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Authors focused on the use of the cell phone by senior people and young people living in the urban area and the rural area in Japan and in the US. The result of the questionnaire research showed that there are differences in the use of the cell phone and other communication media depending on the situation. These differences are related to the difference of the culture: nation culture, region culture, and generation culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, authors focused on the use of the cell phone by senior people living in the urban area and the rural area in Japan. The result of the questionnaire research showed that there are differences in the use of the cell phone and other communication media between two areas. These differences are related to the difference in the life pattern and the environmental factors in both areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead of the usual persona method (full description persona), a new type of persona (trait list persona) was proposed for the purpose of covering the wide variety of possible users. These two persona methods were then used to anticipate problems that might occur by applying sHEM (structured heuristic evaluation method) that is one of the inspection methods. In other words, it was not necessary to create the full descriptive scenario but just the possible lists of problems that are similar to the pMS (problem micro scenario) of micro scenario method were described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of communication media including the land line, the cell phone, the letter, the telegram, the cell phone mail, the PC mail, asking somebody to convey the message, and the face-to-face meeting was analyzed in accordance with the situation comparing senior users and young users. Senior users showed the tendency to stick to the old media such as the land line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the issue of the working memory load in relation to the multi-window system and explains the reason why multi-window and multi-monitor systems are better for the window operation in accordance to the structure and the function of the working memory. In the last part of this paper, a model revised from Card, Moran and Newell is proposed to explain the working memory load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before WWII, number of foreign people was not large in Japan. But after the war, it grew larger and now we have total of 2,011,555 foreigners (in 2005). There are some majority groups such as Koren (598,687), Chinese (519,561), Brazilian (302,080), and Filipinos (187,261). At the same time, there are minority groups such as Bangladeshi (9,707) and Iranian (5,769). Organizing local communities of such people and those of them with Japanese people plays important roles for their life in Japan. Information systems and communication devices such as the PC and the cell phone may play one of the key roles for maintaining such communities. Some people think that the use of such devices and systems may differ for majorities and minorities. Majorities can organize a local community far easily than minorities and will have more chances to meet friends face-to-face. They also have chances of getting information on their own country via the satellite TV, newspapers and magazines and other media. On the other hand, minorities may have only a small linkage with people from the same country. In such a case, the website on the internet or the cell phone may be important for them. Based on this hypothesis, we conducted interviews with and did research among Japanese Brazilians as the majority and Iranians as the minority to specify how the information system can serve a useful tool for their life and their social learning to adapt to the target society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the historical review, a new model on the concept structure of usability and satisfaction was proposed. As a proposer of user engineering, the author redefined the concept of usability of which the usability engineering is responsible and linked the concept of satisfaction to the user engineering. It is based on the differentiation of the objective characteristics of artefact and the subjective impression of user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many people who have the belief that the washing machine, for example, should equip with the minimum functions and there is no affection to such a machine. But today, some users have the affection and/or the positive adherence to such washing machine as to equip the slanted drum and anti-bacteria function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up Scenario Based Design (Rosson & Carroll, 2003) and Micro Scenario Method (Kurosu, 2006), and analyzed the both methodological scenario making processes. In Scenario Based Design, the four making steps are proposed: (1) problem scenario, (2) activity scenario, (3) information scenario, and (4) interaction scenario. In addition, Micro Scenario Method developed two steps of scenario making: (1) problem micro scenario, and (2) solution micro scenario. These methodologies are useful when we consider the human centered design for making products. However, in a pragmatic use case, especially for product designers, it is difficult to visualize the images and ideas taken from the Scenario Based Design and Micro Scenario Method. Based on our analysis, we proposed a new method that is development of scenario method and visual formats for Design Process. The feature of this method is to draw rough sketch and illustration to describe the ideas. Hence, the question which we must consider next is usefulness of this method. Here, we conduct a experiment for testing the programmatic applicability of our proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the purpose of achieving the effective and efficient human-centered design, a database of problem micro scenario (p-MS) is proposed. In the concept of this system, the human scientist work first for getting the information about the user and the context of use by applying the field work methods. The information about problems discovered in the field data will be stored in the p-MS database with the tag and the ground information. Engineers who plan to manufacture something can retrieve relevant problem information from this database, thus they can shorten the time required for the early stage of development. This idea of p-MS database is believed to facilitate the human-centered design and the feasibility study will be conducted within a year from this presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new process model of user-centered design that can be applied to the development of new value and future. Realizing that the widely known conventional human-centered design process, defined by ISO13407, is not always effective, here we propose a new process model and introduce an overview of activities based on this process. This aims at not only developing new value and future, but also in generating new ideas in concept planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Micro-Scenario Method (MSM) is an approach to uncover the consumer needs and establish the development concepts [2]. In this study, the MSM is applied to the Information Support System for Safety related to a motorcycle and devised for application efficiency. What is devised is to make a prescriptive model up before interview research and set up the syntax rules of the problem-scenario (a description sentence of problem situation). As a result, the development efficiency is improved by the modified MSM. The communication of relevant parties can be speeded up, because the prescriptive model which keywords are structurally organized helps development actors share wide-ranging information about problem situations. Moreover, the creation time of problem-scenario can be cut, because the syntax rule of problem-scenario simplifies how to describe it. Though the modified MSM is an effort to take MSM in practical use at YAMAHA Motor Company Ltd. (YMC), the modified MSM was considered as a useful approach to reduce the workload of HCD (Human-Centred Design). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]