Hiroyuki Ikemoto

Approach to designing easy-to-understand icons

The paper describes an approach to designing icons whose functional meanings are easy for users to understand. It is first suggested that the design process is separated into two phases: (1) selection of objects to be used for icons; (2) determination of how to draw the selected objects. The authors focus on the first phase and discuss a method for selecting objects that strongly convey the desired functional meanings. A simple experiment for selecting appropriate objects is then described.<<ETX>>

System Sequence Design Tool "SSD"

Abstract This paper proposes a system design tool “SSD”, which is especially useful for operational sequence design of large-scale systems. The system design process follows repeated trial and error, so that SSD adopts a prototyping technique. SSD consists of four parts: editor, conditioner, simulator and verifier. The editor describes system dynamic specification as SSD diagram by diagrammatic language interactively. The conditioner sets initial and external simulation conditions by rule-based technique. The simulator directly executes SSD diagrams and checks the functional sequence by visual and operational prototyping technique. The verifier checks the simulation results by designer-defined rule and finds errors in SSD diagrams.

Conjoint Analysis Method That Minimizes the Number of Profile Cards

Conjoint analysis is an effective method for use in deciding on a product concept. However, when numerous items are being surveyed, the number of profile cards shown to survey respondents increases and responding becomes more difficult. This makes it necessary to restrict the number of items being surveyed. This paper proposes a method of analysis that makes it possible to use a lower number of profile cards than that provided by the orthogonal design of experiment even when a large number of items is being surveyed. An Internet survey of 1,600 consumers using this method indicated that it generated identical analytical results to those produced when the orthogonal design of experiment was used.

A visual environment for system design and prototyping

The authors propose a visual environment for system design and prototyping with emphasis on human factors. Such environments comprise: (1) visual description of system specifications; (2) visual verification of system specifications; and (3) visual methodology for system design. The authors have developed a system sequence design method, SSDESIGN, reflecting these three factors. The features of SSDESIGN are explained in the context of these three factors.<<ETX>>