Published papers

In recent years, technology presenting views using cameras and sensors has been promoted in aircraft and automobiles. Since sudden vision loss can occur in the event of a malfunction, concerns exist not only about the effects of the loss itself but also about psychological effects such as pilots’ or drivers’ upset or mental strain. Although studies have been conducted from a performance perspective, no studies have examined the psychological effects of vision loss. Therefore, in this study we assessed the psychological effects of vision loss for the reliability design of windowless cockpits while considering human factors. We used a simulator experiment involving controlling the altitude and attitude of an aircraft to examine the psychological effects of various ranges and duration of loss. Our results showed that the psychological effects of the range of loss were significant, and these were not significantly affected by whether vision was restored. Therefore, once vision loss occurs, even if for a short duration, psychological effects follow. In addition, the range of one-third or less for forward field of view vision loss may be acceptable, and thus, designing system partitioning and other aspects using this value may lead to improved reliability.

New air traffic management systems are being researched throughout the world to enhance the safety and efficiency of the airspace. However, human air traffic controllers have been effectively balancing both safety and efficiency in their operations. In resilience engineering, this human trade-off characteristic is called the efficiency-thoroughness trade-off if efficiency is prioritized and thoroughness-efficiency trade-off if thoroughness or safety is prioritized. Moreover, understanding human decision-making is attracting attention in the field of air traffic control system design since it could be incorporated into autonomous systems to improve resilience and automation acceptance. In this study, we analyzed the mechanism of efficiency-thoroughness trade-off decisions in an approach control simulator experiment, so that the results could be applied to future air traffic management systems. The results showed that efficiency-thoroughness trade-off decisions were made when situational difficulty was under 3.5 times the difficulty of an easiest situation and when situational difficulty was over 3.5, a high ratio of thoroughness-efficiency trade-off decisions was observed.

In safety-related fields, analysis on accidents which are instances of failure to maintain safety has been conducted. Today, however, as accidents have decreased, there is a need to analyze not only accidents but also resilient behavior that flexibly responds to changing circumstances in daily successful operations. However, it is difficult to collect daily successful operations as data for analysis. In this study, we analyzed incident reports, which were considered as describing events where an accident or a disaster had been successfully avoided or overcome. The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which collects a wide range of aviation incidents, was used as the data, and the efforts or actions practiced at the field to make things go right (Resilience Competence) were extracted. Furthermore, using the extracted Resilience Competences and the Human Factors analyzed by ASRS staffs, the incidents were organized to identify Human Factors that are likely to lead to worse situation and the Resilience Competences needed to prevent them.

Pilots must manage their workload correctly to achieve a safe operation. However, few studies have attempted to estimate a pilot’s workload in real-time, and there are no established methods of doing so. To provide more direct support for a pilot’s workload management, we attempted to construct a model that estimates the pilot’s future workload using data on various flight-related parameters that can be acquired in real-time. Participants conducted simulated flights using the flight simulator. Based on the data obtained from these simulations, we used machine learning to construct a model to estimate the workload level 30 s later on a five-point scale. This model correctly estimated 32.0% of the test data, and in 72.3% of the test data, the deviation between the subjective value and the estimated value was within one workload level. We implemented a system that presents the estimated workload level to the pilot in real-time, and from the review of a license holder who conducted simulated flights using the proposed system, we confirmed that the system is effective for workload management.

To incorporate Safety-II, which pertains to the continuation of stable operations, into safety management, we must understand why and how everyday operations are successfully carried out. However, there are no effective methods that enable such analysis since successful operations do not have to be reported in depth and are rarely analyzed. In this research, we extracted and undertook an additional analysis of the efforts or actions practiced at the sharp end to make things go right (Good Jobs) from safety reports describing events where an accident or a disaster had been successfully avoided or overcome. Specifically, we analyzed the Voluntary Information Contributory to Enhancement of the Safety (VOICES), which is one of the safety reports widely used in the field of Japanese aviation and is open to the public. In this paper, the discussions are focused on the practical analysis of the extracted Good Jobs so that they could be evaluated in depth.

Crew Resource Management (CRM) was introduced on the commercial aircraft flight deck to promote pilots acting in a well-coordinated manner. This was a result of several accidents where aircraft with no, or minor technical faults, crashed from a failure to utilize effectively the human resources available on the flight deck. CRM draws upon the disciplines of management science, organizational and social psychology. It originated in civil aviation, but its practices have now been adopted in other high-risk, high-performance industries where staff work in coordinated teams, e.g. Air Traffic Control, surgery, nuclear power operations and shipping. CRM is now facing new challenges to promote effective, coordinated teamwork. Teams are often now distributed across many locations but are still required to coordinate their activities in real time. CRM now must evolve to support the actions of remote and distributed teams. At the 2023 HCI International Conference in Copenhagen, a working group formed from subject matter experts to identify application areas and describe the key challenges faced in promoting CRM for remoted and distributed teams both during normal and non-normal operations. This paper describes the workings and initial findings of this working group. The results show that process areas, such as such as promoting Team Situation Awareness, workload management, coordination, and monitoring of the cognitive and affective states of others are more important for developing remote and distributed team CRM than are addressing the limitations imposed by the underpinning technology.

Digital advertisement enables potential consumers to picture what they might experience when they use an advertised product. Creating effective user experience (UX) images in digital advertisement helps companies promote their products and attract specific audiences while allowing the designer of the product to communicate their vision to viewers. To increase the efficacy of advertising while simplifying the design processes, it is important to establish the designer’s own visualization of the product to communicate to buyers. In this research, we conducted an evaluative experiment by analyzing the objective features of 80 video advertisements for home appliances to create an evaluative prediction model for the 24 defined types of UX. The results revealed that UX can be conveyed through digital media and that objective features, which are mainly related to people’s appearance, visual, audio, and content, can influence this. Each UX prediction model was created with different features and might be used as a reference in creating digital content advertisements that convey the UX.

The presentation range and position that could not be obtained using conventional side and rear mirrors can be obtained using the camera monitor system (CMS). Studies have proposed the effectiveness of a side–rear wide-view monitor that covers a wide angle from left to right. However, placing such a monitor in the same position as a conventional rear mirror creates an incongruent spatial relation problem because the driver seated on the right seat is forced to shift their gaze point to the left to perceive the right side. Thus, this study clarifies the effects of placing a side-rear wide-view monitor at the driver-centered (front of the driver) position on the drivers’ cognitive load, mental stress, and rearward visual behavior. Based on a driving simulator, the proposed side–rear wide-view monitor was set at three positions: the same position as a conventional rear mirror (vehicle-centered), in front of the driver (driver-centered), and in front of the driver and raised upward (driver-centered-up). Under the driver-centered condition, the oxygenated hemoglobin in the prefrontal cortex and the heart rate decreased and the eye movement became more frequent compared with the other conditions. By placing the side–rear wide-view monitor at the driver-centered position, the driver’s cognitive load and mental stress decreased and the rearward visual behavior was closer to that of skilled drivers. Placing the side–rear wide-view monitor at the driver-centered position shows some benefits for support of rearward recognition in perspective of the effects on cognitive load.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. Mirrors are used for showing the backward view in conventional driving. However, it has become possible to present the rear space using cameras and monitors as international regulations have been changed in recent years. This increases the freedom of choosing the type of the backward view. The purpose of this study is to experimentally clarify how human spatial perception is influenced by the display method, especially the presentation position and the viewpoint. We prepared a setup in which a simulated vehicle moves while the participant views the front and backward virtual 3-D space. We analyzed the subjective evaluation, the performance, and the eye movement of participants during the task and searched for an optimum presentation position and viewpoint. As a result, we found that it is easier for participants to understand the space with an integrated monitor rather than separated monitors. They could better unify the viewpoints of the rearview and the side view, objectively or subjectively, when these views are independent. In contrast, we suspect that either viewpoint was suitable when presenting the entire backward view with one camera. Also, we suggest that their ease of understanding the space varies considerably depending on the visible field in the bird’s-eye view.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. To support spatial cognition by drivers, it is becoming common for cameras and monitors to be attached to automobiles to enable drivers to see perspectives (objective viewpoints) besides their own field of vision (subjective viewpoint). Previous studies have suggested that the difference between the subjective and objective viewpoints influences drivers’ spatial cognition of their automobiles; however, the specific impacts on the human cognitive process of recognizing space, and on driving performance, have yet to be revealed. Thus, this study was designed to experimentally assess the role of subjective and objective viewpoints in the cognitive process of driving and the level of driving performance. The following results were obtained: (1) driving behavior with a subjective viewpoint tends to be more careful, as demonstrated by the rate of collision with dynamic objects. It was shown that a high cognitive load was applied in this case, but that subjective fatigue was small. It was thought that the subjective viewpoint makes a sense of ownership occur more readily than the objective viewpoint, so drivers tried to avoid collision by unconsciously recognizing their cars as part of themselves. (2) Driving with an objective viewpoint tended to be smoother, as evidenced by the frequency of collision with a wall. In addition, the cognitive load was also low.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Smartphones can be readily used to operate home appliances remotely, and we can gather log data when a user operates home appliances. However, currently, there is no established method for using the collected log data, and they remain unused. Therefore, assuming some relevance between the operation of home appliances and the intention and emotion of users, we aimed to establish a method for analyzing the former and understanding the latter. We implemented an application that can operate a cold/hot blower via smartphones while simultaneously surveying users’ intentions and emotions. It was used by participants daily for approximately 3 months. As a result, we found effective operation sequence rules for estimating intention and emotion and could construct a model that estimated intention and emotion with good accuracy from the operation log data using support vector machine.

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. People may follow a manual to achieve safety (Safety - I). On the other hand, it has been proposed in recent years that people sometimes respond flexibly to situations in order to achieve safety (Safety - II). Both modes (Safety - I and Safety - II) should be used mutually [1]; therefore, one strategy is to apply the Safety - I mode when the fluctuation of conditions is below a certain level and to apply the Safety - II mode when it is above that level. In this research, in order to clarify the level of situation fluctuation at which it is appropriate to switch modes from Safety - I to Safety - II, we conducted a simulator experiment involving a fire-extinguishing activity. As a result, it was revealed that people adopted resilient behavior when the situation fluctuation exceeded a certain level and resilient behavior led to success when the fluctuation was not too large or too small.

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. There are increasing opportunities to engage in purposeless information searching, such as browsing purposeful information. A growing focus is also promoting interest in products and services by utilizing these opportunities. Thus, rather than the efficiency of information searching, the new concept of the “continuousness” of information searching is expected for information design. It has been suggested that searching for information without a defined purpose or use is done based on intrinsic motivation (IM). The theory of optimum stimulation level (SL) gives a U-shaped relationship between IM and SL. On the basis of this theory, we hypothesized that the continuousness of information is enhanced in an environment in which the user can enjoy searching for information at the optimum level of stimulation. In this study, we attempt to specify the requirements for a method of information design based on the aforementioned hypothesis. We assess the effectiveness of the method with an experiment in which participants engage in information browsing. The SLs of the referred pieces of information are quantified on a scale from zero to one. After analyzing the relationship between the SL and the physiological and psychological responses of the participants, we clarify (i) the optimum SL, (ii) the SL that most effectively enhances the IM of the participants to search for information, and (iii) the SL between one piece of information and the next at which the IM of the participants is increased.

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. With the advance of automation in recent years, the interaction between systems and users has become less intense and more monotonous. Thus, there is some concern that the arousal level of users is liable to decrease while interacting with a system. The decrease in the arousal levels of users causes drowsiness in their bodies and deterioration of their performance, potentially leading to serious accidents. Thus, it is necessary to establish a method for maintaining arousal level. At present, external-stimulation methods such as sounds or vibrations are popular; on the other hand, some psychophysiological studies have suggested a relationship between motivation and arousal, but there has been little research on how to apply these studies, as well as only a few examples of practical application. Therefore, in this research, we propose and verify a method for maintaining arousal by inducing intrinsic motivations. This arousal maintenance was found to work well during manual operations, but to be less effective by influence of stress during automatic operations. In addition, the varieties of presentation of feedbacks and the arousal level during operations were found to be influenced the effectiveness.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Multifunctioning systems are being used extensively in households nowadays. System information is summarized on a portable terminal. Users benefit from the value produced by multifunctional systems. It is conceivable that the motivation to use such systems can increase or decrease depending upon the balance between the amounts of information on the terminal screen and system information. The ability to create a model capable of showing the ranges of various amounts of information that increase users’ willingness to use a system is extremely useful. Thus, to motivate the elderly, we explore the relationship between these amounts (information on a terminal screen and system information). We create a smartphone application that can control the amount of information, and the participants perform a task in which varying amounts of information are combined. Thus, we could discern the participants’ willingness to use the system and create a model to derive optimal amounts of information.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Nowadays, numerous home electric appliances with voice guidance functions are available. These functions not only tell us how to operate the product but also make us feel attachment and familiarity as we would have for a human. On the other hand, at the beginning of the design process, an image of the product is clearly decided. It is necessary for a good design to have elements that are consistent with the image. However, the images that the users have by voice guidance with different characters have not yet been reported. In this study, we made 3-D CG videos of home electric appliances (a microwave) with different images and combined them with varying voice guidance. Participants evaluated each combination using the consistency with the product image. In the result, we reveal the requirements necessary for voice guidance to increase consistency and the relation between voice guidance functions and various images.

Recent automobile development has led to the installation of rearview cameras or electronic mirrors that could display a rearview image to the driver through a monitor in the driver’s seat and it expected to provide drivers with higher spatial cognition. In this research, we clarify the magnification function that allows optimal cognition of the rear approaching vehicles for drivers. We conduct the experiment introducing Camera monitor system under the same size and location constraints that traditional rearview mirrors face. We use a simple driving simulator and provide participants with a wide rearview by changing the magnification according to the viewing angle. Participants estimate the distance from approaching vehicles that change lanes and press the button. We recorded the distance the button was pressed and a subjective evaluation questionnaire. We analyzed from the point of view that it is safer to perceive the vehicle to vehicle distance to be closer than its actual distance. It was revealed that a pattern that follows the downward convex with no magnification region and a linear function without no magnification region led to the safest presentation of the vehicle to vehicle distance. It was also confirmed that some subjective evaluations of these patterns were higher. In addition, the presentation difference of the vehicle to vehicle distance between one function and the function that is no magnification could be estimated by a model using the least-squares method.

In recent years, the use of automation has been promoted in various systems such as automobiles, and the interaction between the system and user tends to decrease and be monotonous. Consequently, there is a concern that the arousal level of the user may decrease during work. In a semi-automatic system that requires user intervention in an emergency, performance degradation or accidents may occur because of the driver falling asleep. Therefore, an effective method of maintaining the arousal level must be established. Currently, the methods of stimulating the driver such as the presentation of siren sounds and injection of the scent of mint are being studied as the methods of maintaining the arousal level for automobile drivers. However, these methods of maintaining the arousal level via external stimulation have also suffered with challenges such as discomfort with the stimulation. In our previously conducted study, we proposed a method of maintaining the arousal level by presenting information that induced intrinsic motivation for maintaining the driving behavior in the driver; such a presentation might help maintain the arousal level. We aim to make such a method more applicable by optimizing the timing of the induction of intrinsic motivation.