Human Interface and the Management of Information. Interacting in Information Environments

Scientific fields of study such as astrobiology, nanotechnology, and cave and karst science involve the study of images and associated biological, physiochemical, and geological data. In order to ensure interdisciplinary analysis, it is important to make these kinds of datasets available for analysis and curation by the scientific community. The goal of this project is to design and develop an online workspace that enables scientists to collaboratively view, analyze, and annotate such datasets. The prototype contains scanning electron micrographs of karst and cave samples. The target users are the interdisciplinary community of scientists who study karst samples to learn more about critical biological and geological processes and the microbial communities often found in karst terrain. The prototype can inform the design and development of collaborative workspaces in other interdisciplinary fields.

Email archives are full of social information, including how messages are addressed and frequency of contact between senders and receivers. To study the use of this rich metadata for email management, particularly email triage, we deployed SNARF, a prototype tool which uses social metadata to organize received email by correspondent, sort received email by past interactions, and filter email into multiple views. We discuss the lessons from a seven month deployment, including the value of organizing by personally addressed mail, the unexpected value of SNARF for email awareness, challenges with handling workflow, and ways to use social metadata in applications.

In this paper, we propose “yourStory” as an effective reminder management system to construct a life story from the viewpoint of communities to which the user has belonged. Our framework helps the user manage his/her personal history and tell his/her life stories to other users through sharing communities and episodes. This system provides four kinds of functions: building up a life story in accordance with community information, output of the “communityTree” and “lifeChart” data based on the life story, registration of an episode in relation to a community, and display of various kinds of data, including “communityTree,” “lifeChart,” photos and episodes.

This paper proposes a novel idea of the Spatial Electronic Mnemonics (SROM) that augments human memory by using electronically annotated and/or converted materials based on places, objects and people in the real world. The SROM provides effective recall cues for information to be memorized with visual materials such as digital images captured and modified for easy association. A basic function as well as structure of SROM and some plans to construct the SROM is presented. The initial implementation and a preliminary registration experiment of spatial virtual memory peg are demonstrated.

This paper presents an assistant tool for concealing personal information in text. Concealing personal information is one of the important roles for protecting privacy in disclosure of public documents, protection of accidental personal information leakages, and so on. However, concealing personal information is very time-consuming, because it is strongly depending on manpower. In order to alleviate tasks of concealing personal information, we have developed a graphical user interface (GUI) tool that has the following three characteristics: 1) Extracting candidates of personal information in text. 2) Presenting the candidates with colors indicating types of personal information. 3) Creating extraction rules for personal information from text including annotations of personal information. The experimental results on tasks of concealing person names in Japanese text showed that processing times of concealing personal names with candidates of person names were about 1.5 to 3.9 times faster than without candidates of person names.

This study investigates the effect of providing a Web-based diagnostic tool as a collaboration medium on remote customer troubleshooting tasks with and without the assistance of a customer call center agent. The study tested three troubleshooting modes (Web tool alone, call center agent alone, and Web tool + call center agent). The hypothesis that the Web tool + call center agent mode would be faster than the other two modes was not supported. However, the results of the experiment showed that the Web-based self-help diagnostic tool can be a potentially cost-effective way of providing customer support. The performance using the Web tool alone was comparable to the call center agent.

In this paper we present the progress of the natural language usage as the paradigm for information extraction and presentation in the enterprise environment. Distributed heavy personal assistant architecture and its implementation is presented as the solution to overcome difficulties related of the natural language use in the information systems development. A new methodology based on connectionist and symbol processing techniques for a knowledge worker to process his documents and utterance is suggested. Then we suggest the results from those processes to reuse for new documents classification and generation of small atomic applications. Finally the experiment is presented. We compare Microsoft EQ, IBM WebSphere Voice Server NLU toolbox and our solution for concepts identification accuracy.

Trust has become an essential prerequisite for customer relationship building. Implementing institutional mechanisms seems to be an obvious outcome in inducing trust, rather than the result of independently motivated decisions of the user’s interpretation on the institutional design features to be trustworthy. Proponents of this idea argued by understanding the concept of a sign and its related properties, it is possible to improve the analysis and design of interface design elements within web environment to induce trust. Drawn from established theoretical work on institutional based trust and semiotic, the concept of Institutional Symbolism and its four underlying dimensions are proposed to facilitate thinking and perception as to how trust can be built through signs comprehension. Conceptualized in the context of web mediated information environment, the implications of these dimensions on web site design and future work is further discussed.

Email is a convenient tool, however, it is still difficult for elderly people and kindergarten children. If they can learn to use it, their ability to communicate may be remarkably increased. Therefore we developed two kinds of email software ’Gin-Mail’ for elderly people and ’Ocha-Mail’ for kindergarten children. They adopt a pen-based interface with a tablet PC. Users write email using Ink function, and software sends it as an attached image file. There are two modes in it, User mode and Maintenance mode. User mode offers only minimal functions to prevent misoperation. We devised each user interface in accordance with the user’s characteristics. ’Ocha-Mail’ and ’Gin-Mail’ are accessible to kindergarten children and elderly people respectively. Our goal is to encourage interactions among different generations by through the use of email.

The present authors have developed a communication system WSCS (Waseda Shadow Communication System), with which your remote communicating partner (or you) can be positioned and appeared 3-dimensionally in your (or your partner’s) real space, by exchanging body shadows each other. With this WSCS, we have reported previously that cooperative work and conversation can be achieved with your remote partner while taking the spatial distance (“Maai” in Japanese) between you and his shadow appeared in your space. For further development of the WSCS as Arts Communication System being supportive to a generation of co-creative “Encounter Ba”, a creative expression technique has been investigated in the present study. With this technique, a relationship between you and your remote partner at the encounter occasion can be strengthened from the following two points of view. The first point is related to a supportive method to a self-organization of “Ba” at the encountering “Now, we are here”, by enriching the co-existing feeling between remote participants. For this specific aim, the application software was developed with which remote participants can perform embodied interaction between remote groups using a virtual shadow ball. The second point relates to a method by which scene of the past time was reproduced across the time scale and the bodily expression of the concerned person can be trace-experienced. For this point, a co-experiencing type archive software was developed with which one can put himself at the past scene by processing of shadow images of recorded person(s), so that one can share experiences with concerned person(s) while entering the past scene across the time scale. After installing these software programs into WSCS, several communication experiments were conducted. It was found that (i), with the first software, a similar effect as an ice-breaking activities occurred at a workshop was recognized, and the software was found effective to develop a workshop which shares a mutual context among groups, and (ii), with the second program, since participants and the concerned person can be present at the same scene, changes in feeling/emotion of the concerned person can be conveyed directly via the embodiment.

Voice chat system is one of the most popular communication systems using computer networks. There is considerable delay to transfer the sender’s voice to the receiver on usual voice chat system. The message transfer delay often causes unintentional interruptions and makes participants of the system feel confused. It is considered that such negative effects occur because participants can’t know the status of their voice playback in remote site. In this paper, two types of remote status monitoring systems are introduced to reduce unintentional interruptions and confused feeling. Then, it is confirmed experimentally that these systems were effective to reduce these problems.

In the interactive model considered herein, a user can be made to feel that the virtual world exists as tangibly as the real world does. Once “Friendly Process of Human-Computer Interaction” launches, a user can wait to see what happens before he or she takes action. Even if a user does nothing, the program still runs. A PC user is an audience. The computer program performs for its user audience. If the user is interested in the computer program’s behavior, that user interacts with the PC as its audience. The purpose of our work was to examine the potentiality and significance of our interactive model. We integrated our concepts into our interactive design. In order to evaluate our concepts, we prepared three interactive movie system prototypes. The creation of our prototypes is well underway toward effectuating our concepts. After we improve our prototypes, we will then need to evaluate them.

Fond memories provide not only warm feeling to those who possess them, but also bonds that tie people who share them together. Utilizing this property, we propose to develop an environment where people can share their feelings for fond memories, as well as empathize and communication with each other. We consider this environment like a park, where you drop in and take a rest on a bench, look at the fountain and feel comfortable atmosphere away from your daily life. Instead of benches or fountains, we provide some triggers for fond memories. We named this environment "Reminiscence Park". An example of the triggers for remembering in Reminiscence Park is the old popular song common to the users’ younger days. We developed a prototype system modeling a music box. Opened by one or more people, the box starts to play a common song from their youth.

This paper describes an experimental comparison of three variants of a meeting browser. This browser incorporates innovative, multimodal technologies to enable storage and smart retrieval of captured meeting. Over a hundred subjects had to work in a design team in which they had to prepare and carry out a final meeting, while supported by one of the browser variants. In one condition, teams worked without such support. Measures on individual characteristics, the team, the process and outcome of the project, and the usability of the browsers were taken. The results indicate that a multimodal meeting browser can indeed improve meetings. Further analysis of the now available data will provide additional insight into how browsers can contribute to more efficient and satisfactory meetings, improved team performance and higher quality project outcomes.

To build the effective information systems Scandinavian tradition emphasizes and encourages the participatory design methods which involves both designers and users equally in building the systems. While the main intention of Scandinavian tradition is to refocus the dominant orientation of systems developers by involving users but one really wonders whether it can be applied in the context of developing countries particularly in a country like India where the structures are rigid, hierarchical and strongly bureaucratic in nature. In spite of the fact that health sector being a key social area in India’s developmental administration it is highly fragmented and receives low priority. In India, while the general administration is mostly concentrated at the district level, health and family welfare administration has been centralized at state and central levels. This coupled with the excessive concentration of powers in the secretariat system of governance, has considerably centralized planning and monitoring. Keeping in view the above complexities and challenging conditions this paper tries to understand using case study as a method how participation at different levels affects the design and implementation of Health Information Systems in primary health care sector in India.

The importance of social relation has never been as vital as of now, in an age of sound bites, aging population and busy work schedule, contemplating social behavior has become a rarity. The ’Structuration’ theory [2] elaborates the fact that how much social relation’s are important in human life. Here we re-define basic concept and category (types) of mobile community. A realization of mobile communities through unified UI for mobile devices is believed to provide users efficient communication ways while satisfying properties of various communities. Such unified UI led to drive an adaptive and intuitive user interfaces that depict real-time interaction involving multiple parties, contents and activities. Many different scenarios emerge with the proposed UI to give a deeper thought and understanding about the role of mobile community in everyday life and help promoting user’s communication experience.

As extensive amount information is required within a R&D environment, an automated information system could save a considerable amount of time and efforts. There are currently many researches to overcome the information overload phenomenon, including information systems, recommender systems and adaptive hypermedia, and this paper presents an adaptive information providing system utilising some characteristics of these technologies to support R&D and collaborative meeting environments. The system described in this paper aims to present the potential synergy between recommender systems and adaptive hypermedia systems.

Organizations use several methods to communicate formal and informal information. Currently, message boards or corkboards are used as a means for sharing information, coordinating activities and communicating with others. Using our organization as a case study, we observed that there are many message boards around the physical environment and most of them are covered with documents announcing upcoming meetings, seminars, conferences and other events. Besides that, some of the documents were out-of-date which makes it more difficult for users to find information that is relevant for their activities. To support the dissemination of information in organizations, we are proposing a Time-aware Public Display System that enables organization personnel to become aware of relevant information in a timely fashion. We used the Perspective Wall visualization to enable the categorization of the information into topics and dates. We evaluated the system design which shows that users considered appropriate and useful the presentation of information on the Time-aware Public Display.

Instant Messaging (IM) is becoming as the dominant means of communication over the Internet. The popularity of IM has led to significant developments in the sophistication of the software. There have been a number of attempts to deliver emotional content through IM.The sense of touch has been a focus in a number of these research projects [1], [2], but there have been no implementations of tactile IM that have successfully bridged the gap to public, widely deployed use. In this paper, we describe a tactile interface designed to convey emotional content and focused on intuitive input and sensorial output methods to be applied in a public IM client. The initial stage of this research involved a fundamental investigation into IM usage patterns. We distributed a questionnaire to gain insight into user’s requirements, and received completed results from 79 people in their twenties (32 male and 47 female). Regarding how the tactile stimulus should be integrated into the environment, 50% felt a mouse (26%), a glove (14%), or a keyboard (10%) based display would be appropriate and afford easy physical contact during IM. Furthermore, they expressed a desire for tools to enable them to easily author their own tactile sensations. From the data gathered in this survey we developed a design concept for the physical interface. And we selected a set of emoticons most used in IM and defined both tactile and visual information to help emotional expression for each emoticon. We named these enhanced emoticons TCONs (TouchCON, Touch Emoticon). We defined 6 TCONs and 3 intuitive tangible input methods. We played our TCONs on a physical interface device, called the TCON Display, during public IM. The TCON Display consisted of three components, two devices shaped like cartoon hands, the other like a pair of lips. These devices included various output and input systems: vibrating motors, pin actuators, Heat coil, pressure sensors, buttons and LEDs. We also implemented a TCON Editor to allow users to create TCONs and for testing our research. The TCON was applied to a public IM system, NateOn, just like graphical emoticons. We tested the TCONs and tactile emotional interface system with 12 users test in their twenties (6 male and 6 female) and received a positive response.

The paper outlines a theoretical framework for the conceptualisation and design of collaborative systems for design organisations. The intent is to examine and support the idea of ’co-purposing’ as an influential design metaphor for the analysis of design teams and the development of design support collaborative systems in contexts where systems’ designers collaborate with their clients. By offering associations to the work activities and the social interaction of designers in actual design workspaces, we propose that the metaphor of ’co-purposing’ can stand as an alternative perspective in the analysis and design of potentially new realisations of computer supported cooperative work systems for supporting teamwork.

Our research focuses on

ambient sounds

as a key to implementing an ambient atmosphere of people, that is, the feeling of another’s proximity or presence. Such knowledge is sought for constructing an ultra-realistic communication system with shared reality. This study examines whether people’s impressions and behaviors are affected by (a) the existence or (b) non-existence of ambient sounds. A pilot study is conducted by using the ambient sounds of a newspaper’s pages being turned and a glass being placed on a table in an adjacent room. No difference in the subjects’ surface behavior between the two ambient-sound conditions is observed explicitly. However, the preliminary results suggest that participants feel an ambient atmosphere of people in the next room when the ambient sounds are output. They also suggest that the participants become nervous as they feel the presence of other people. This study demonstrates the importance of investigating the fundamentals of an ambient atmosphere in interaction via an ultra-realistic communication system.

There has been a diversification of the social risks to information-based society leading to complex social issues, and risk communication is necessary in order to solve the complicated social problems that arise concerning stakeholders with various levels of knowledge and differing standards regarding risks. In this paper, we introduce a portal system that assists participants to achieve an optimal combination of countermeasures. The characteristics of the proposed method are: first, to classify the stage when participants acquire information; second, to enable smooth transitions during the information acquisition stage; and third, to support information acquisition by offering information portals.

This paper extends the knowledge and understanding of art-technology collaboration. It reports upon a close empirical study of how computer programmers interacted with a digital artist to develop a computer-based interactive artwork. Analysis of the data collected showed that the joint uncovering and resolving of assumptions made by each party led to increased shared understanding. The contribution of this paper is to provide a better understanding of creative collaboration, particularly focusing on how developing the artefact increased the understanding between the artist and technologists.

This paper presents an approach to investigating interdisciplinary collaboration between an artist and a technologist based on case study methods. The aim of the research is to understand how artists and technologists communicate with each other during a collaborative process. The paper begins with a brief account of the art-technology context, and goes on to describe how the data was collected and how the analysis framework was developed specifically for this context. At the end of this paper, we discuss the preliminary findings which illustrate the characteristics of participants’ communication behaviours in art-technology collaboration.

The high penetration of mobile devices implies that we are closing up to the vision of ubiquitous media environments. This paper reports from a broad survey about barriers, use patterns, and motivations for using mobile media services. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of mobile service adoption process by studying users in different phases of the adoption process. The findings imply that mobile services are still not adopted and ubiquitously ingrained in use patterns. There is still a long way to go.

Large quantities of historical newspapers are being digitized and OCRd. We describe a framework for processing the OCRd text to identify articles and extract metadata for them. We describe the article schema and provide examples of features that facilitate automatic indexing of them. For this processing, we employ lexical semantics, structural models, and community content. Furthermore, we describe visualization and summarization techniques that can be used to present the extracted events.

The purpose of this study is to help to improve teachers’ instructions by using information and communication technology. We developed a new method with the LAPP (Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, and PHP) system. We adopted a mobile-phone as a terminal device. Using this system, a teacher could record easily and quickly students’ learning situations also with taking pictures and evaluation data. A teacher could understand how well a particular student and whole students during a lecture – numerical evaluation values, average and the standard deviations of classroom average. We used this system actually for improving a lecture of programming and checking students’ wood works. In both using, our system could work without any trouble. Understanding trends in students’ learning, we found that this system could help teachers’ instructions for students and reduce teachers’ load.

In e-Learning study, the materials are the only environment. Therefore, the influence which these have on a students’ emotion has big influence on progress of study. The purpose of this study, from a standpoint of making easyto- follow e-Learning materials, is to construct the foundation for a methodology to evaluate the materials from emotional aspect. At first we re-corded the basic EEG during mental calculation. Second, we tested two different levels of materials which had 3 important learning points. We recorded subjects’ EEG, then analyzed and compared with the basic EEGs. The result suggested us that at the learning point, where the α-wave power was greater than the basic one and the β-wave was less than it , the content was not able to understand.

This paper presents a “persistent chat” extension to the ePresence Interactive Media webcasting infrastructure to support real-time commenting on and discussing of issues that arise during a learning event, followed by ongoing asynchronous dialogue about these issues while viewing the archives after the event. We report encouraging results of a field study of use of the system by students and a teaching assistant in a computer science class on communication skills, which encouraged students to review, think critically about, and improve their public speaking abilities.

This paper presents an extension to the ePresence Interactive Media webcasting infrastructure to support real-time voice and video conferencing for a few attendees while concurrently streaming an event to many others. We emphasize the tools for enhancing awareness of the remote attendees in the lecture hall or seminar room, and for facilitating communication between remote attendees and the lecturer. We present preliminary results of a field study of the use of this environment for a multi-campus university class.

We present experimental results of solving mathematical models, using very efficient complete and incomplete techniques, for designing balanced academic curricula. Solutions to these models give curricula with academic load for each period as similar as possible. Based on this work, a software tool has been developed to help administratives as well as students in the planning of academic curricula.

As of 2003, 99% of K-12 schools in the United States use the Internet. With the increased use of databases and other technologies to manage data in K-12 institutions, an inherent threat to the privacy and confidentiality of that information has also increased. Over the last decade, with the increased use of these technologies, there has also been an increase in the number of privacy-related violations that have occurred, both in industry and in the K-12 environment. There are a plethora of security technologies that can be used to improve privacy; however, organizations such as K-12 schools often cannot afford to hire IT staff versed in the state of the art. Furthermore, technology alone will not address security and privacy problems; policy is an essential ingredient for any organization. This study is a gap analysis investigating privacy practices of public educators in the Midwestern portion of the United States. The significance of the work is that we cannot improve the practices unless we understand deficiencies in current privacy practices and perceptions.

The objective of this paper is to present a part of m-learning process developed at our University at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in the field of image processing. The basic courses in this field are on the Faculty Web. The multimedia illustration of the basic methods in image processing is realized both on Desktop PC and on handheld (PDA) devices equipped with cameras and could be used individually by each student. The students can take photos with the cameras and interactively learn about the results of the image processing algorithms. For efficient use of the handheld devices we developed a suitable HCI. According to the surveys with 20 students at the last year of study, their experience with our specially developed tools for m-learning is very positive.

In this paper we present a semi-automatic ontology editor as implemented in a new version of OntoGen system. The system integrates machine learning and text mining algorithms into an efficient user interface lowering the entry barrier for users who are not professional ontology engineers. The main features of the systems include unsupervised and supervised methods for concept suggestion and concept naming, as well as ontology and concept visualization. The system was tested in extensive user trails and in several real-world scenarios with very positive results.

Knowledge sharing is presumed to be better facilitated through knowledge gardening metaphor. Nonetheless, there is a research gap in the metaphor application, where there is yet a formal elicitation undertaken towards it. This paper intends to answer three questions: How does knowledge gardening metaphor supports knowledge sharing within a user interface? What properties should the overall user interface have to support user-oriented environment? How can the knowledge gardening metaphor be elicited? Henceforth, a description on the user interface design incorporating knowledge gardening metaphor is discussed. Steps undertaken in a metaphor elicitation are also provided.

When information is memorized, the brain rehearses it. We can preserve information over a long period of time if this rehearsal is effectively performed in studying. This research aims 1.To clarify the effect of the rehearsal in e-learning, 2. To clarify the effective method for summary-making using a prototype system that studies structure of a stock (equity in a company). For this purpose, we 1.Compare the difference among three rehearsal methods, 2. (From result of 1) compare the results of an experiment of “Summarize” rehearsal method. As a result we find that the “Summarize” rehearsal is effective, especially when used for memorization constraints imposed in the number and types words used.

Online game websites can not only provide players with a hyperspace for enjoying game playing, but also with a service platform for diverse community interactions, information sharing, and online transactions. Based on the four virtual spaces proposed in Angehrn’s (1997) ICDT model: virtual information space (VIS), virtual communication space (VCS), virtual distribution space (VDS) and virtual transaction space (VTS), this research developed a content architecture for analyzing the function interface of online game websites. 26 online game websites are chosen as sample sites. This research found that most of the websites investigated provide good service functions in both VIS, but require further improvement of their VTS functions. Certain suggestions are proposed to the online game websites in Great China area.

There is amble evidence that supports true interactivity, both in the interface and in the presentation methodology, will further enhance learning and knowledge retention among students. The real challenge is how to implement it, measure and evaluate this outcome. This paper presents findings that look into the efficacy of the combination of virtual environments and interactive teaching techniques in enhancing learning and increasing the knowledge retention level of students.It is now widely accepted that the conventional way of lecturing students has certain limitations. E-learning and the use of ICT, interactive tools in the education field has proven to be effective in assisting the teaching and learning experience. It has been observed that the one way communication method of lecturing with limited or no opportunity for feedback from students and audiences in general has a major impact on their attention span and the retention level. There are issues related to the establishment and implementation of interactive learning tools as an aid for teaching and especially in continuous evaluation of students’ achievements. We point out that it is not only the ’teaching’ tasks that are impacted by the use of ICT but also current methods of evaluation including written examinations which have proven to be time consuming and inaccurate reflection of students’ achievements. The introduction of interactive learning and evaluation has several advantages and this paper will give a convincing support to the fact that the advantages are more than the fact that it makes

the teaching and evaluation process easy, simple and rapid.

Educators should not fail to adapt and respond to the needs of 21st century bust and multi-tasking students for innovative learning methods, i.e. interactive learning. The role of education institutions and educators in the future will become demand-driven; to satisfy technically sophisticated student clients. The paper recommends that we should not ignore the use of interactive technology used as it should be, as a tool, to enhance sound pedagogical methods, however, we should also be able to measure its contribution in enhancing teaching and learning. It is pertinent to synthesize a framework that encompasses ways to compliment existing methods of teaching with interactive learning.

Science and technology communication is very important for a lot of people, engineers, scientist, and students. In order to study science and technology communication method, some education programs have started in some universities of Japan. In this study, to support education programs for science and technology communication, a support tool using computer is designed and developed. The target of support is group discussion of the exercise, and the developed software tool was used in the exercises in Osaka University.

In the past year, the majority of conventional learning schemes have been transformed offline, gradually adapting E-Learning and M-Learning through the evolution of IT technology. In order to achieve effective learning, existing static schemes of learning must be transformed in all domains, to deliver true personalized learning depending on various user characteristics. Offering a conceptual background that supports this environment is the foundation of ubiquitous learning. Ubiquitous learning exists in the physical space of everyday life. It is possible to compose learning components existing in the activity space of an intelligent network. Adaptive learning in such ubiquitous environments is a significant learning step. In a general sense, our aim regard Ubiquitous computing is pursuit in the same light with Human Computer Interaction is pursuit by related works. However, in order to achieve sufficient improvement, ubiquitous learning requires 1) learning system has to provide learner centered learning contents what learner wants, 2) and through consideration of learner’s learning device and learning environment, it has to offer learning contents. In this paper, a system supporting the dynamic configuration of user optimized learning objects, and the transmission of learning content irrespective of the learner device used, is designed and implemented. In addition, through the development of an effective learning model, the effect on learning is maximized.

The purpose of this study was to determine user suggestions for a typical OPAC (Online Public Library Catalogue) application’s functionality and features. An experiment was undertaken to find out the type of interactions features that users prefer to have in an OPAC. The study revealed that regardless of users’ Information Technology (IT) backgrounds, their functionality expectations of OPACs are the same. However, based on users’ previous experiences with OPACs, their requirements with respect to specific features may change. Users should be involved early in the OPAC development cycle process in order to ensure usable and functional interface.

The cultural background of learners has been highlighted as crucial in determining the effectiveness of educational technology. This paper focuses on the influence of power distance in determining the effectiveness of educational technology. Utilizing a multiple case study, we examined the perception of learners from small and large power distance societies in terms of satisfaction with learning, self-efficacy with educational technology and perceived learning. Our findings show that the availability of educational technology enhances the learning outcomes of both cultures. The study suggests the notion that learning outcomes differ for learners from small and large power distance cultures.

We develop a multiple-view tool called AlViz, which aims at supporting the ontology alignment process visually. Combing views on several levels of abstraction, the tool tries to make the ’relatedness’ between entities accessible. Based on a literature study we identified relevant phases emerging in ontology alignment. We extended a general alignment framework in order to reflect the adoption of visualization techniques. This framework builds the background for our user study. We evaluate visual ontology alignment with AlViz in three stages: (1) Participative software development, (2) usability evaluation, and (3) utility study. The evaluation methods proved viable even though our study design is challenging.

This paper presents an experience of educational podcasting set up at the University of Bergamo (Italy), and derives from that experience some remarks upon the quality of podcasting services, in order to promote the definition of guidelines on podcasting quality. We discuss three main attributes of a podcasting environment: quality of the production environment (recording and editing), quality of the product (content and communication style), quality of the distribution environment (paratext and management).

Context can be utilized as an effective source of information for supporting the user system interface under the ubiquitous environments. The context awareness function forms the basis of the studies regarding the ubiquitous computing environment for creating numerous smart spaces, and a context awareness service is usually based on the context awareness system or middleware. However, conventional context modeling approaches based on ontology bear several problems. First, a context awareness service must share the context information with other context awareness services in the designing phase. Second problem is a context uncertainty, which can arise in the process of deducing the data acquired from the sensor into the context information based on the dynamic modification of the context ontology, must be resolved. This study proposes the context management system based on the dynamic context ontology management method, which involves the hierarchical context management method using common context and the paper proposes a method for resolving the context uncertainty problem of interpreting the data acquired from the sensors as two or more types of context information.

Modern manufacturing industry changes dramatically following the fast progress of mechanical improvement and informatics development. Young people focus on learning new techniques in order to catch up the fast progress. Traditional industrial skills are missing step by step that will be a problem for modern industrial manufactures. The technological generation gap also causes damage in manufacturing industry. Elder experts who accumulated many traditional industrial skills faced the problems of retirement and strict competition. Young novices receive modern industry technique trainings, but still require traditional skill to maintain the industrial manufacture. The skill transmission from elder expert to young novice is known as an important course. In Japan, industry pays a lot of concern at the decline in mastery of skills technology. Based on the importance and difficulties of skill transmissions, an idea model was searched and established in this study. We choice screw manufacture as a representative industry in this study because screw manufacture required traditional skills and modern techniques. A manual introducing traditional skill and integrating computer science could transmit technologies smoothly from elder expert to young novice. Computer science here is used to link generation gap, to introduce traditional skill delicately in order to keep all the detail tricks and lively in order to be accepted by novice. The transmission efficiency and efficacy both will be considered.

The number of experts in various fields such as manufactures, traditional arts/crafts decreases because of their retirement in Japan. In the field of nuclear power generation, it also becomes problem especially in maintenance. The goal of this study was to develop an advanced instruction video system to support skill acquisition. We proposed to use eye movement as one of the expert’s skill information, and developed the system for supporting recording skill (scene video and the point of regard of an expert), making teaching materials in XML format and learning skills with the special user interface. Evaluation will be necessary by experiment to confirm the effectiveness of the training method.

This paper presents a mobile collaborative application to support the Collaborative Examination Technique (CET). This software tool, named MOCET, keeps the metaphor of the student’s paper notebook used to support CET processes. In addition, it provides solutions to overcome the two main limitations identified on CET: (a) the inefficiency to support the building and sharing knowledge processes carried out by students during the pre and post-test activities, and (b) the high cost in time spent by instructors to carry out the examination process. Although MOCET is able to run on several computing devices, it has been specially designed to be used on Tablet PCs and PDAs and interact with the users using a pen device. This tool replaces the student’s paper notebook during exams and supports students and instructors in every phase of the examination process. MOCET has been tested in two computer science courses and interesting results were obtained.

The growth of grid computing facilitates the discovery of scientifically meaningful findings from the result of computational simulations by providing enormous amount of computing power and huge volume of storage area. As the computer technology advances, the relative portion of the time required for preparing and analyzing the result of the calculation increases because the complexity of the problem to be solved by grid computing also increases. In order to provide transparent and flexible interface to various groups of users who have different objectives, multi-layer design is applied for developing data portal for climate data. This paper presents three-layer model with four user groups which represents student, teacher, researcher, and administrator. The functionalities for job submission, post-processing, data management, content management are distributed into three different layers of complexity which is categorized as basic, intermediate, and advanced.

ECampus is a project spanning all departments at the University of Fulda. It has been started to create a uniform learning environment at the university. The objective is to research and develop a user-friendly easy-to-use editor to generate SCORM 2004 conform eLearning modules. This editor is based on Open Source software and new technologies such as XSL transformations and the Google web toolkit. Some eLearning modules can be developed with the system immediately. These modules are now being used during the lessons with great success.

Simulation-based training has traditionally relied on live simulations for the specification of training scenarios. However, both the logistics and cost of live simulation constrain how often that form of training can be accessible. As the healthcare community begins to invest significantly in simulation-based training, it is running against the limitation of requiring expensive hands-on instructor-led facilitation to make it effective. New technological advances applied to simulation-based training provide automated coaching and feedback which reduce the need for instructor facilitation, thus making simulation-based training cost-effective and feasible. The design and development of SimCore (

Sim

ulate,

Co

ach,

Re

view), a simulation based framework that adds intelligent performance assessment and coaching facilities to training simulations, is discussed. Through the use of SimCore, simulation developers are able to convert their simulations into automated, intelligent tutors. SimCore is a unique application that includes a scenario authoring tool tailored to the medical domain that can be used to rapidly customize existing scenarios or to create new ones.

In this paper, we introduce a virtual pop-up book system using Augmented Reality technology. This system displays 3D virtual objects on the real book based on pose and position estimation of the camera. Although many marker-based methods have been proposed, a picture book with markers looks unattractive. Our system does not use any markers. We describe four advantages for the virtual pop-up book. Firstly, 3D rendering helps readers understand scenes. Secondly, characters look lively by using motions. Thirdly, author of the picture book can use the new representation, which mixes 2D and 3D rendering. Lastly, it can express time changes using animation.

Due to the diversity of mobile device and wireless network’s progress, mobile learning has become a possible and convenient way to support learning activity, whether it was in or out of classroom. There have been some researches showed that using such devices in the course can improve learners’ performance and arouse their motivation, cases like bird watching, plant observing, museum navigation and tourist guidance. Chinese language was considered difficult to learn all the time, because of its complicated shape, different pronunciations and multiple meanings. In this paper, we propose a system that works on PDA for foreigners to learn Chinese. The design concept derived from geographic information sharing, people will use PDA to explore the city they live, and gradually find virtual messages around them, thus enhance their Chinese communication skill.

Recently, various ways are being explored for enhancing the fun of computer games and lengthening the life cycle of them. Some games, add realistic graphic effect and excellent acoustic effect, and make the tendencies of game players reflected. This paper suggests the method to collect and analyze the action patterns of game players. The game players’ patterns are modeled using FSM (Finite State Machine). The result obtained by analyzing the data on game players is used for creating NPCs (Non-Player Characters) which show new action patterns by altering the FSM defined previously. This characters are adaptable NPCs which is learnable the action patterns of game players. The proposal method can be applied to create characters which play the role of partners with game players or the role of enemies against game players.

An experiment was conducted on the ease with which a car navigation system could be read by elderly, middle-aged and young people. 127 subjects (19-76 years of age) evaluated ease of reading of the displayed characters. The experiment evaluated characters displayed on a liquid crystal display (LCD) similar to those used in car navigation systems, and evaluated readability in 9 stages. Five character sizes for traffic terms and two languages (Japanese and English) were used in the experiment. The experiment was conducted with the LCD in 2 positions: directly in front of the subject and diagonal to the left (about 30 degrees). The results showed that he directly frontward position was significantly more readable than the position of diagonal to the left.

Subject performance in reading characters on mobile phone liquid crystal displays was researched with the use of: (1) sentences without meaning, made from randomly ordered alphanumeric characters having 3 different sizes of characters and 4 different contrasts (n=78; age=39.9 ± 17.6), (2) Japanese characters of 5 different sizes and 2 types of font (n=98; age=44.5 ± 18.5), and (3) Japanese characters vertically enlarged 1-4 times (n=120; age=46.9 ± 18.6). Readability was higher with higher contrast displays, and with Gothic than with Mincho font in Japanese. Readability of Japanese characters improved when they were vertically enlarged to approximately twice the width.

In this paper, we describe life-log content mash-up application called “Sharelog” by using widespread consumer mobile device. By using consumer mobile device as a interface for ubiquitous and mobile computing application, the system developers are enabled to focus on the content side of an application. We have demonstrated our application “Sharelog” at the museum exhibition and realized the capability of consumer mobile device as an interface for ubiquitous computing in public space. We would like to call this kind of mobile devices as public user interface.

This paper proposes new method for object reference which enables a person to find surrounding objects and develops a navigation system named CoCo. CoCo employs an ultrasonic directional speaker with a rotating base. Ultrasonic wave transmitted by an ultrasonic directional speaker is converted to audible sound when it reflects on floor, wall, or object. Based on this property, CoCo can emit audible sound from arbitrary place using a rotating base. When CoCo navigates a person to an object, CoCo transmits ultrasonic wave so as to hear audible sound continuously from the line between the ultrasonic directional speaker and the object. We designed and implemented an object management system as an application using 3D position sensors and a navigation system CoCo. This paper shows how CoCo navigates a person to an object using position data from an object management system.

For online social networking service in the ubiquitous computing and networking environment, a ubiquitous Web service accessible with a mobile user interface was studied using single-character domain names among multi-lingual domain names, especially for mobile social networking. As convenient user interface for accessing a Web service for a social community, instead of long URL strings, the multi-lingual single-character domain names as indexing keys to social information in a ubiquitous Web service are convenient mobile interfaces to search social information as well as to register information and knowledge for mobile social networking service. We studied the convenience and performance of accessibility to ubiquitous Web and studied resource utilization for a mobile social networking service.

In this paper, we describe the development of gloves that can be used in a ubiquitous computing environment. The ubiHand gloves were developed to access information devices in various wireless environments, including mobile computing, games, and in-vehicle telematic systems. The gloves are equipped with chording keyboard mechanism for flexible input and control of the wireless devices, an embedded RFID reader and a set of accelerator sensors for gathering information from the users’ various hand gestures. The system configuration and keymaps for ubiquitous information access as well as the interface for input and control for the gloves are presented.

To construct constraint-free human-computer interaction (HCI) environments, the wireless communication is one of the most essential research issues. Among the numerous wireless communication technologies, IEEE 802.15.4 low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) is the most suitable for ubiquitous and pervasive HCI environments, such as home networking applications, monitoring systems, and so on. In LR-WPANs, the power-efficiency is one of the most attractive issues. Therefore, this paper proposes a power saving medium access scheme for star topology beacon-enabled LR-WPANs. To achieve power efficiency, we turn off communication modules when the time slots are not used for data communications. On the other hand, we turn on the modules. The proposed scheme predict the time for data communications in a given superframe structure. Our simulation result shows that our algorithm achieves desired properties.

A MA(Mobile Agent) is a computer program which autonomously migrates within the network and works on behalf of a user. With the progress of ubiquitous computing environments, MA paradigm becomes more useful paradigm because MA paradigm makes it possible for various user-centric services, such as follow-me service, private secretary service, and etc. Also, in ubiquitous environments, the cell phone has very important role, but the cell phone cannot support the MA technology because J2ME(Java2 Micro Edition) CLDC(Connected Limited Device Configuration), which is the java platform for cell phone, does not support the essential facilities for the mobility of the mobile agents such as reflection, dynamic class loading, and object serialization due to security problem of the cell phone. So, in this paper, we propose the scheme that the MAP(Mobile Agent Platform) dynamically generates the UI(User Interface) according to the user’s device. Also, we show the experimental results of our proposed scheme. By using our proposed scheme, the user gets the service of MA by the cell phone.

TCP application in wireless HCI environments communicates to each other frequently through wireless networks. Therefore, it is important that significant TCP performance is guaranteed in wireless network. TCP New Jersey, known as the best existing scheme in terms of goodput in wireless networks, improves wireless TCP performance using the available bandwidth estimation at the sender and the congestion warning at intermediate routers. Although TCP New Jersey achieves 17% and 85% improvements in goodput over TCP Westwood and TCP Reno, respectively, we further improve TCP New Jersey by exploring enhanced available bandwidth estimation and suitable error recovery mechanism. Hence, we propose TCP NJ+. It outperforms other TCP variants by 19% to 104% in terms of goodput even when the network is in bi-directional congestion. Hence TCP NJ+ can provide the best services to user in wireless HCI environments.

Short text message (SMS) as a key communication means in China received a lot of attention in research community. 114 subjects attended the study, sharing totally 10843 SMS they sent and received daily. We divided the SMS into two categories (instrumental and expressive), analyzed vocabularies, functions and effects of demographic factors and SMS categories on SMS lengths and found: 1) Top 400 Chinese characters occupied 85% and top 388 words occupied 73% in SMS. Punctuations appeared frequently (18%), while Smiley appeared very little (less than 0.1%). 2) People sent both instrumental and expressive messages regardless of their age. Female users tended to send longer SMS. Retired people sent longest SMS, followed by working people and students. People exchanged SMS with close friends and families. Expressive SMS have more words than instrumental SMS. 3) People over 40s exchange more SMS with children than with friends.

A multilingual disaster information system (MLDI) has been developed to overcome the language barrier during times of natural disaster. MLDI is a web-based system that includes templates in nine languages so that translated texts can be made available immediately. Mobile phone e-mail with graphic text is a useful tool for delivering multilingual disaster information. We assessed the performance of the translation system and the multilingual graphical characters, and found that they are sufficiently useable. We discussed the usage of mobile phones for multilingual disaster information delivery system including Early Earthquake Warning system. Multilingual mobile information and measures is useful for a safe and barrier-free society.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between the visibility of mobile phone displays and aging effects on subjects’ visual functions, based on measurements of vision, including near visual acuity and cataract cloudiness. In the relation between Character size, CC, and NVA, visibility was lower with smaller character size “S”. In the relation between Contrast, CC, and NVA, the organoleptic evaluations showed significant differences in contrast. The subjects’ attached a high value to the negative display mode, especially when the subject’s CC was more than 200. Such considerations are particularly important for elderly users who have marked deterioration of visual function.

Multi-view video is a new multimedia service which provides immersion and realism using the multiple view channels. However, as the number of cameras increases, the enormous data volume generated by them inevitably calls for better video compression and processing algorithms. However, the multiple images taken at any certain time instants always have inconsistency among the views in their intensity, color, sharpness, and so on. It not only degrades the compression efficiency greatly but also causes subjective quality loss such as dizziness and unnaturalness in random view access. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a new multi-view compensation method which uses the Kalman filter. It estimates the illumination discrepancy parameters autonomously both in encoder and decoder. Therefore, our method needs not transmit any additional data for illumination discrepancy information.

This study focuses on an analysis of the naturalistic driving behavior before making a right turn at an intersection. We conducted experiments on a public road and measured driver behavior, vehicle state, and headway and rear distances. The results suggest that the positions of the front and rear vehicles and the vehicle velocity have an influence on the onset location of covering the brake pedal. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to estimate these relationships quantitatively. The results imply that the SEM with latent variables can represent the hypotheses obtained from the analysis of the measured data. We propose a detection method of unusual driver behavior by predicting the driver’s preparatory behavior using the SEM, and possible new application of in-vehicle navigation systems is discussed.

This paper focuses on finding the suitable mapping between the input action with the portable information terminal (PIT) in the real world and the operation in the 3D information space. From the experiments, following suitable mappings are found. They are changing the PIT position for changing the view position, changing the PIT orientation for changing the view orientation, and picking or grasping the object and moving or rotating hand for selecting the object and moving or rotating it.

A mobile ad-hoc network [1] is a set of mobile nodes acting as routers in infrastructureless networking situations. In ad-hoc environments, to extend the lifetime of wireless mobile hosts, energy-efficient ad-hoc routing protocols must be designed. However, in conventional reactive ad-hoc routing, the route discovery operation is triggered whenever a source node has packets to send to a certain destination, but has no route information for the destination. Intermediate nodes, then, repeatedly broadcast the message until it is received by all nodes. This route discovery process could result in excessive drain of limited battery power and increase collisions in wireless transmission. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient route discovery scheme using the K-hop Pre Route Request (PRREQ) message which is only flooded within K hops from the source node. This reduces the number of nodes that participate in the route discovery process. Our empirical performance evaluation, which compares our proposed scheme to the conventional reactive adhoc routing schemes, demonstrates that proposed enhancement reduces energy consumed in the route discovery procedure by about 27% when each node initiates a new route at a rate of 0.05/sec.

Multimodal mobile interfaces to the Semantic Web offer access to complex knowledge and information structures. In SmartWeb we try to build multimodal interfaces to answer very specific closed and open domain questions by natural language dialogue and multimedia presentations. Advanced user interactions such as pointing gestures are also supported. We present the interaction design and its implementation for Semantic Web related knowledge structures, i.e., ontology instances and relations, and follow the principle of no presentation without representation for information content, its presentation, and interaction possibilities. In particular, we address the challenge to display interactive text and image results obtained from multiple homogeneous and heterogeneous information sources.

Society of Mobile Interactions was established in April 2006. Short history to establishment and topics of interests are introduced. Mobile interactions suggest interactions among people instead of mobile technology. First the influences of mobile mail to life and communication of young and elderly. Some aspects to be studied are discussed. Some trials to adapt people to mobile interactions are explained. Hito navi (handheld navigation) and Kid’s K-tie are discussed as the recent applications.

In this paper we propose an optimal information architecture model for mobile multimedia devices. In our study we first reviewed the information architecture models of four currently popular mobile multimedia devices, Apple iPod Video, Nokia N80, Sony Ericsson W800i and Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). Then we used Open card sorting method to find out what kind of mental models does people have for optimal information architecture model. Finally we compared these two study results together and created a design proposal.

For adaptive content generation, it means that the application can recognize a user’s preference and consequently retrieve and present the appropriate media objects stored in the databases. That is, the application presents only the media objects with the conditions evaluated to be true according to the user’s demand or preference. The feature of adapting presentation contents can significantly improve browsing results through providing materials that are more suitable for each individual user. In the mobile environment, some more changing factors can affect a user’s access to the contents generated by the presentation engine. These factors include location, available bandwidth, past visits, the currently closest media source, etc. In this paper, we propose an adaptive content generating engine called Mach for mobility-aware multimedia applications. Mach’s goal is that a single content description file can be applied to compose various multimedia presentations. By following the statements of the description file and the user’s preference, Mach can dynamically generate adaptive contents for each class of users. In this way, the content designer does not need to compose several description files for each class of users. Mach is based on the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard and thus its platform independence makes our work well-suited to the mobile environment.

Electronic Sports (e-Sports) is computer and video games played as competitive sports over the Internet and a local area network, and are provided to users through a TV relay broadcasting system and the Internet due to tremendous popularity of the e-Sports recently. The main drawback of the previous e-Sports relay is to broadcast the e-Sports selected by the provider without viewers’ intention, and thus the viewers can not watch desired information. Accordingly, this paper proposes a message-based semi-interactive relay broadcasting system called e-Sports Live over the Internet. The proposed system captures all regions of playing a game, and transfers the regions to a client’s viewer. The client can watch desired information by selecting a slice of all regions. However, transferring continually all regions to the client over the Internet leads to a high-traffic due to high-capacity of data. To reduce the traffic, the system transfers all messages occurred in the game such as movements of characters instead of transferring continually all areas, based on resources repetitively used in game such as the whole map and game characters, and the resources are repetitively transferred to the client’s viewer in an initial stage. Consequently, the proposed system can reduce the traffic over the Internet by transferring only message, and can perform a semi-interaction by watching desire information, as the client’s viewer receives all areas occurred in the game based on resources repetitively used in the game and messages. Now, our system can not apply to TV relay broadcasting, as it does not have buffers for resources, but may be utilized for a variety of fields of interactive TV.

In this paper we highlight the need for privacy of user data used in digital identity management systems. We investigate the issues from the individual, business, and government perspectives. We provide surveys related to the growing problem of

identity theft

and the

sociological

concerns of individuals with respect to the privacy of their identity data. We show the privacy concerns, especially with respect to

health

and

biometric

data, where the loss of privacy of that data may have serious consequences. Moreover, we also discuss how privacy concerns change according to the individual’s disposition to provide the data. Voluntary disclosure of personal information is more acceptable to users than if information disclosure is involuntary, like in the case of surveillance. Finally, we highlight the shortcomings of current identity management systems with respect to the current privacy needs and motivate the need of hardened importance of privacy enabling functionalities in such systems.

At the present Net Work Period of the IT history deep changes are taken place in collaboration between people and human communication, its structure, quantity, and quality. A dominating steering factor for the design and structure of work life as well as private life is the convergence of three technologies, computer technology, tele technology and media technology (ICT). Telecommunication technology has come to play a more a more dominant role in this convergence, especially internet and web technology. Embedded (ubiquitous) computer technology is making the process invisible, and media technology converges within itself (multimedia or cross media). Well functioning organizational

and psychosocial communication

are an important prerequisite for successful industrial and social change in the ICT society. Managing and working in an organization organized as a network, involves communication between people, groups, units, other organisations, and various combinations of these entities. ICT applications together with deep knowledge and insights in organisational design and management (ODAM) are the keys to social change. The author describes her convergence theory on ICT and Psychosocial Life Environment with special emphasis on psychosocial communication and sustainability in the Net Era of the ICT society.

This paper is a response to the lack of knowledge regarding actual online purchase behavior, and introduces behavior analysis as an alternative framework in studying consumers’ purchase behavior. Motivation to confirm an order online can from the concept of motivating operation (MO) be analyzed as those antecedents in the environmental setting (included verbal stimuli) that; (1) have an effect on the consequences of responding, and (2) influence the responses (including purchase) related to those consequences. Using the functional analytic framework from behavior analysis, MO is identified as a likely predictor of consumer tendency to confirm their online orders.

An increasing, degree of rich and dynamic content and abundant links are making Web pages visually cluttered. This paper presents a numerical tool to evaluate the screen complexity of a Web page using four critical measurements: size complexity, local density, grouping, and alignment. In the empirical study, we first translate the real screens from four first pages on Ebay auction web sites to serve as model screens that contain the structure of complexity without content. We subsequently compare the complexity values calculated from the model screens with the viewers’ judgment from the real screens. The resemblance between the results indicates that the tool is useful.

How well the privacy policy follows a regulation is one of the current concerns of the user. Such a task can be accomplished by directly querying the policy statement with the regulation text. Automation of the process requires an expressive meaning-based framework for Natural Language Processing (NLP). This paper discusses the Ontological Semantics approach to the issue of verifying compliance and illustrates the potential of utilizing the framework in the domain of Privacy management for NLP-related tasks. As an example a section from BCBS and corresponding HIPAA regulations are used.

This study is mainly to evaluate measurement models for web purchasing intention, which reflects to a tendency of attitudes and behaviors toward the online purchasing behaviors. Four dimensions of web purchasing intention are proposed based on a literature review, including (1) Information Provision: product-related information that e-retailing users receive from the Internet; (2) Alternative Evaluation: issues that affect an individual’s decision making when purchasing online; (3) Customer Service: services that e-retailing websites offer for customers in the e-transactions and post-sale process; (4) Price: the final dealing prices of products on e-retailing websites. This study developed a questionnaire and delivered to consumers with web purchasing experience. The method of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is adopted to verify the internal quality of the proposed measurement.

This paper describes web application for data analysis by means of evidential dominance. Red Hat Linux 9, Apache, Tomcat, Java 2 Platform, and Eclipse are used to this system as tools. In conventional system, Java for Evidential Dominance is applied as Java servlet. Client accesses to the Web Server to analyse data. Java for evidential dominance is started and implemented on Web Server. The server processes and responses the result of analysis to the client. The information of data is not remained in server. This system not only responses the result of analysis to the client, but also save the information of data in server. Evidential dominance is applied to decide the priority relation of data which varies widely and have little amount of data. Evidential dominance not only is effective to focus on one phase a lot of alternatives, but also applies to decision making problem.

There is almost universal agreement on the benefits of an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) System, yet successful implementations are few. While EMR systems focus on the important areas of functionality, interoperability and security, the area of usability has been overlooked. No electronic medical records system can be viable unless it addresses usability. We have had the opportunity to work with several systems and have employed field data gathering, expert reviews, usability testing and ScoreCarding to enhance the usability of EMR systems. Unless usability becomes more widespread and is given a higher priority, the benefits of an EMR system will remain elusive.

The goal of this study was to determine (a) users’ privacy concerns; (b) whether these privacy concerns can be checked by an existing Web-based privacy agent; and (c) whether users are able to easily specify their privacy preferences using this agent. Users were able to configure the agent correctly for about half of the desired privacy goals that could be checked by the agent. Of more significance, users thought that they had configured the agent successfully to achieve many privacy goals that cannot be accomplished with the version tested. We also examined alternative interface layouts to ascertain whether any of them allowed users to specify their preferences at a higher success rate than the current interface. We discuss implications of our findings for user agents designed to aid users’ assessments as to whether a Web site’s stated privacy practices are consistent with the users’ preferences.

Local government in the UK has made progress towards the delivery of services online. However individual local authorities do not necessarily have the experience or infrastructure to develop web sites that are usable and that can be maintained as content changes. This study used a three level model as a heuristic tool to evaluate a case study e-government web site. While the results were useful in proposing changes, barriers exist which slow down the process of making the changes. The paper proposes strategies that may be adopted to ease this process of web site development and change within local government environments and elsewhere.

Usability testing on Ilmu (i.e. WebOPAC for children) showed that poor graphic design contributed the most to the usability problem. Three main issues of graphic design are layout, use of colors and human visual perception. A design approach is formulated in an effort to develop a conceptual design that specifies children’s requirements and preferences on graphic issues. This involves two main activities which are identifying children’s preferences on graphic design and generating design ideas using participatory design method. Four categories of requirements and preferences on graphic design are derived from children. Each category is demonstrated by design ideas. All these constitute towards the formulation of a conceptual design for children’s WebOPAC interface and become the basis for redesigning Ilmu’s interface.

This study evaluated users’ behaviors when performing inexpensive or expensive e-commerce purchases on familiar and unfamiliar Web sites. Users were more comfortable with making inexpensive than expensive purchases. They also felt more secure and that their privacy was better protected when shopping with a familiar Web site than an unfamiliar one, especially for expensive purchases. For inexpensive purchases, if the price was “right”, participants were willing to purchase the product on unfamiliar Web sites. For expensive purchases, though, the reputation of the organization hosting the Web site was the most important factor. In both cases, privacy was a minor determinant for deciding whether to make a purchase from a Web site. Only 20% of the users regularly accessed the sites’ privacy policies during their interactions with the sites. Moreover, less than half of the participants even looked at privacy-policy links during their interactions with the Web sites.

This study examined participants’ comprehension of Web privacy policies when the information from the policy had to be recalled from memory or when participants were able to view the policy while searching for the answers to specific questions. Eye-gaze data were analyzed to examine where users focus their attention when reading privacy policies and searching for information in them. Overall, participants showed poor comprehension of the information conveyed in the privacy policies even though they were written at the participants’ level of education. When searching for information in the privacy policies, participants relied on the listing of individual sections provided at the beginning of a privacy policy, when available. When the listing of sections was not available, participants skimmed the entire policy, examining the headings and first few words of each paragraph to determine whether the sections or paragraphs were likely to contain the information for which they were searching.

When using the bookmark or “Favorites” function included with most web browsers, it is difficult to retrieve a target bookmark if it is not properly categorized or tagged with meaningful keywords. For this project, we propose using a method of human-like long term memory (LTM) rather than directories or keywords for searching and managing bookmark data. This experimental model takes into account the user’s browsing experience (i.e. the bookmark’s added date, number of visits, and last date visited) to create and manage bookmarks. A pilot study of the model shows that the new system is significantly more efficient at retrieving information from large collections of bookmark data.

This paper recognizes the need for new approaches in IT based education. Our proposed model depends on two major concepts. The first is to believe in the learning approach not the teaching approach that is widely used. Learning delivery requires providers to alter their in-class approach and demands students to be more independent learners. The second concept is the interdisciplinary learning approach rather than the silo teaching model used currently. For Example, software engineers will not be allowed to work in isolation from the business people, the users, the client, etc. in the real world. Therefore, their college education must qualify them, as much as possible, to deal with the real world. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary project based learning model focusing on collaborative learning (CL) and Business Integration (BI) using the SEE [1] portal. This integral solution is designed to overcome the teaching and silo models used currently.

Today’s businesses increasingly rely on vast amount of information. Yet effective use of information is becoming more and more difficult. This paper describes a general purpose analytics solution,

“Business Insights Workbench” (BIW)

, which embeds two major classes of information analytics techniques and a unique set of visualizations to mine the available information and uncover critical business insights and enhance business performance. The two major classes of analytics technologies include the “taxonomy” analysis and the “relationship” analysis to facilitate understanding and detection of hidden concepts and patterns buried in the information respectively. The BIW technologies have been successfully applied in many application domains, e.g., Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for customer satisfaction analysis, Intellectual Property (IP) for patent portfolio analysis and licensee identification, and Healthcare Life-sciences (HCLS) for facilitating drug discovery by identifying the relationships among chemicals, DNA, proteins, drugs, and diseases. We show some BIW sample applications in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a decision making model for the Taiwanese shipping logistics company in China to select the best container distribution center location. The representation of multiplication operation on fuzzy numbers is useful for the decision makers to solve the fuzzy multiple criteria decision making problems of container distribution center location selection. In the past, few papers discussed the representation of multiplication operation on multiple fuzzy numbers. Thus this paper first compute and obtain the representation of multiplication operation on multiple fuzzy numbers. Based on this representation, the decision maker can rank quickly the ordering of each alternative location and then select easily the best one. Finally, the representation of multiplication operation on multiple fuzzy numbers is applied to solve the fuzzy multiple criteria decision making problem of container distribution center location selection in China.

In recent years, needs for wide-ranging kaizen / improvements have arisen in relationships with suppliers and other transaction partners in response to rising demands including increases in profit and reductions in time. One of the technologies leading to kaizen / improvements is the application of servo-mechanism control to manage inventory ordering. It is thought that if this theory is applied to the overall supply chain, it may enable an optimization of the supply chain that fits the needs of modern society. This research proposes the prototype model of the supply chain model of the contemporary society applying the control theory, and the validity of that model is evaluated.

The article explores how mobile, nomadic and distributed workers develop a sense of

place

to counter the lack of spatial determinants which increasingly characterize contemporary work and lifestyles. When developing collaborative technologies, designing for a sense of place becomes especially problematic when spatial realities and empirical coordinates are absent or no longer take precedence. What is lacking in the current knowledge is a coherent workplace approach that can offer an overview of placeness, delineating not only the core understandings of place but more importantly where these overlap and at times conflict. The intention of this article, therefore, is to present an approach that captures how key features of place as opposed to space, can be used as a motivation for the design of collaborative technologies. Most importantly, this approach must explain how the concept of place and its distinction from space can provide new understandings of the public, private and permanent places of work that help us to sustain productivity in the workplace. These at once discrete and overlapping concepts help to frame the key research questions: where is work? What constitutes a place of work? Who works there?

A routine work requires few skills, so employees can be skilled easily. Therefore, the productivity and the quality of work greatly depend on employees’ work motivation. However, as a routine work is often not interesting to almost all employees originally, a method for promoting and keeping employees’ work motivation is required for keeping or increasing the productivity and the quality of work. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop the method for promoting employees’ work motivation in a routine work especially with an affective interface and applying the persuasion technique.

This paper presents a case study on developing a smart user interface for supporting the adjustment works on automated weighing machines of computer-controlled multihead weighers. Based upon the theoretical and practical framework of Vicente and Rasmussen’s Ecological Interface Design (EID), we clarified the functional structure of the work domain in terms of the means-end relations, and visualized it on the screen displays to encourage the human operator’s “direct perception” of the meanings or values of his practicable actions to those automated processes. Comparative experiments using test subjects with a variety of skill levels confirmed the effectiveness of the redesigned user interface that can facilitate unskilled operators appropriately evaluating and effectively responding to their immediate work situations, and that will take the place of the experts’ knowledge and insights on the works as one of the distributed resources for cognition.

Experts have issued directives for snow clearance in snowy regions.These directives are implemented in accordance with the experience of the director in charge, and snowplow drivers are reliant on directors to carry out their tasks efficiently. However, many experienced directors will be retiring when they reach retirement age in the next few years and their successors will be faced with difficult circumstances because of a lack of training and experience. In order to provide support to such neophyte directors, we propose a case-based directive support system, which reuses past directive cases. Each such case stores data on weather, snow, number of snowplows available, the time taken to complete a snow clearance task and an evaluation of the tasks carried out by the director. When a neophyte director specifies current task conditions, the system searches and presents cases similar to the current conditions. When the director selects the most similar case, the system estimates the time required to complete the snow clearance task, based on the snow and road conditions. The director can also manage the progress of snow clearance tasks with the system.

This research investigates the relationship between working conditions and musculoskeletal disorders in an assembly facility. I believe that the physical and psychosocial aspects of work have a significant influence on the individual worker’s health and well-being. The work organization at which I evaluated the employee’s health and well-being was at a large manufacturing assembly facility. This research is based upon the Balance Theory Model of Smith & Carayon-Sainfort [5, 6].The overall aim of this research is to improve the long term health and well being of worker’s in a manufacturing assembly facility. The overall purpose of this research is to try to identify the stressful working condition and attempt to control it. By trying to control the various musculoskeletal disorders in the work environment, you should also attempt to reduce or eliminate the level of stress, and to try to reduce or eliminate the level of strain.

Sales at retail stores in Japan have been declining for various reasons. One important factor has been a steady diversification in the lifestyles and needs of customers. If a retail store is to sustain itself and continue developing, it must search for the latent demands of customers and adapt itself to accommodate those demands. A support system for store improvement capable of viewing specific improvement plans will prove useful as a tool for improving stores on a sustainable basis. In this research we develop a method for generating effective store-improvement plans to accommodate actual customer demands. The method employs both Text Mining and Conjoint Analysis techniques. We also demonstrate a sequence and a test run of a prototype.

Process control in control rooms is currently in a state of technological flux driven by recent developments in information technology. The continual integration of new control devices carries with it the risk of overburdening the human operators, with a major source of danger here being information input overload. This article addresses this phenomenon and the implications for user-centered process control.

In this study, we discuss a brick-and-mortar sales (the existing sales method through the sales channel 1) and an online sales under an e-commerce environment (the sales channel 2). We focus on each differences of goods return ratios and delivery lead-times to a customer through both sales channels for a selling period. Concretely, we consider a parallel sales method that the sales channel 2 is newly incorporated into the sales channel 1. In the parallel sales method, a manufacturer incurs returns processing costs and fixed system operational costs for both the sales channels. For an appropriate selection ratio to the sales channel 2, the additional system operational costs in the parallel sale method could be retrieved, and it could lead to improving the profit to the manufacturer. Utility of the parallel sales method is investigated from each difference of goods return rates and delivery lead-times between both the sales channels by comparing the expected profit of the manufacturer adopting the existing sales method with that adopting the parallel sales method.

A lighting control method has been proposed which adjusts the circadian rhythms of office workers and eliminates a decrease in the arousal level in the afternoon by exposing a high intensity of light in the morning in order to improve their productivity. As a result, it was found that the task performance of the CPTOP test under 2,100 lx was significantly higher than that under 700 lx and more than a 9% improvement of task performance was achieved. Furthermore, a demonstration experiment has been conducted in order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed lighting control method in actual office rooms. As a result, it was confirmed that the performance of their accounting work was over 10% higher than under normal conditions.

This paper proposes a ubiquitous environment store, which is composed of cameras, sensors and displays, for supporting decision concerning commodities based on each customer’s shopping interest. This store suggests that three analyzing views can be utilized to analyse relations between customers’ interests and their behaviours towards commodities. This store collects data on the behaviour of each customer, who has agreed to be observed, and makes individual models, by analyzing collected data. This store also provides commodity information, which is decided by the individual’s model, to each customer through a display, which is in front of this customer. Comparing this system to a non-system through a purchase experiment of clothes shows this effectiveness of this system.

Whereas Business Process Management (BPM) systematically guides employee participation in business processes, there has been little support, use or development of user-friendly functions to improve the efficiency of those processes. To enhance business process efficiency, it is necessary to provide automatic rational task allocation and work-item importance prioritization, so that task performers no longer need to be concerned with process performance. In the context of BPM, two different perspectives, the Process Engine Perspective (PEP) and the Task Performer Perspective (TPP), are considered. Accordingly, we developed a comprehensive method that considers those two perspectives, in combination rather than separately. We carried out simulation experiments to show the combinational effect of the two phases.

The authors have developed a performance test, CPTOP (Cognitive Performance Test of Productivity), which combines 11 basic task testss to evaluate intelligent abilities of office workers in order to quantitatively and ob-jectively evaluate their productivity by controlling office environment. However, in the previous experiment, it was found that the results of CPTOP contain in-fluences of learning effect and variation of difficulties depending on each prob-lem set. In this study, therefore, subjective experiments have been conducted in order to compensate these influences and a correction method has been proposed.

This research has two objectives: first, to develop a method to quantitatively clarify the causal relationship between store improvements (store

kaizen

) and store features that attract customers; second, to verify the effectiveness of the method developed. The results of this research confirm two points. (1) The causal relationship was quantitatively clarified through the use of a covariance structural analysis, and the degree of the relationship between the store features that attract customers and store kaizen could be understood. (2) The proposed methodology has proven to be useful in an actual store improvement activity. The owner of the store studied in the investigation commented, “It is very important to set up a hypothesis when seeking an improvement. This research provides a helpful framework for doing so.”

The written examination for job hunters in Japan is an important examination that cannot be skirted as the first step in the hunt for employment. However, there is no environment that can be studied using easy methods (mobile phones, etc.). In this research we clarify a methodology for constructing a prototype system for finding employment SPI measures. After constructing a prototype, we examine the effectiveness of the methodology. We use answer formats to achieve two purposes. (1) We clarified an answer format that can be efficiently studied through an experiment in ‘no space’ in order to produce a measure site that can be efficiently studied in little time. (2) We constructed a prototype for selecting answer formats in order to examine whether the prototype can be used to select the following two formats on a mobile phone: first, ”the word, the meaning of the word, and an example of the word in use”; second, ”the word, an explanation of the word, an example of the word in use, and the meaning of the word.” (3) The test-takers studied the constructed prototype on mobile phones, then our group examined the effectiveness of the prototype based on the questionnaire results. The results indicate that the form can be efficiently studied. Thus, we can conclude that the prototype constructed can be used to select the following two answer formats: ”the word, the meaning of the word, and an example of the word in use” and ”the word, an explanation of the word, an example of the word in use, and the meaning of the word”.

The AMPAC

1, 2, 3

proposes a simple and unified format to describe parameters of the printing production process such as design, press and bookbinding. The database described by the format can be used commonly in any processes connected by the network production system, since the description accepts any parameters in any processes. A print production system assisted by computers should be very helpful to boot it after altering a parameter of the process, since preparation for starting up a printing machine requires abundant knowledge and wisdom. This paper gives details of the knowledge and wisdom stored in the AMPAC database used for booting the printing machine. Parameter data stored in the AMPAC database can easily be searched and found all of resetting targets in the printing machine when a parameter in the process is changed. This advantage comes from the fact that each parameter of the machine setting can be connected with the related parameters in this database.

The overall objective of this research project is the development and evaluation of a flexible and cooperative management system within SME based production networks for the ramp-up process. Inter-organizational processes of six previous ramp ups were analyzed and documented in flow charts. High-level executives and domain-experts of the production nets developed in moderated focus-groups standardized steps and phases of the ramp-up processes and agreed on one common reference workflow. The reference workflow is the basis for the further development of the inter-organizational management of virtual project teams supported by an IT-assisted workflow management system.

In this article, we examine individual spatial cognitive ability to improve the usefulness of a car navigation system. We developed a driver support system through which individuals can view an unfamiliar route before they actually drive the route. Using this system, we performed experiments to confirm the effectiveness of our approach, and we discuss the result of the experiment.

The object of this research is to build supporting systems for disaster victims, especially for the elderly. These systems are considering as follows: support the people who belong to the specific area, work on the initial stage of disasters. By using these systems, the people in the area can be easy to refuge and to communicate each other. Therefore we suggest several ideas to build systems. And we focus on the system which concerns the elder’s action to refuge and demands of the elderly in such situations. Then we aim at designing concrete functions based on these ideas.

Logistic integration is a essential condition for the development of maritime-port transportation. This paper proposes to demonstrate that this integration is dependant on a digital strategy. A conceptual architecture is proposed here. This architecture uses the emerging technology of web services as a good solution for enterprise application integration (EAI).

Dementia occurs in every country of the world, especially in developed nations. Since such spatially and cognitive impaired people lack the ability to grasp positional relationship between landmarks, we have developed a walk navigation system using photographs of landmarks to benefit them and their families. Our system provides a photograph of the next target landmark to the mobile devices of cognitive impaired people. It can also identify points where cognitive impaired are likely to get lost. Our system can also support such tasks as taking tickets by photographs and animations.

The range of tasks for Search And Rescue (SAR) services is very comprehensive and requires extensive experience in addition to detailed knowledge. Actual and extended incident data, tactical information and technical knowledge are significant issues in this field. Within research projects information systems are designed to provide relevant information with the required/desired detail depth to the individual user groups. Mobile information processing instruments in combination with an internet based access to a modular knowledge database are predestined to improve the handling of emergencies as well as the data management for operation controls and fire-fighting forces. Emerging data transfer technologies like UMTS as well as WLAN are applied in order to access the database independent of the location. Semantic methods provide new possibilities to interlink information which accelerates the data preparation and retrieval. This paper describes the information and knowledge availability and adaptation.

1,4-Dichlorobenzene (DCB), widely used as a moth repellent and a space deodorant, is one kind of chlorobenzene that is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer among chemicals possibly carcinogenic to humans on the basis of a sufficient evidence for carcinogenicity to rodents. DCB has been found to cause renal tubular-cell adenocarcinomas in rats and hepatocellular carcinomas in mice but without their clastogenic and genotoxic effects. In this study, we investigated the health risk of DCB workers from three steps. Firstly, we investigated the cytotoxicity of 1,4-dichlorobenzene and its metabolite 2,5-dichlorophenol in human lymphoma Jurkat cells, human colon adenocarcinoma cells and human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. The LD50 of DCB were 1.34 mM, 5 mM and 2 mM in Human lymphoma Jurkat cells, human colon adenocarcinoma cells and human hepatocellular carcinoma cells respectively. DCB was found to cause apoptosis itself and reduced the staurosporine-induced apoptosis in all three cells. Secondly, works in four factories were investigated to examine their blood cells. Two items, their apoptosis rate and their anti-apoptosis rate, were investigated on the work’s blood. In an investigation on Dec, 2004, we found a significant higher apoptosis rate of exposure workers comparing with non-exposure workers. The blood cells of workers were significantly resistant to the staurosporine-induced apoptosis. In the other three investigations in 2005, we found similar phenomenon that the blood cells of exposure workers had higher apoptosis rate and higher resistant rate to staurosporine-induced apoptosis. Thirdly, the DCB content in the urine and blood of workers were analyzed. Based on the low to high level of DCB content, the workers were grouped into 10 degrees. The correlation of the level of DCB and apoptosis rate and anti apoptosis rate was analyzed by Pearson Correlation Program. The apoptosis rate and anti-apoptosis rate of worker’s blood were both significant negatively correlated with the DCB content in their urine and air. Based on this computer program analysis, we suggest that the exposure of DCB induced significant changes of the blood cell of exposure workers and need to be concerned.

The economic assessment of industrial accidents caused by abnormal behaviors can not only improve the risk assessment results but also serve as a crucial criterion for prioritizing the correction plans. Three stages of works are designed to derive the loss figures from assessing the standard operation procedure. The objective of stage one is to identify potential abnormal behaviors through analysis of activities. The objective of stage 2 is to identify cost types initiated by different accident losses. The objective of stage 3 is to establish the accident cost bank through analyzing the historical accident data. Two industrial cases, including one semiconductor and one steel company, were studies to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach in both high-tech and traditional industry. This study proposes a framework to develop abnormal behavior identification and cost estimation model.

In robotic applications, there is a growing trend for developing human-like real-time interaction capabilities. A good example can be found in Simultaneous localization and mapping technique, where a robot or an autonomous vehicle builds up a map within an unknown environment while at the same time keeping track of its current position. Especially in indoor environments, wall detection is often a critical part of SLAM: it plays a key role in scene interpretation and 3D workspace modeling. Further, it also reduces the size of the map. This paper presents an effective and real-time approach for detecting walls in indoor environment using GPU (graphics processing unit). The experimental results show the feasibility of using GPU as a coprocessor in robotic applications.

The purpose of automatic controllers for building services (air conditioning system, lighting and blinds system) is to save energy in the whole building while keeping occupants’ comfort. Nevertheless, most of automatic controllers don’t optimally operate from the viewpoint of total energy efficiency and occupants’ satisfactions. The main reason is that each controller operates, neglecting states of other controllers and therefore, control point of each controller always doesn’t correspond to best control point in the whole building system. In this study, we propose an innovative controller that communicates with other controllers to control building equipments optimally from the viewpoint of total energy efficiency and occupants’ satisfactions. The developed controller functions as an agent in the control system, which can voluntarily collect available information from other controllers and decide set points to enhance total efficiency in cooperation with one another. Therefore, this controller is called as “cooperative controller”. Several types of cooperative controllers have been developed and experimentally applied to an actual building located in Japan (Sogo et. al. 2002, Honma et. al. 2002, Terano et. al. 2002 ). In this paper, cooperative control using daylight, major example in series of cooperative control system, is reported. Daylight is useful to reduce energy consumption of lighting, however, it has not been widely used. The main reason is that as incoming daylight has complex effects on thermal and visual environment, it is difficult to optimally control amount of daylight. To solve this problem, we propose cooperative control system that can control amount of daylight effectively to optimize total energy efficiency and occupants’ comfort. A series of numerical experiments was conducted to confirm effect of cooperative control system on improvement of total energy efficiency and indoor environment. The results showed that this cooperative control system could save energy use rate of almost 10% compared with no cooperative control system. In addition, in order to use in practice, cooperative controller is designed to apply an actual building easily and keep stability even in the other controllers’ troubles.

A methodological approach is presented for the human-centered development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). A procedure has been developed for the objective evaluation of potential impacts of ADAS usage on traffic safety. The procedure is based on the observation and analysis of the emergence resp. avoidance of driving errors (inadequate speed, insufficient safe distance, etc.) in conjunction with the usage of ADAS. Driving errors are assumed to occur by the coaction of functional ADAS features, the situational context and (psychological) behavioral backgrounds. The applicability of the approach is examplified with a simulated ADAS.

As Augmented Reality Navigation systems receive increasing attention as the next generation navigation systems, the importance of the layout of the elements and searching for the appropriate level of information cannot be overstated. Due to this, a series of experiments of usability tests had been designed. According to the experiments, the results for the screen arrangement showed that the MBN screen displayed on the left and the ARN screen on the right was preferred the most while the results for changing lanes showed that displaying information directly on the road and highlighting the path was the best method. As for switching direction, using the upper icons and displaying information directly on the road was preferred. The adequate amount of information was found out to be an average of 3 POI with 20pt font sizes for ARN displays and 10 POI with 18pt font sizes for MBN displays. Lastly, the Eye-tracking experiments showed that the ARN screen was viewed more often with a ratio of 7:3.

The evaluation of notification systems is rare in critical systems. The only available experiences are based on empirical data on costly simulated environments and the subjective follow-up of some guidebooks probed by the experience. In case of absence of performance requirements, critical parameters can provide quantitative measures that may be used to determine the overall usability of interfaces that continuously present precious information (

id est.

Notification Systems) in Avionics (NSA) and should be validated before use to improve the confidence level in the measurement unit. In this paper, we introduce a set of critical parameters that could be used for usability evaluation of NSA’s interfaces. A process for a formal validation is described and results of the applicability of these parameters to the real NSA interface of A400M’s power plant are presented.

In this paper the development of a 180° high resolution video panorama system and results of initial field test at Braunschweig research airport are described. The system serves as main HMI for remote surface movement management of small airports or of movement areas not directly visible for the controller. It provides the framework for video-see-through augmented vision by integration of traffic and weather data and it allows for panorama replay. Preliminary evaluation of initial field tests quantify the visual resolution as compared to the real far view.

A fuzzy set-based AR (Automatic Recognition) system named TDARS for machine readable travel documents (MRTDs) is designed and implemented for speeding up customs clearance. The system consists of three parts: text feature extraction, facial feature extraction and identity matching. Text feature extraction takes charge of locating machine readable zone (MRZ) and extracts text features automatically. Facial feature extraction focuses on locating the front face photo (FFP) in the MRTD and extracting the facial features of the MRTD possessor. Identity matching compares text and facial features with feature data in the Terrorist Database (TDB) respectively and fuses the matching results of text and facial features in the decision-making level using a fuzzy set based algorithm. Experimental results show that both the correct acceptance and refusal rates of the TDARS are over 90%, which evidently exceed those of the existing recognition systems that extract text features solely.

In this paper we propose AR-Navi, an in-vehicle navigation system that uses video-based augmented reality technology. AR-Navi includes an in-vehicle camera, which captures real-time video, and displays the guidance which overlays the video display. To solve several problems that arise when real-time video is used, we propose registration adjustment based on recognizing crosswalks and filtering images based on evaluated values. We have built and tested an AR-Navi prototype that uses the proposed methods and confirmed that the system can achieve registration accuracy for driver route guidance at intersections.

An analysis support system has been developed of various energy and environmental system for the sustainable development. The proposed support system can model, and simulate the flows of matter, energy and information with tens or hundreds of elementary processes in the target energy and environmental system. It is based on the combination of Multilevel Flow Model (MFM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) and it can account various indices for sustainability. The values of the evaluation indices can be utilized to not only test the feasibility of one scenario but also carry out the inter-comparison of various optional scenarios. As a case study, introduction of hydrogen production system in a local town is investigated by the proposed analysis support system.