A model that estimates emotion types from bio-signals obtained by wearable monitoring systems was developed. A total of 470 events of strongly conscious emotions (happy, relaxed, sad, and angry) during work hours were recorded in 11 office workers under a total of 911 days of continuous monitoring of pulse rate, pulse rate variability (PRV), skin temperature, body motion, and conversation time with a bracelet-shape wearable sensor. When the four emotion types were developed on the two-dimensional plane consisted of valence and arousal axes, the former axis was composed of the coefficient of variation of high-frequency PRV amplitude and skin temperature, while the latter axis was composed of the frequency variability of PRV respiratory peak and conversation time. Among office workers, two emotional coordinates comprising the Russel’s Circumplex model may be estimated by bio-signals obtained by a wearable watch device.

The spacing and curvature of dots are assumed to be factors determining the roughness sensation of a dot pattern. We investigated the relationship between these two parameters and the roughness sensation. We used a three-dimensional printer to produce samples with different combinations of curvature and spacing, and conducted a sensory evaluation to select combinations presenting the same sense of roughness from among them. Experimental results showed that the contour lines of the same sense of roughness are concave and monotone decreasing on the dot curvature versus dot spacing plane. It was found that the roughness sensation is proportional to the logarithm of dot curvature, adopting a previously obtained result that the roughness sensation is proportional to the logarithmic value of the dot spacing. The experiment also revealed non-negligible differences in contour lines among participants and possibility of sorting them into three groups with different roughness perception.

To investigate how smell would affect the product experience, the present study chose the aromas of sweet orange and peppermint as the starting point of the product experience of the orange-shaped lego-like toy blocks. It was found that the aroma of sweet orange would lead to the highest degree of liking for the aroma, evoke images or expectations closer to the reality of the toy blocks, and relieve the fatigue of the participants after they directly smelled it. And the aroma of peppermint was found to moderate the tension caused by the blocks-building task and contribute to maintaining participants’ vigor. Notwithstanding, the aromas did not have noticeable effects on people’s degrees of liking for the toy blocks and their evaluations of the product due to the sensory dominance in the multisensory product experience. The potential roles of aromas in product experience remain to be investigated.

Usefulness of subjective sleep quality assessment by a questionnaire (OSA-MA sleep inventory) was examined in ten track drivers (age, 42 ± 12 y, range, 23-62 y) in reference to the objective measure of sleep apnea by cyclic variation of heart rate (CVHR) in electrocardiogram (ECG) during sleep. Total CVHR suggesting moderate-to-severe sleep apnea (average over total time in bed > 15 cycles/h) was observed only in one subject and the transient occurrence of frequent CVHR (≥ 50 cycle/h) was detected in the same subject and two other subjects. The questionnaire provided the standardized scores of five features of subjective sleep quality, including less sleepiness on rising, good initiation and maintenance of sleep, less frequency of dreaming, refreshing feeling, and subjective sleep length as factors 1-5, respectively. The subject with high average CVHR showed factor scores < -1 SD for factors 1, 2, and 3 and reported subjective sleepiness during driving. In the two subjects with transient frequent CVHR, one showed factor score < -1 SD for factors 3 and 5, while the other did not show score < -1 SD for any of the factors. Although this is preliminary study in a small sample size, it suggests the possible associations between the subjective assessment of sleep quality and the objective measure of CVHR.

This paper proposes an impression-based music playlist generation method with musical diversity and serendipity to positively impact the mood of a listener. The method designs two types of playlists with smooth transitions for audio track impressions: mood-boosting (uplifting) and mood-stabilizing (relaxing). Both these impressions have four patterns with different structures that alter the listener’s mood. To create a playlist, the proposed method calculates the probability of impressions for all audio tracks using a multinomial mixture model adopting a Bayesian approach and chooses audio tracks based on these probabilities. This study uses two psychometric evaluations to evaluate sample playlists for all four patterns of both playlists, i.e., whether they can positively influence a Japanese listener’s mood. The results indicate that the proposed method can achieve both these objectives concerning the audio tracks.

In this study, we propose a system to generate the T-shirt design images that match a user’s preference based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) and a Kansei agent. The generator of GAN can be used to generate lifelike images similar to the learned data. The Kansei agent is a model that learns the user’s Kansei evaluation and retrieves images that the user likes. The Kansei agent is constructed using two neural networks. The first network extracts features from given T-shirt images. The second one estimates the user’s evaluation of T-shirt design using the extracted features. We examined the performance of the proposed system according to the results of the evaluation experiment. The results of the experiment showed that the proposed system finally presented most users T-shirt design images that were highly evaluated.

Traditional textiles of India have lengthy crafting traditions signifying cultural beliefs. With globalization and advancements in technology craft practices are on a rapid decline. Also, extensive studies have been conducted by researchers elsewhere about relationships between clothing, personality, emotions, preferences and wearable technology. Such research pertaining to traditional textiles of India is limited. Hence, the research reported in this paper aims at understanding contemporary perceptions of traditional textiles of India as understood by 30 young respondents as Experiment 1. And further, possibilities of merging traditional textiles with LEDs that could make textile crafts dynamic has been explored. This dynamic craft and its role in non-verbal self-expression in social space of 60 respondents has been reported as Experiment 2. Analysis reveals that both static and dynamic traditional crafts evoke positive emotions in respondents significantly and that the users are inclined towards using dynamic traditional crafts for non-verbal expression in near future.

We present an Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) system that applies user gaze information. Historically, IEC systems have encountered the problems caused by heavy user evaluation loads. To solve these problems, researchers have employed biologically derived user information, such as heartbeats or brainwaves, to reduce the evaluation load. However, the requirement for users to wear special devices to measure this information has limited the popularity of these systems. Therefore, we applied the user gaze information approach to solve these problems. Gaze information includes the user’s potential preferences, which are derived from various processes. When user gaze information is applied in the evaluation of candidate solutions, IEC systems can obtain user evaluation information while users are viewing multiple candidate solutions. In this paper, we verify the effectiveness of the eye tracking IEC system using evaluation experiments with real users. In the experiment, we use a normal IEC system as a comparison method where users manually evaluate candidate solutions using a 10-stage evaluation process. The experimental results show that the eye tracking IEC method can generate solutions with results equivalent to those of the compared system.

Currently little is known about how the color of non-edible items such as tableware affect people's perception of food, emotional responses and mood in dining activities. The emotional responses and mood during dining activities are considered more easily affected by colors. In this study, we conducted an experiment to understand Japanese female participants' preference and association about 8 different colors. We also designed 6 different illustration indicating typical dining situations to evaluate the perception of dining activities and color preference in each dining situations. Analysis of variance and correlation analysis were carried out to detect the significant differences between preference of colors and the relationship between color selection and adjective words. The results showed the tendency of light color being preferred to dark color, and explained that different dining situations evoked different mood and interpretation, which might lead to different choice of colors for tableware.

This paper intensively examines the effects of gender and seasons on impression factors of pictures using word pairs. Previous studies have presented four impression factors for females and males: Evaluation, Potency, Sharpness, and Freshness. However, this paper finds that, for males, the factor of Sharpness could more accurately be described as Tenseness. Additionally, the factor of Freshness could be more appropriately described as Dryness for both males and females, although they have different impressions. This paper also shows that several impression factors are affected by the season rather than the temperature.