Though government agencies have often reported near-miss accidents caused by holding a closed umbrella during walking, there are few measures against dangerous ways of holding the umbrella. In this paper, we conducted two investigations on how people hold umbrellas, proposed three prototypes based on the knowledge, and had hearings for them about their usability. The investigations showed that subjects tend to prioritize the way of holding the umbrella that does not touch the ground or the way that is comfortable for themselves when they judge that it does not cause inconvenience to others around them. In the hearing of the prototypes made based on this knowledge, the respondents tended to prefer the prototype according to their own comfortable way of holding the umbrella.

This study aims to elucidate the formation process of socially accepted ideas about fine art in the Meiji era, using quantitative text analysis to examine the process of how social events related to 'fine arts' in newspapers were shared by the people of the time in the specific historical and social context of the Meiji period. As a result, the formation of social recognition of 'fine arts' focused on the actual genre from 1868 to 1887 as the first stage, and concentrated on values in the second stage, from 1888 to 1905. The third stage, from 1906 to 1912, was the process of understanding concepts. It founds that people of upper-class society accepted 'fine arts' in the order of concept to actual genre, and then to values, while the public understood fine art based on almost opposite processes. In addition, the Meiji government introduced the concept of 'fine arts' and integrated existing paintings into 'Japanese painting', which gradually reduced the functionality of painting in daily life, making it a mere object of appreciation.

In recent years, there has been an interest in ideas and activities that involve non-designers in the design process. However, we think many people have problems regarding self-efficacy for design activities. The purpose of this study is to clarify the effects of conducting reflection with Dual Focus by non-designers in a co-creation on their self-efficacy for design activities. After having university students who had never professionally studied design conduct group work involving design activities, we divided them into two groups: one group that conducted reflection with Dual Focus and one group that conducted reflection without Dual Focus and analyzed the effects of each. The results showed that the group that conducted reflection with Dual Focus after the group work tended to reflect on themselves in more detail and significantly improved one part of their self-efficacy for design activities.

This study examined the use of conceptual combination (CC) and analogy and their relationship in creative idea development. An idea development experiment was conducted with students (N=170). When comparing the group encouraged to use CC with examples (CCg), the group encouraged to use analogy with examples (Ag), and the control group (Cg), subjects in CCg or Ag significantly applied further removed concepts in the use of CC or analogy than Cg subjects. Here, the examples included concepts removed from the target domain. According to regression analysis, which used the CC dummy, the distance between the target domain and a concept as independent variables and idea creativity as the dependent variable, the beta of the distance was significant. Implication was discussed based on the results.

In this study, an experiment measuring spectral reflectance was conducted to clarify the physical properties that affect the depth evaluation of red interior material textures. In the experiment, considering the difference of the measurement angle, the measurement was conducted at 3 angles (highlight, semi-shade, and shade), with each measurement angle of 15 degrees, 45 degrees, and 110 degrees to the specular reflection light. It was also analyzed that was the correspondence between the measured data and depth evaluation data obtained in previous studies.
As a result, depth evaluation was affected by the difference between the maximum and minimum values of spectral reflectance in highlight and the difference between each maximum value of spectral reflectance in semi-shade and shade. This indicates that evaluations by multiple measurement angles were connected with the depth evaluation of red interior material textures. The above findings may assist in the evaluation of red interior material textures to be developed in the future.

To confirm whether the products that imitate plants in motion could affect the atmosphere of a room. We created three light fixtures that mimic the forms and motions of three plants and compared people’s impressions of a room in three different situations: these included with and without the movement of the homemade light fixtures and with the presence of commercial light fixtures. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to three groups, and after being allowed to observe each space, they completed a questionnaire to evaluate their feelings about each room. An analysis of the variance showed that the movement of the homemade objects positively influenced the participants’ evaluation of the atmosphere and impressions of the room. The results of our study have provided preliminary evidence that the movement of homemade lighting fixtures can enhance and increase a room’s atmosphere by recreating the movement of natural objects.