study is to propose a way to evaluate space quality on various display environments. In present study, we tried to find commonalities in impression formations of space quality in three display environments. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate space quality on three display environments, those were LCD projector with screen (Experiment 1), 19-inch LCD (Experiment 2) and 2-inch LCD (Experiment 3). In each display environment, the impressions on space pictures on display were evaluated by SD method. Based on the results of factor analyses in each experiment, we found four factors, ‘Lighting and air-conditioning’, ‘Impressiveness’, ‘Relaxation’, and ‘Oppressiveness’, common to three display environments and one specific factor, ‘Artificiality’, which was found only in two display environments.

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Because the success of audio equipment as Kansei products depends on sound quality evaluation, and the first step in obtaining persuasive evaluations is to select reliable subjects, herein a method to screen subjects is proposed. This method, which consists of four experiments, uses conjoint analysis, which is a statistical technique to determine how people evaluate different features that make up an individual product. In the first experiment, subjects who prefer sound quality over visual design, brand, or price are selected from potential customers of car audio equipment. In the next experiment, subjects are further narrowed by selecting those who provide stable judgments on a specific timbre factor. The remaining two experiments examine whether the subjects stably judge based on their preferred factor. By applying the proposed method, five subjects were selected from the original 27 subjects.

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This paper proposes a new approach for the analysis of a customer's initial impressions of an automobile front view. It is important for manufactures to analyze the differences in the expression that a studied automobile provokes in the viewer. We have tried to estimate quantitatively both the “facial expression” and the “perceived age” using modals that are already in common usage, for fifty automobile front views. Two visual stimuli were used in our experiments: the drawings and the caricatures generated by an automotive caricaturing system coche-PICASSO. The results show that this approach is effective in analyzing motor vehicle viewer perception.

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In this study, the evaluation of regional landscape is performed by residents using the Kansei Engineering method, and it is shown that the regional landscape is characterized by three Kansei factors such as “locality”, “mentality” and “functionality”. Further more, the residents are classified into three groups such as “high QOL”, “middle QOL” and “low QOL” according to a regional QOL (Quality of Life) index proposed in this study using the Kansei Engineering method, and finally the Kansei for landscape is evaluated for each group. Based on these results, the contributed factors to QOL of residents are analyzed using by SOM (Self Organizing Map), and the difference of evaluation of landscape between the high QOL resident and the low QOL one.

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We have been developing a design support system to assist novice users as well as designers to suit to their taste or to those of expected consumers. Color coordination is considered to be an important factor to control the image of products, which means there is a strong relationship between a color coordination and imagewords. To accept wide variety of imagewords, we need a large number of color coordination as training examples. To reduce such a mental load, we focused on both intra-relationships among imagewords and inter-relationships between imagewords and color coordinates. In our method, a user firstly gives a 2D-imageword map to teach intra-relationships, i.e. subjective similarity, among them. Secondly, the user gives subjective scores to basic imagewords in relation to typical color coordinates. Applying multivariate analysis, we got the user's taste model on color coordinates. Thus, we can select suitable color coordinates from wide variety of imagewords. In our current experiment, we achieved good precision for the imagewords strongly associated with basic imagewords.

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When the bottleneck is eliminated by applying the idea of TOC (Theory of Constraints) for production management, taking direct cost accounting will be much easier if the variable cost ratio rises, and so called “process of sensitivity” of managers of plants who are used to standard cost or estimated cost must be deeply doubted. This paper builds mathematical models based on two different cases and develops simulations respectively to explain the theory mentioned above more realistically. In the first case, the variable cost ratio went up in the simulation for utilization rate based on a model established for production process of X planet when TOC and JIT applied. Similar was done for Y planet and the variable cost went up, either. As a result, the variable cost ratios went up 128.8% and 149.6% for X and Y plants, respectively.

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This research aims at supporting human communication from the aspect of sense of intimacy among people. The typical example is campus community aid to activate mutual teaching among students. In this service, a senior student is chose as a tutor for a junior student on each of the exercise. In this service, the sense of intimacy is an important factor in human communication to achieve close relationship between them. This research approaches to statistically enumerate and model the sense of intimacy from multiple aspects depending on matching scores of personal profiles, such as hobbies and preferences. We had better result through the test on quality of service comparing the service without our mechanism.

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In the field of image processing, it is well known that the gray level transform by Histogram Equalization (HE) for gray scale image effectively enhances the intensity contrast, in general. For the case of color image, the HE processing can be regarded as an elastic transform on the lightness axis in the RGB attribute space of input color image. In this paper, from the expansion of this idea, we propose some elastic transforms based on the HE on Principal Component axis, as arrangement processing for color image that can bring about impressive feeling effects. Moreover, we show the questionnaire survey on the results of the arrangement processing, and discuss the effectiveness in feeling impression.

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We picked “block” and “colors” as decision factors affecting the judgment of “the simplicity” and “the complexity” of exhibition information on a display. And these two factors -blocks and colors -were examined through two experiments in this study. As a result, it was cleared that these two factors gave largely influence into the judgment of the simplicity and the complexity of exhibition information, and the degrees of influence into judgment were also cleared. Furthermore, we obtained the knowledge that should be the indicator to make the exhibition information look more or little. In addition, we could investigate not only the applicative aspect which deal with information exhibition method, but also the fundamental aspect on the research of the internal process of area perception. Based on this study, further investigation on area perception is expected on both fundamental and applicative aspects.

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In order to consider facial expressions of laughter in relation to underlying mental processes, we have been attempting to use remake movies. In this study, we introduced automatic smile-detection software so as to evaluate the strength of laughter objectively. First, the performance of the automatic smile -detection software was examined by a questionnaire-style survey in 10 subjects aged between 19 and 25. Second, from 23 original-remake movie pairs, we extracted 37 facial expressions of laughter for analysis. Measured strengths of facial expressions of laughter of corresponding scenes of original and remade were close to each other except few exceptions. This result suggests that the smile-detection software is reasonably accurate, and facial expressions of laughter at the same underlying context are always similar even though backgrounds of movie production are different.

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Selecting the Kansei words is very important for experiments on the impression measurement used the SD methods. A method, that is making a pre-experiment and then giving factor analysis, is often used in order to select the Kansei words. However, this method burdens not only researchers but also testees, furthermore it cannot exclude their subjects. To solve the problem, we propose a new Kansei words extracting method based on morpheme analysis and tf-idf. The proposal method extracts Kansei Words from documents, for example, magazines and review articles, etc. Extracted Kansei words are ranked by tf-idf method from one document to another. Higher-ranked Kansei words are extracted as the proper Kansei words set. We applied the method to women's fashion magazines. The experimental result shows it's more efficient than conventional methods.

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There are traditional autonomous organizations called Keiyaku-kou which have been organized by inhabitants in Tohoku region. The chanting of Noh text has been sung as an important element at the end of the general meeting since the Edo era in the Nagao Keiyaku-kou in Kitakamicho, Ishinomaki-shi, Miyagi prefecture. In this paper the author considers about the effect of the chanting of Noh text sung by the members of the Keiyaku-kous in this area. While people say the chanting of Noh text has an educational effect as they call “The 15 virtues of the chanting of Noh text”, the author discovered that the chanting of Noh text sung as the group had a possibility of contributing for the formation of a community. It is the reason why the author considers the chanting of Noh text sung as the group has four necessary elements for the formation of a community, which are (1)scale of the number of people in a group, (2)sense of cooperation, (3)individual autonomy and (4)courtesy. In the Nagao Keiyaku-kou the chanting of Noh text has been working in order to create and continue ‘NAKAMA’ (fellows) relationship in the community. The author proposes a new viewpoint creating a community indirectly by using traditional KANSEI like the chanting of Noh text.

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Sleep health is very important in daily life. People with sleep disorders are reported as having higher risk for the loss of concentration, traffic accidents while driving. Checking one's day-to-day sleep has become very important. Since the body movement during sleep has a certain relationship with mental and physical fatigue or stress in daytime, we pay attention to the body movement as the index of sleep assessment and propose new method to detect body movement during sleep by using difference image processing. To verify the validity of this method, we compared the body movement calculated by our method and heart rate as reference data. A subject performed six nights' experiment of recording the body movement both with the video system and the heart rate. The result showed that the body movement calculated by the video image expressed successfully match to the heart rate change.

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The polarity of depth specified by binocular disparity or motion parallax is sometimes perceived opposite to that of the geometrical prediction. Previous studies have suggested that apparent shape distortion induced by these depth cues contributes to depth reversal. We tested this suggestion by examining the relationship between apparent depth and shape distortion. Disparity or motion parallax gradient was introduced into a grid pattern subtending 20 deg of visual field so that a slanted flat surface or concave/ convex surface was perceived. Observers judged the directions of apparent depth and shape distortion using a two-alternative forced choice method. When the apparent depth was reversed, some observers perceived a veridical shape while others perceived a reversed one. The former is consistent with the prediction of the theory that hypothesizes the contribution of apparent shape distortion as a perspective depth cue; however, the latter can not be explained by the theory. This suggests that the sign of binocular disparity or motion parallax can itself be reversed at a relatively early stage of depth information processing.

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The purpose of this study is to understand the needs of people who use wheelchairs and to design an appealing aesthetic pattern for pants. In the first phase, we accurately analyzed how the peripheral shape of buttocks varies when one sits on a chair. Many case studies on the peripheral shape of buttocks can be found in related literature. Since it is not easy to measure the peripheral shape of buttocks, the people being tested placed their feet on a tall footrest for measurement purposes so that both knees and hip joints were flexed to 90 degrees. In this study, we used an impression material alginate to accurately measure the peripheral shape of buttocks on a chair, and compared our results with those from conventional simulated experiments. As a result, the experiment was so stable and its success rate reached 100%. The experiment could also be performed without touching sensitive body parts. From the collected alginate mold, the amount of body surface variation on the chair could be accurately measured and the shape of buttocks could also be observed. The back side of the femoral region, in fact, becomes flat on the chair, whereas it was of round shape in the conventional simulated experiments. Furthermore, we identified a hollow in the hipbone region due to the impact of body weight on the hipbone of buttocks. We also verified that the expansion and contraction rate differed by approximately three times in a certain part of the body between our experiment and conventional ones. From the above results, we reconfirmed that the amount of body surface variation should be added to the pattern of pants.

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We aim to provide web-based learning support based on individual knowledge. Tags of a web page assigned by its author and/or readers are considered to show its semantic feature. We are developing a tag-system-based educational contents sharing service, to give a suitable assistance according to each user's level of familiarity and knowledge with the contents and their categories. And we found that our method have a need and adequateness.

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Consumers may take some specific behavior preference or favorite items to get more information, such as the material and the price, in shopping. We have been developing a smart room to estimate their preference and favorite items through observation using ubiquitous sensors, such as RFIDs and webcams. We assumed the decision decision-making process in shopping as AIDMA rule, and detected specific behavior, which are “See”, “Touch” and “Take”, to estimate user's interest. We found that we can classify consumers by their behavior patterns of the times and duration of the behaviors. In our experiment we have tested twenty-eight subjects on twenty-four T-shirts. In the experiment, we got better precision ratio for each subjects on estimating preference and favorite items by discriminate analysis on his or her behavior log, and behavior patterns classification above.

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This study verified how timing of sound effects affects the user's operation performance with interactive content, such as computer games. We conducted an experiment to test the hypotheses that (1) operation performance is slightly degraded if the sound effects lag behind the visual beat with “good” timing and (2) operation performance is substantially degraded if the sound effects lag behind the visual beat with “bad” timing, where the “visual beat” in interactive content is the repetition of periodic visual accents in visual images. Our findings indicate that a delayed timing of sound effects degrades the operation performance, but the degradation depends not only on the degree of delay of the sound effects, but also on how in tune the sound effects are with the visual beat.

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This study aims to analyze the relationship between the managerial characteristics considered as Technology Management and the Customer Experience of a long-standing company. Based on the case of YAMADA-MATSU, this study conducts various analyses from the perspective of building Customer Experience, and also examines managerial characteristics as Technology Management in order to build Customer Experience. From the results of analyses using Strategic Experiential Modules, the strategic implementation of such Customer Experience and five customer experience management frameworks, Yamada-Matsu forms and maintains its Customer Experience created by Technology Management, which results in providing extraordinary products based on Kyoto culture, such as the incense ceremony.

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This study aims to analyze the long-standing company providing such products that hold some sort of customer experiences. The long-standing company has continuously adjusted its main products to the changes of customers' lives by harmonizing tradition and innovation. The KYO-KARAKAMI is handmade Japanese paper representing the“Karacho” pattern, used for covering walls, ceilings and FUSUMA (a thick papered sliding door for partitioning rooms in a Japanese house). Based on a case of KYO-KARAKAMI “Karacho”, this study analyzes how the KYO-KARAKAMI designs the SHITURAI (furnishing with hospitality) and every-day's living environment and how the design of living environment made by KYO-KARAKAMI has been linked with creation of customer experiences.

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Various colors are used for things that we use in daily life. Color combinations are important for design, and have a great influence on image or human kansei. The purpose of this study is to model the relation between two-color combinations and human emotions, and to apply it to the design support. In this paper, we propose emotion two-color combination models generated by the quantification theory type I. First, harmonized two-color combinations are generated by color harmony theories, and these color combinations are evaluated by the semantic differential method in order to clarify the relation between two-color combinations and basic emotions. Next, statistical models concerning emotions and color combinations are generated by analyzing acquired data using quantification theory type I. We applied these models to a uniform color combination system. Related models of image words of sport and emotions were generated, and these were combined with emotion two-color combination models. Finally, we constructed a simplified uniform color combination system, and confirmed effectiveness of models.

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This paper examines the problem of evaluating the attitudes of residents using an example of the failed mergers during the municipal mega-mergers of the Heisei era. In other words, the analysis examines the two aspects of the determination process and surveys of residents' attitudes. Firstly the problem of new city names resulting from municipal mergers is related to the sensibility of residents seen from their attachment to a place name or “local brand”. The failure of the Noshiro merger in 2004 showed that even though residents had objections during the consultative stages for mergers, the residents remained silent until their opinion was individually asked by way of signature collection activities for petitions or by resident attitude surveys. Consequently the transparency (information disclosure) of discussions from the publication of the new name until determination may be seen as not fulfilling the necessary and sufficient conditions for evaluating the objections of residents. As a result, there is a need for local government to search for a new means of evaluating the sensibilities of residents. Secondly the wide use of resident attitude surveys by local governments is shown to lead to the risk of a loss of long-term vision resulting in a tendency to focus on immediate problems faced by all resident demographic groups.

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The theme focused on in this research is “Profitability improvement” in the small and medium-sized enterprises which occupy a large majority in Japan. The methodology to extract “Priority matter in the marketing strategy for the small and medium-sized enterprise to improve the profit” was examined by investigating the enterprise's condition of execution concerning marketing which was the center activity for them in order to obtain an advantage, and by also analyzing the relation between the content of the practice and the corporate profit by applying the technique of KANSEI engineering.

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There are many products that make use of mental effects by various color are developed, today. For example, products, such as bath salt, are being used in the life of everyday. In this study, we aimed to determine quantitatively how the color of solution can influence the mental effect by the SD method. There were 39 subjects in this study. The result showed that effect by the red shades such as “warmth” was high. The result also showed that effect by the red shades in value became more notable while the value of the white muddiness became higher. On the other hand, effect by blue and purple shades such as “composedness” was high, which would decrease with the increasing of the white muddiness.

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Serious problems have been occurred by the trading of the data leaked from computers and the one uploaded to Homepages illegally by the file-sharing software program for example Winny recently. Winny was developed by Isamu Kaneko and opened on his homepage, May 6, 2002. Winny has a characteristic to maintain anonymity. Two users of Winny were arrested on the charge of the copyright infringement by Kyoto Police, November 27, 2003. And Isamu Kaneko was also arrested on the charge of their aid, May 10, 2004. And Kaneko was sentenced to fine 1,500,000 yen by Kyoto District Court ,that is “Judgment 2006.12.13”. He is appealing to Osaka High Court now. I would consider the technology of Winny, think the judgment of the Kyoto District Court and talk about the best legal and technical way in the future.

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Currently, news contents are based on traditional taxonomy with hierarchical structure. Meanwhile, social bookmarks have a flat structure called folksonomy which has less difficulty to get news rather than taxonomy. However, bookmark tags depends on users. It causes three problems; polysemy, synonymy, difference of understanding. In this study, we propose a new method to recommend interesting news by using social bookmarking. It uses tags attached by a group of users who have similar preferences. Although this method still uses tagging system, the tags represent same understanding of the group. It reduces the influence of the three problems above. We also employ thesaurus to extrapolate sparse descriptions. We had evaluated appropriateness assigned to the web pages by the users of articles selected and recommended for the web pages. In our experiment, social bookmarking service, called 4dk, is used. 4dk is based on the group. All tags attached in 4dk are assumed as tags attached by users who have same preferences. We showed high precision of the set of recommended pages through statistical tests such as wilcoxon test and sigmoid-like function test developed in our study.

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This study is to constitute a framework for understanding aesthetic sensibility by introducing a mental model called the content space which is defined as a set of all possible contents of consciousness. An aesthetic sensation is a conscious process, thus it belongs to the content space. On the other hand, all mental process must be realized by neural activities which were initially evolved in human ancestors. Because aesthetic sensation is a content of consciousness appeared only in human, it is highly probable that its origin can be explained by a correlating process of biological evolution and cultural development. As the bridge between mental and physiological processes, the emotion and mood relating aesthetic sensation are also considered in the proposed model.

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This paper proposes music retrieval system according to the pattern of human walking. Firstly, we have tried to get walking pattern using 3-axis acceleration sensor put on waist of subject. We have extracted walking tempo through noise reduction and observation of the vertical axis. Secondly, we developed a music tempo system on the base of tempo (bpm) matching with those of music which are extracted automatically by Mix Meister from ten thousand of Mp3 data. Then we have also examined the sensor of smoothness of walking to keep higher walking tempo, such as +10, +15 and +20 per minute (bpm) compared to the subjects normal speed.

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Most of digital contents distributers use key words which correspond to objects in images to index various kinds of photo images. But these key words not always match with visual impression of images. We have developed a method to evaluate visual impression of images by using image key words which given by professional photographers. We have modeled their image evaluation process based on visual impressions (KANSEI Model). In this paper, we propose a method to efficient supervised learning. We succeed to improve accuracy of KANSEI Model by automatic classification of training data set and using two kinds of graphic features, global and structural graphic features which imitated visual neuron of human. By using the KANSEI model, we have developed automatic image classification system for various kinds of photo images based on visual impressions, and we have applied to similar image search system.

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It doesn't put a strain in the user with the sensor by the miniaturization of the stock vice, the measurement of T(time), P(place), and O(ocassion) becomes possible, and the application to information service begins to try. However, because only the situation that can be thought from the sensor in the service of the current state is presumed, and the presumption of the situation in which the user needs information is not understood, information matched to user's TPO is not necessarily being offered. Then, it proposes the layer model of the situation assessment that combines the situation presumption of a bottom-up expression that presumes the situation that can be thought from the sensor presuming the situation to the top down type to presume information for which the user needs information in this research. The proof experiment that offered sightseeing information to timing that the user judged information to be necessary was conducted by using the proposal model to serve the sightseeing support, and utility was verified. It was interested in the our information on 60% by information on 50% being used among information offered to the result and the user.

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In this paper, we propose a font automatic generating system considering quality of a generated font. This system learns a placement of skeleton points in a font to evaluate shape of the font by GRNN (General Regression Neural Network) for each element. Furthermore, using the shape evaluation by the GRNN, the proposed system generates a font considering the quality by revising placement of skeleton points and transformation parameters of the font. In addition, to learn the shape evaluation of the font, a user can evaluate the generated font interactively on the Web. The proposed system has the following three advantages. First, it is possible to evaluate a shape itself of the font. Second, it is possible to make a modification automatically for a skeleton and transformation parameters of a font by shape evaluation. Finally, an interactive shape evaluation of a generated font is possible with low burden.

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A 3D virtual space creating system capable of customizing and learning is proposed in this paper. In the proposed system, a user inputs space parameters through a simple interface and virtual 3D spaces are generated. In order to obtain satisfactory spaces, a partial modification of spaces by user is possible. Furthermore, the system has the learning ability to support making spaces. When a user inputs the image of the generated space, the system learns the relation between various space parameters and the image by clustering and weighting of the parameters. After input of an image of 3D space that the user wants to make, the system generates the 3D space corresponding to the image. In this way, the early parameter settings are reduced in the proposed system. The followings have been confirmed by experiments : users can obtain satisfactory spaces by customization ; users can make spaces more easily by learning ability.

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We developed the experiment teaching materials for high school students to learn motion-sensitive controllers, and got a hint to Nintendo's Wii. They are able to game designs and creations by using Wii-like controller. We carried out questionnaire survey about free answer and extracted KANSEI word with morphological analysis. There is more positive word than negative word. So, we confirmed teacher-student, student-student and student-content interaction. We visualized an interaction with a KeyGraph and got knowledge about the transformation of interactions.

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This paper proposed a support service to have better awareness to some values of commodities through natural behavior on a real world interface. We have developed a smart shop with ubiquitous camera sensors and communication robots; the former are to detect a user's (consumer's) behavior and the latter are to send multimodal message to a user to explain the value of the commodity. We found that the user's behavior on a commodity is closely related with the interest and/or preference to it. We have also shown that a multimodal message from a communication robot which exolain the value of a commodity way have an effect on the user's subjective evalution.

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