Human Interface and the Management of Information: Applications and Services

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an important skill for 21st-century workplaces. We examined the effects of two collaborative modes (learner-on-computer agent mode and learner-on-learner mode) on the CPS performance of 64 college students (28 women, 36 men; age range = 18–22 yr., M = 20.1, SD = 1.2). Participants’ CPS performance scores in the learner-on-computer agent mode were significantly higher than those in the learner-on-learner mode. The optimal mode for teaching CPS skills, the practical implications of using a CPS system, and the limitations of this study are also discussed.

Wild fire management is often an intense and highly dynamic context, which requires the continuous flow of large amounts of information. It requires effective preparedness, quick response, and efficient and effective team communication and situational awareness. Aside from the skills and experience of the management team, the success of the process often depends on effective tools and technology that can present, communicate, and document the fire information in a way that supports and facilitates the response process. The aim of this study was to assess the informational needs of the wild fire response process and model the information flow and situational awareness, with and without supporting technology. It aimed to translate the findings to definitions and requirements for enhancing the process through human-computer interaction (HCI) design solutions and improved usability.

In the era of big data, it is imperative to assist the human analyst in the endeavor to find solutions to ill-defined problems, i.e. to “detect the expected and discover the unexpected” [23]. To their aid, a plethora of analysis support systems is available to the analysts. However, these support systems often lack visual and interactive features, leaving the analysts with no opportunity to guide, influence and even understand the automatic reasoning performed and the data used. Yet, to be able to appropriately support the analysts in their sense-making process, we must look at this process more closely. In this paper, we present the results from interviews performed together with data analysts from the automotive industry where we have investigated how they handle the data, analyze it and make decisions based on the data, outlining directions for the development of analytical support systems within the area.

This paper presents how to design a more practical information sharing service for disaster situations based on the requirements learned from many disaster experiences in Japan in the past. In designing technologies to be used in disaster situations, it is important to add resiliency that can handle changes in the situation. To provide more people with an information sharing service, the technologies should be independent of Internet availability and should work on many types of user devices. We develop and evaluate a resilient information sharing platform and some applications, all of which can work with Wi-Fi and a web browser. This paper also details the results of field experiments and describes the importance of the “service usability” concept in making those technologies truly practical.

We propose a prototype for a system to verify the decision support of a group based on estimations of group status through utterance analysis.Based on methods used in prior studies of group dynamics and utterance analysis, we measured the utterance characteristics of group members to infer group status; moreover, we aimed to enhance the overall condition of the group by providing appropriate reference information in a timely manner through a conversational agent system. The goal of this system was a more satisfying decision-making process.We manufactured a prototype system to verify both the operations involved in the test case and the ability to infer group classification and status according to group dynamics.Our proposed method was appropriate based on the prototype system. Future work will focus on optimizing the logic and system functions of group status estimation and the subsequent step of informing the group.

This paper aims at investigating how correct or incorrect opinions are shared among the agents in the weighted network where the relationship among the agent (as nodes of its network) is different each other, and exploring how the agents can be promoted to share only correct opinions by preventing to acquire the incorrect opinions in the weighted network. For this purpose, this paper focuses on Autonomous Adaptive Tuning algorithm (AAT) which can improve an accuracy of correct opinion shared among agents in the various network, and improves it to address the situation which is close in the real world, i.e., the relationship among agents is different each other. This is because the original AAT does not consider such a different relationship among the agents. Through the intensive empirical experiments, the following implications have been revealed: (1) the accuracy of the correct opinion sharing with the improved AAT is higher than that with the original AAT in the weighted network; (2) the agents in the improved AAT can prevent to acquire incorrect opinion sharing in the weighted network, while those in the original AAT are hard to prevent in the same network.

Using a questionnaire survey and a smartphone-based social experiment, we conducted a study of private non-profit organizations aiming to supply public goods during three periods. Using the data obtained, we identified a dynamic change in the communication by temporal network analysis and elucidated the relevant factors by panel analysis. From the result of this paper, it was shown that having effect by the period on network structure, and sex and Face to Face Communication where there were scale-free characteristics were unrelated to the information dispatch by the ICT.

We have developed an auto annotating system. To apply to the system, we conducted experiments about the method to evaluate difficulty of technical terms in documents by using data of Wikipedia. Based on a hypothesis that basic and easy terms appear frequently in Wikipedia, we surveyed relationship between subjective difficulty and appearance frequency in Wikipedia. As a result, we could classify technical terms into the easy term and the difficult term at the accuracy of 0.70.

We report essential tips for collaboration success obtained through the task of the “Marshmallow Challenge.” This involves examining the relationships among task achievement, performance satisfaction, and verbal/non-verbal behaviors throughout the task. We record and analyze the speech and gaze of participants with a video camera. The height of the marshmallow tower is measured as the metric of task achievement. The performance satisfaction felt by participants is obtained with a post-task questionnaire. We use correlation analysis between task achievement/performance satisfaction and verbal/nonverbal behaviors at three stages of the task: the early, middle and final phases. The results suggest that number of agreement utterances in the early phase contributes to increased height of the marshmallow tower. The distribution of the frequency of eye contact in the early phase seem to affect the performance satisfaction of the participants.

We propose a mechanism to alleviate the aggression on Computer Mediated Communications. A title reflecting the aggressivity of comments posted by the user is displayed on screen. The effects of the proposed mechanism are verified with laboratory experiment, where participants post comments after reading the topics of discussion and other participants’ comments. The results indicate the validity of the proposed mechanism.

In this paper, we present some insights extracted from experiences with conducting three case studies that show how different game-based approaches affect people’s motivation to encourage more activities in digital services. The first case study is a game-based English words learning application. The second case study is a gamified sharing economy service. The third case study is a persuasive service customized for a user’s unique preference. The results of the case studies show that adopting only one approach is not effective to motivate all diverse people, and multiple approaches should be incorporated when developing digital services that motivate diverse users by game-based approaches.

To communicate one’s thinking precisely and to find proper solution in case of conflict, it is important to improve one’s thinking skills. Thinking skills are required to expose the root of conflict between one’s own thought process and that of others. To cultivate such a skill, a training tool that analyzes a person’s internal self-conversation by verbalizing their thought is proposed by [1]. If such a process can be interpreted in human-understandable levels, a system can judge whether the learner is thinking logically in the self-conversation or not. In this paper, we propose a system that traces the sequence of a user’s eye-gaze during his/her internal self-conversation process. The initial analysis based on the trainers’ correction process data for hospital nurses’ cases showed that our proposed system has the potential to interpret the context of a person’s metacognitive monitoring and control process.

This paper describes kit-build approach to realize educational externalization of thinking task. In this approach, a learning target is to comprehend an information structure. In order to comprehend the structure, an interactive environment where a learner is allowed to operate the structure is designed and implemented. In the operation, the learner is provided several components and operates them. So, this approach is called kit-build approach. In this paper, the framework and several past related work are introduced. Then, ongoing work and future work following this approach are reported.

e-Learning is easing restrictions on time and space for a learner. However, its weak point is that a user authentication employs only on log-in with credentials, which makes it easy to cause a cheating. We have studied the changes in face image in e-Learning with the aim of detecting the cheating. We proposed an authentication method with sequential updates of student’s face information using new images taken by a web-camera during the e-Learning. We examined the update timing and procedure in this study, and found that the authentication accuracy the highest by summing each face feature vector in the face image which is taken when a student operates the e-Learning system.

This paper reports an interactive system for learning by logic building. In the system, a learner is requested to build multiple logic patterns to explain a given four frame comic strip in multiple ways. The system can diagnose the build logic patterns and provide immediate feedback with semantic reason related to the strip. We show the effectiveness of the proposed system by using experimental results that were obtained through a use of the system by elementary school students.

The role of universities in imparting knowledge to students is declining as e-learning and massive open online courses become widespread, and it seems likely that eventually only seminar activities will remain on university campuses. Prof. Nagaoka, Waseda University in Japan, previously proposed the importance of making seminar activities the core of university education, considering them as a “university within a university,” and furthermore proposed the concept of a seminar management system (SMS). Following this proposal, we report on the development of a literature review support system using latent Dirichlet allocation as one aspect of an SMS.

Various researches have shown that providing adaptive support during students learning process improves student’s motivational and learning outcomes. Therefore the effectiveness of e-learning systems can be determined based on how adaptive they are to the intended students. In this paper we describe a design for an adaptive user interface for a web-based learning system that can estimate students learning styles from their interaction with the web and use that information to guide them during their knowledge construction process.

In this paper, we focus on design for an adaptive research support system that provides support for research activities of students in higher education, as well as improving the research skills of the students. Research activity is one of the core activities of institutions of higher education and it is with this in mind that we propose an adaptive research support system to improve the research skills of students. Research skills include such generic skills as planning and scheduling, communication and presentation; and specific skills such as trend analysis, problem definition and data analysis. We present a general way to improve research skills of students by adaptation, achieved through coaching and scaffolding supports using information gained from archived laboratory knowledge.

We investigated the types of user interfaces effect the human learning by using the improved cognitive model, and found that there are some differences in learning process between GUI and TUI. In GUI condition, many subjects started establishing sub-goals in the tactile control and strategic control modes and stay in them even after the learning is proceeded. In TUI condition, on the other hand, though the subjects use the same strategy as GUI in the initial term of learning, they found the other strategy and become to utilize it in the late term of learning. In this strategy, when they face to the difficulties to establish sub-goals, they try to find clues by moving to the explorative mode and attempted to achieve the sub-goal by trial and error.

Improving added value and productivity of services entails improving both value-in-exchange and value-in-use. Value-in-use is realized by value co-creation, where providers and receivers create value together. In higher education services, value-in-use comes from learners achieving learning outcomes (e.g., knowledge and skills) that are consistent with their learning goals. To enhance the learning outcomes of a learner, it is necessary to enhance and utilize the abilities of the teacher along with the abilities of the learner. To do this, however, the learner and the teacher need to build a consensus about their respective roles. Teachers need to provide effective learning content; learners need to choose the appropriate learning strategies by using the learning content through consensus building. This makes consensus building an important factor in value co-creation. However, methods to build a consensus about their respective roles may not be clearly established, making such consensus difficult. In this paper, we propose some strategies for consensus building between a teacher and a learner in value co-creation. We focus on a teacher and learner co-design and propose an analysis method to clarify a collaborative design process to realize value co-creation. We then analyze some counseling data obtained from a university class. This counseling aimed to build a consensus for value-in-use, learning outcomes, and learning strategies between the teacher and the learner.

In order to improve the efficiency of teaching and learning, it is very important to grasp learners’ mental states during their learning processes. In this study, we attempt to extract and formalize the relationships between learners’ mental states and learners’ physiological information complemented with teachers’ speech acts using the association rule mining technique through an experiment. As a result, four sets of association rules with high degrees of generality are obtained.

This study explores the effects of music tempo on designer’s idea generation, and compares the features of the subjects’ ideas evoked through design behaviors and emotional feelings under without-music, fast-tempo, and slow-tempo music situations. Three experienced designers and design teachers were invited to evaluate their sketches. The experimental results showed that, (1) when listening to fast-tempo music, the subjects generated remarkably more sketches, and achieved significantly higher scores of idea fluency and flexibility, in contrast to listening to slow-music and non-music situations. (2) Under the slow-tempo music situation, the subjects’ originality and feasibility of idea sketches were significantly higher than those under fast-tempo music and without-music. (3) The idea elaboration was enhanced when listening to slow-music and non-music situations. The study suggests that when require lots of ideas may listening to fast-tempo music, while listening slow-tempo music if need novelty ideas.

With the trend of environmental protection around the globe, the development of most green furniture in the past emphasized on the production processes and technical applications and more particularly on material selections and functional improvements. However, the user demands which keep pace with the times have seldom been considered. Thus it is difficult to satisfy the diversified demands for green furniture’s creativity and functions by modern consumers whose motivation of buying is thus reduced. Moreover, with the rise of the creativity generation nowadays, people of the fresh new generation always have ever-changing creativity. Enterprises and those who develop products should collaborate with consumers and give users the room for product creation so as to satisfy the concept of user creation and fulfill the design experiences. Based on the ideas of “value co-creation with users” and “experience service”, the topic of “co-creation design experience” was investigated in this study with discussions on the possibility for an enterprise to develop products in joint cooperation with users. Enterprises should no longer develop products independently but should view users as the co-workers for product development. This allows users to participate in design processes and own design experiences so that it is possible to co-create products’ new values with users. This study connects users’ creativity in series for considering the balancing point of the co-creation between enterprises and users on product values. A “development procedure for products co-created with users” was proposed. Paper pallets were used as the material and a set of innovative eco-friendly furniture was successfully developed for satisfying the co-creation design experience between an enterprise and its users. For the meaning of this innovative eco-friendly furniture, it resembles LEGO toy blocks, which let the users enjoy the design experience by bringing their creativity into play and assemble the parts of the eco-friendly furniture without the need of additional learning or tools.

This paper presents that art with BCI (Brain-Computer Interaction) is decolonizing from the dimensions of action between politics and the aesthetic in traditional knowledge systems. In order to explore the creative power of art with BCI, it proposes the concept of decolonizing aesthetics. It critiques the beauty of art with BCI, through the reframing of aesthetic activities such as aesthetic objects, aesthetic attitudes, and aesthetic values in the view of psychoanalysis. Its aim is to find out a response for alternative perspectives of reference in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) systems and alternative ways of understanding the relationships and collaborative actions between humans and new digital technologies.

The authors have previously shown that, by using shadow media that transforms the color and shapes of shadows to transform the relationship between individuals and shadow media, a variety of bodily expressions is created from individual performers. In this study, we attempted to support co-creative expressions by transforming the relationships between performers and shadow media space. Specifically, we developed shadow media utilizing point clouds (dappled shadows) and made it possible to freely alter the light source position of shadow media. In addition, we implemented a shadow media system that displays a shadow agent moving according to the movements of a group of performers (a virtual light source robot) on a stage, and used its position as a light source. As a result, we found that the expression space of performers expanded in comparison with existing shadow media systems. This result shows the possibility that this system supports the emergence of co-creative expressions.

This paper discusses a new approach to assist human learning at the museum based on spatial and graphic information on mobile devices. A technique for memorizing a number of unstructured items is called mnemonics. Although its effects were remarkable, acquiring the skill to take advantage of the mnemonics is generally difficult. The present study provides a new technique of photo montage to fully exploit the effectiveness the mnemonics by facilitating the enrollment process. The proposed method utilizes images for a memory peg that are processed with mobile devices on the fly. After the basic structure is presented, the location type virtual memory peg (vmPeg) system is discussed. The evaluation of the system on the number of memory pegs revealed its coverage up to 50. The applicability of the method to museum exhibits specifically for children was also evaluated. The results of both experiments exhibited remarkable retention that suggested positive potential of this new mobile enhanced mnemonics.

In this paper, we introduce the K-Culture Time Machine Project, which develops a mobile AR platform for visualizing time-space connected cultural contents of Korea. Existing AR Applications in cultural heritage domains are currently not interoperable and cannot reuse content. To solve this problem, we developed the modified AR reference model as generic framework of a context-aware AR platform; and we developed the context-aware AR platform with several core technologies according to this model. For back-end, we established the Korean Cultural Heritage Data Model (KCHDM) to aggregate the heterogeneous cultural heritage databases in Korea. We also developed the semi-auto time-space correlation generation module for domain experts. Moreover, we developed the authoring tool to generate the time-space connected AR contents. For the front-end, we developed the vision- and sensor-based spatial data composition technology to perform the solid tracking in outdoor environment and context-aware AR framework. Through the UI/UX and 3D contents, whole technologies are packaged into the mobile AR platform. As a validation process for the application, a mobile AR application for the Korean world cultural heritage was developed. Based on this project, an interoperable AR platform that responds with heterogeneous database would be developed and smart tour guide of the cultural heritage site would be possible.

To attract visitors and encourage them to interact with interactive systems such as digital exhibitions, digital public art, and digital signage in public spaces, this paper proposes a method to not only attract passersby’s attention but also maintain their attention until they interact with them by managing the situation in which someone is experiencing it and several people are forming a line. Our proposed method changes the experience time of the interactive system based on the presence of people interacting with the system. The experiments, held in real public spaces, showed that the proposed method counteracted the negative effect of crowded situations (which resulted from attracting many passersby), and increased the number of people who interacted with the system.

Relationships between classical music composers are known due to explicit historic material, for instance the friendship between Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as the influence of the latter on Ludwig van Beethoven. While Haydn and Mozart were critics of each others work, Mozart and Beethoven probably never met in person. In spite of that there is an impact on especially the early music of Beethoven. While relationships between well-known composers like the mentioned ones are investigated, it can also be of historic interest to know the roles less-known composers played. Some of them might have a part in a famous persons work but were not further analyzed given the fact that there have been many composers and no hints given to researchers indicating which person would be worth studying. In this work we develop an approach to visually hint possible relationships among a large number of composers. Detailed historic knowledge is not taken into account; the hints are only based on the composer works as well as their lifetimes in order to guess directions of influence.

In this paper, we propose a crowdsourcing system that constructs a database for AR (Augmented Reality) contents by user generation for on-site AR exhibitions that runs on personal mobile devices. The AR exhibition systems superimpose images from the past onto the present scene in the photographed places. They require location information of past pictures and current pictures that were shot in same place at same angle. Previously, system designers had to prepare the contents by themselves because the estimation of photographed positions was an unautomated task. This is one reason why there were only a limited number of contents. We overcome this problem by implementing a system in which many users can participate in creating contents easily. Users can post necessary information for AR contents only by taking photos when the current scene matches the semi-transparent past image. Through experiments and workshops, we found that our system had many interesting and acceptable sides. For example, our application for looking for the photographed positions gives users entertainment akin to games. Although its user interface and user-motivating design require increased sophistication, our system could work well and gather valuable user-generated contents to provide a richer AR experience.

Today, museums are looking for new ways to attract and engage audience. These include virtual exhibitions, augmented reality and 3D modelling based applications, and interactive digital storytelling. The target of all these activities is to provide better experiences for audiences that are very familiar with the digital world. In augmented reality (AR) and interactive digital storytelling (IDS) systems, visual presentation has been dominant. In contrast to this trend, we have chosen to concentrate on auditory presentation. A key element for this is a backend service supporting different client applications. This paper discusses our experiences from designing a portable open source based audio digital asset management system (ADAM), which supports interaction with smart phones and tablets containing audio augmented reality and audio story applications. We have successfully implemented ADAM system and evaluated it in the Museum of Technology in Helsinki, Finland.

We explored how three people communicate verbally (i.e. chatting, discussion) and nonverbally (i.e. gazes, gestures) in creating a Lego(R) castle collaboratively. We also investigated how such communication behaviors can be cues for a “better” and “more creative” castle. In Experiment 1, we asked a total of 30 students (3 people $$\times $$ 10 groups) to construct a castle fully in collaboration with the group members. In Experiment 2, we asked the other 27 students to assess the quality (“how good the castle is”) and creativeness (“how creative the castle is”) for the photographed castles. The verbal, gestural, and gazing behaviors of the creators were analyzed quantitatively. We conducted path analyses to identify parameters determining the quality and the creativeness, showing that the degree of communication behaviors was reflected in the evaluation of the created castle. In detail, the quality was enhanced by looking at the other group members as well as by discussing the content of the castle. The creativeness was determined by the degree of chatting and representational gestures. These results suggest the communication process in multiple-agent creation: Rapport can be constructed efficiently by chatting with the other members; creators can share divergent ideas; and they can construct a creative object.

This study is aiming to develop embodied interfaces to support co-creative expression which will be necessary when embracing the diversity in different people in a series of workshops, which are mainly focused on hand contact improvisation, held in the affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In specifics, two types of interfaces, which allow children to elicit hand-contact-improvisational expressions, create a relationship and cultivate it further, have been built with a focus on workshop-experienced autistic children having difficulties in verbal interactions in mind. These interfaces, designed to facilitate the reciprocal embodied awareness and thus achieve “the encounter and the connection with others through expression,” play a role of an inclusive function in hand contact improvisation. In the attempts of hand contact improvisations using these interfaces with the autistic children, it has been observed that co-creative expressions have been achieved among those children who tend to avoid a face-to-face contact. This indicates that the interfaces are efficient as new non-verbal technologies to support their communication.

We developed a novel haptic display taking advantage of the sensitivity of the lips. Lips are one of the most sensitive regions of the human body similar to fingertip. Our display presents vibrotactile stimuli using piezo bimorph cells; the system is capable of presenting vibration on sixteen points on a lip in 2 mm pitch. We conducted experiments to evaluate the spatial discrimination characteristics of vibrotactile stimuli presented by our system. In the experiment, the two-point discrimination in simultaneous and sequential stimulations was investigated, and they were proved to be approximately 8 mm and 2 mm respectively. We also conducted an experiment that evaluates the amount of information that can be transmitted through the system; recognition of the patterns of vibration using three and four cells were investigated. It was proved that approximate bitrate of the interface was 3 bit/s.

In Japan, people visit shrines to pray for good fortune. For determining their fortune, they draw fortune-telling paper slips called Omikuji. The Omikuji contain predictions ranging from daikichi (“great blessings”) to daikyo (“curses”). As a novel, interactive fortune-telling system, we propose the “Fortune Air.” According to the person’s interactions and a random value generated by the measured resistance of a leaf from a tree in the shrine, in real-time, a unique fortune is determined. Then the fortune-air system visualizes the fortune using one of the four patterns generated by double vortex rings: merging, rebound, disappearance and no-interference. After the visualization, the paper containing the fortune is printed by a thermal printer. In this study, we conducted an experiment for determining the parameters for controlling the four patterns of double vortex rings. From the results, we confirmed that the distance between the air cannons and a combination of the air pressure as well as the angle of the two air cannons, are the parameters to control the four patterns generated by the vortex rings. Using the results, we implemented a prototype system for the fortune-air and evaluated the entertainment value provided by the interactive system to enhance the praying experience.

Service desk has been widely deployed to cater user-support in an organisation. However, in the field of e-Research there are only few studies conducted to enhance the user-support services or user-services. Little has been done to improve the motivation of the employees of e-Science infrastructures to service incoming user requests known as incidents. In this paper, User-Support-Worker’s Activity Model (USWAM) is presented that enhances the interactivity of the employees of cyber-infrastructures with the incidents. Furthermore, the model enhances not only the handling of the incoming user requests but also the management of the core activities assigned to the employees via visualization queues and matrices in the UI. Subsequently, USWAM aids the employees to remain interested in supporting users, similar to playing a game. Accomplished tasks can be rewarded in the form of money/gifts or recognitions. Finally, USWAM can be transferred to other service-oriented domains where prioritization or management of tasks is required.

User Interface (UI) design guidelines have not been adequately applied towards the design of UI of request tracking systems. Moreover, UI of request tracking systems in particular have not been researched in federated e-Science organisations. These systems, however, play a central role for the collaboration in e-Science. The users of e-Science infrastructures that constitute data and High Performance Computer (HPC) facilities interact with the cyber-infrastructures to use their features mainly for research purposes. The incoming problems and information queries i.e. user requests are shown using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Request Tracking System (RTS) – like other software systems. In this paper, a field study has been conducted and it has been found out that in the process of using a cyber-infrastructure the users face problems on one hand as well as the people who process incoming user requests also need better UI of RTS on the other hand. From this field study observations were made and amendments in the current UI of RTS were proposed. Moreover, the UI of RTS has been evaluated and recommendations have been made to improve it in a federated e-Science environment using a field study.

Interdisciplinary collaboration and its success is still not fully understood. In two explorative studies we examine both the existence of benefits and barriers of interdisciplinary collaboration as well as the leverage of a social portal to support benefits and lower the barriers of such cooperations. As core issues we identified problems of language and missing depth as the strongest barriers in a triangulation of qualitative (N=6) and quantitative results (N=45). In contrast we found intrinsic motivation and widening of one’s horizon as well as the combination of knowledge as key benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration. In the second interview study (N=5) we found that our social platform approach could address theses barriers and leverage the benefits from the first study.

In order to implement an ambulatory physiological monitor in a free-range environment, a number of human performance sensing, human-computer interaction, data visualization, and wireless transmission technologies must be effectively and unobtrusively integrated. The Zephyr BioHarnessTM is being integrated into NASA’s Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lava Terrains (BASALT) Mars simulation in order to monitor and transmit crewmember health and activity information during “extravehicular activity” (EVA) sample collection tasks. The structure of the simulation and the different types of data and knowledge coordination are described. The importance of physiological monitoring in extreme environments, the selection of the BioHarnessTM for use in the project, the process of integrating the monitor into the simulation, and the anticipated results from the analysis of the gathered data are also discussed .

It is hard to gauge the reliability of health information that is provided on the internet as there are plethora of medical firms and other organizations promoting their massive marketing campaigns to sell their products and services. However, an initiative; Health On the Net (HON) foundation claims that it is possible to observe the credibility and trustworthiness of health information on the websites internationally by following HON-code principles. Keeping with the principles set by the HON foundation, we analyzed the credibility of Turkish health websites and portals related to health information seeking behavior from the point of view information seeker’s benefit. We selected and analyzed 56 websites within three categories which are “psychology”, “aesthetics and beauty” and “motherhood, baby and children”. We then evaluated their credibility of health information as according HON principles. We found out that most of the selected websites do conform to the basic principles set by the HON foundation, in Turkey. However, this information of conformance to the standards has not been listed explicitly, as opposed to the health portals in the US. Furthermore, we observed that accessibility of health information for patients and other information seekers is another topic that is needed to be dealt with separately.

The digitalization of research processes has led to a vast amount of data. Since third-party funding institutions progressively set standards and requirements regarding the handling of such data, research data management has become important in the context of international research collaboration projects. Simultaneously, adequate collaboration systems are needed to support scientists in this context. In this paper we discuss existing standards for research data management in the context of third-party funding and how cloud technology could support the fulfillment of existing provisions.

As part of the Challenging Obstacles and Barriers to Assisted Living Technologies (COBALT) project, we developed the COBALT Tools for EngagementTM, a number of innovative techniques to engage older people in all stages of the technology development process. In the present study we used Technology Tours of the homes of eight older adults to look at their daily usage and examine the ways in which technology influences well-being. All of the participants use multiple technologies every day both inside the home and out. The data highlighted how technology contributes to well-being in a number of ways, including enabling them to maintain current activities; providing a means of staying in touch with families and friends; being easy to access and learn to use; and enhancing their lives. These can be divided into two types of factors: ones that relate to the direct outcomes of technology use and how these contribute to feelings of wellbeing and factors that relate to meeting an individual’s needs, which if met contribute to their well-being. The findings indicate that well-being is a multi-faceted construct that includes autonomy, i.e. remaining independent, competence both in continuing to complete activities and learning new ones, and communication with other people. The study also indicates that Technology Tours provide an easily applicable and accessible means for enabling older adults to speak as ‘experts’ on technology.

Memories of experience are influenced by a peak-end effect [13]. Memories are modified to emphasize the final portions of an experience, and the peak positive, or negative, portion of that experience. We examine peak-end effects on judged Technical Quality (TQ) of online video. In two studies, sequences of different types of video disruption were varied so as to manipulate the peak-end effect of the experiences. The first experiment demonstrated an end effect, plus a possible peak effect involving negative, but not positive, experience. The second study manipulated payment conditions so that some sessions were structured as requiring payment to watch the video. The second study also distinguished between a peak effect and a possible sequence effect. Evidence was again found for an end effect, with a secondary effect of sequence, but no evidence was found for a peak effect independent of sequencing.

Successful aging is expected goal for every older adult. Well-being has been considered an important indicator of successful aging. Thus the aim of this study is applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate senior citizens’ leisure participation behavior and their perceived psychological well-being of participating in gateball-playing activities. We analyze a survey of 614 Taiwanese senior citizens gateball players to test the hypothesized. The results indicated that perceived behavioral control, attitude, and subjective norm have significant positive effects on gateball participation behavior, and ultimately significant positive impact on senior citizens’ perceived psychological well-being. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have positive and significant effects on attitude. Friend/co-worker influences have significant positive effects on subjective norm. Both resource facilitating conditions and self-efficacy have significant positive effects on perceived behavioral control. Managerial implications and suggestions are also discussed in this study.

The popularization of video-viewing systems enables both adults and children to endlessly watch countless video clips. But such long-time video viewing might cause health problems especially for children, but rule-making tendencies are weaker among video-viewing systems than for watching television. Children have difficulty voluntarily curbing their watching of rich video clips because they are so attractive. In this study, we propose a video recommendation system that arranges video clips based on pre-defined times to support parental-mandated video-viewing stops. Our proposed system enables parents to limit the video-viewing time in advance and provides video clips that are arranged to finish exactly at pre-defined times. In this paper, we targeted adults to confirm the effectiveness of our approach. The results suggest that our proposed system increases post-viewing satisfaction.

A feeling that “I controlling this” is called as the sense of agency (SA). Recently, there have been many studies for improving motor skill through making perception that the passive bodily movement caused by observation of the other’s movement or a machine operation as active movement. However, these methods cannot impress the problems of self-motion. In this regard, we hypothesize that observation of himself/herself from third-party’s point of view and improving skill of finding problem of self-motion is possible when self-motion is perceived as an other person’s motion based on mechanism of SA. In this paper, we propose “Diminished agency” to attenuate SA from observing self-motion for the finding problem involved motor-skill based on the findings a sense of ownership (SO) influences SA. This paper summarizes finding mechanism of SA and discusses the feasibility of “Diminished agency.”

New measures of well-being are drawing the attention of researchers and practitioner in human factors generally and human-computer interaction (HCI) in particular. Following in the footsteps of previous scholarly endeavours in hedonic well-being (HWB), this paper argues for the adoption of eudaimonic well-being (EWB) in explorations of well-being in HCI. To this end, I report on initial findings from research in which I have evaluated the impact of hedonic and eudaimonic motives on gaming experience using a validated instrument developed by psychologists and adapted for use in HCI contexts.

This paper focuses on the real-time sleep stage estimation and proposes the method which appropriately selects the past sleep data as the prior knowledge for improving accuracy of the sleep stage estimation. The prior knowledge in this paper is represented as the parameters for estimating the sleep stage and it is composed of 26 parameters which give an influence to the accuracy of the real-time sleep stage estimation. Concretely, these parameters are acquired from the heartbeat data of a certain past day, and they are used to estimate the heartbeat data of a current day, which data is finally converted to the sleep stage. The role of the proposed method is to select the appropriate parameters of the heartbeat data of a certain past day, which is similar to the heartbeat data of a current day. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conducted the human subject experiment which investigated the accuracy of the real-time sleep stage estimation of two adult males (whose age are 20 and 40) and one adult female (whose age is 60) by employing the appropriate parameters of the different day from three days. The experimental results revealed that the accuracy of the real-time sleep stage estimation with the proposed method is higher than that without it.

The purpose of the present study is to understand Japanese schoolteacher anxiety when teaching dance and how such anxiety differs according to the teachers’ individual characteristics. We focused on “teaching anxiety,” which we defined as teachers’ concerns regarding physical education curricula. We conducted a questionnaire survey of teachers from randomly selected public junior high schools (N = 143). Our text-mining analysis showed that teaching anxiety is classified into five groups: anxiety over teaching methods, his/her own dance skills, lack of knowledge, student interest, and general teaching. Multiple correspondence analysis showed that teaching anxiety differed according to age, sex, dance experience, and dance teaching experience.

New technologies have the potential to be used by anyone irrespective of age, gender, location, nationality, disability or time considerations. The session topic of well-being is close in meaning to User Experience (UX) which is considered a broader category under which usability and accessibility fall and is concerned with human perceptions and responses related to system attractive and comfortable use. To measure one quality of well-being, this paper discusses an original method: the Sensory Evaluation method. This method is demonstrated using multivariate analysis with the example of creating pictograms/icons of daily used signs from seven national sign languages on a smartphone. A usability evaluation test on its effectiveness and efficiency revealed that communication speed by tapping pictograms/icons on the smartphone was about five times more efficient than text message .

In order to improve penetration in Taiwan’s electric two wheeler (E2W) market to decrease emissions of pollutants generated by scooters, a battery swapping model is proposed to overcome battery limitations (e.g., expensive purchase price, short lifetime, limited driving range per charge, long charging time, and inconvenient charging). This study aims to understand individuals’ information needs of using battery swap station (BSS) and, furthermore, providing several suggestions to improve BSS service for enhancing their willingness to accept a battery swapping system. In this study, a sample of 2,100 riders who had experienced a battery swapping service and filled out a post-experience questionnaire. The questionnaire elicited their traffic demands, the system acceptability, and purchase intention. The results showed that approximately 79.9 % of riders adopted the battery swapping system, but only 3.9 % were willing to purchase an e-scooter. Riders identified a number of problems with the self-service BSSs, including 42.8 % usability, 33.1 % environment, 18.7 % utility, and 5.4 % price. Finally, these problems were discussed, and addressed several recommend ways of resolving them.

Multitasking on digital media has a negative effect on mental health and concentration. At the same time, the negative effects of computer usage are not immediately obvious to most people. We suggest that people can improve their daily experience on the computer if they pay closer attention to their multitasking activities. To this end, we have constructed a system that detects multitasking work and periodic negative multitasking routines from computer logs. We created two indicators: relax rate and multitasking rate. The relax rate is defined on the basis of heart rate variability information and the multitasking rate is derived from how often users switch their computer windows. We analyze whether users’ multitasking is negative or not and whether or not negative multitasking is part of a periodic routine. We logged the computer activities and heart rate data of one participant for six days.

This research aims to characterize the system of local resident-based regional activations using ICT. It verifies the hypothesis that an individual participates aggressively in the local community planning only when the main activity does not take place in the home and workplace. Verification was conducted by employing a proposed leader estimation method that uses kernel density estimation (KDE) and evaluated questionnaire results. This method was applied to location information gathered between August 1 and 31 in 2015. This research finds that KDE can serve as a visualization method to promote awareness.

We want to know what kind of foreign baseball player were hired in Japanese Baseball League. We used the data that is from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). We only used the result which is batter for one year. At first, we want to know about characteristics which is the team current situation. Then we used the way that is principal component analysis. The ingredients are a hit, 2-base hit, 3-base hit, Home run, Run batted in, Stolen base, Sacrifice, Four balls, Dead ball, Struck out and Double play hitting. We could find the two components. First, it is power hitter that is a lot of home run. Second, it is short hitter that is difficult to become out. We used the result which show a graph which is team current situation. That mean, we could easy to understand that is team characteristics, because we could see the graph. We compared between current team situation and except foreign baseball players. The reason is because we want to know the position that the role of foreign baseball players. We could find reason that the role of foreign baseball players. There is one reason for this. Foreign baseball players are needed to power. That is why Japanese team don’t have a lot of power hitter. Therefore Japanese team need to hire foreign baseball players for the win.

On October 6, 2015, TPP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement) has reached a basic agreement. TPP benefit in the industrial sector of Japan. However Japanese are wary about agriculture sector. As mountains account for 80 % of country, it cannot be efficient agriculture on a large scale in Japan. It is disadvantageous in the price side too. Furthermore, it becomes the problem that the area under tillage decreases by the aging of the scholar of agriculture. Among in this environment, the freshness vegetables are indispensable to a domestic dining table every day. Therefore, it is necessary that the freshness vegetables are supplied qualitative, price mark and quantitatively. It is the purpose that changes in the price of fresh vegetables is to analyze whether give how to affect the purchasing behavior of consumers.As the analysis, changes in price and quantity were classified into three features.Feature 1 is “two peaks of quantity”. Feature 2 is “The difference in the Hall vegetables and cut vegetables”. Feature 3 is “The difference in the way of price declines”.From the analysis, the authors clarified what kind of influence the change of the price of freshness vegetables had on the purchasing action of consumers. In addition, it was found that there is a difference market transaction price and store price.

The aim is to extract only experts’ “skills” without “individual habits” by extracting data of postures and actions of expert Japanese drum players and then conducting data mining of the collected data. In order to discover the skills of the experts, we obtain data of postures and actions of novices to compare them with the data of the experts to extract skills. As a stage before automated skill extraction, in the present study, we examined whether it is possible to extract skills from limited data. We found that recording the positions of joints, grip strengths, and the accelerations of the drumstick allowed extraction of Japanese drum playing skills. By comparing the experts’ movements with the novices’ ones, we also found skills common to the experts. Further, we could create a model of automated skill extraction from experts’ movements and body dimensions.

In order to understand the manner to develop what type of teaching material from wooden puzzle by combining the aspect of “easy to understand models” and “fun to assemble” for learning how to measure volume, this paper discuss about what is variable that impact to different degree of assembly difficulty in cube puzzle. The experiment is conducted by 3 characters of cube puzzle which have different condition such a picture print, many color, and no image or color. All puzzles were composed by third and sixth grade student. Each experiment spent 15 min for observation. It was designed for 2 times for observation and each time students experienced the different sizes to evaluate for difficult assembly. The result showed that the easiest in degree of assembly difficulty due to the large size. Further, since students found assembly difficult for shapes with deep joints, we notice that the color provided a helpful hint when selecting joints.

In this study, we propose and implement method for sensing the excitement action of the participant by using smartphone. Also we propose and demonstrate method for inducing fan activities to Japanese idol by using gamification through smartphone-based communication in and out live concerts. We measured the acceleration of live concert participants can be measured with their own smartphone, and revealed that the acceleration data can be used as barometer of participants’ excitement by utilizing the relationship between the known heart rate and emotion. Based on this concept, we carried out long-term experiments by implementing and distributing our smartphone application via internet with promoting in live concerts, and evaluated the effectiveness of proposed inducing methods of fan activities by analyzing log data from our smartphone application.