Michiko Ohkura

• Shibaura Institute of Technology

In this work, we objectively compared various Kawaii fashion styles that can be observed in Japan. We compare 5 styles of Kawaii that we have collected in previous works: “Classic Retro Doll,” “Orthodox Pretty and Cute,” “Street Kawaii,” “Harajuku- type Kawaii,” “Lolita,” Additionally we also include the Japanese luxury brand Tomo Koizumi because t...

In 2007, the author began a study to systematically analyze the physical attributes of “kawaii,” focusing on its value as a kansei value of artificial products. In this article, I introduce some of the studies we have conducted. The targeted physical attributes are shape, color, size, and material perception. The obtained results can provide guidel...

Pink is considered a critical color in Kawaii fashion and is associated with the perception of Kawaii-ness. This study investigates the use of pink shades in different Japanese Kawaii fashion styles, including Harajuku-type Kawaii, Lolita, Classic Retro Doll, Orthodox Pretty Cute, and Street Kawaii. In this work, we investigated how the four pink c...

In modern society, robots have been increasingly involved in human lives in various scenarios. As a future society with human-robot interaction is approaching, it is important to consider how to develop robots that give positive impressions for a variety of users. Based on an Affective Engineering approach, affective values can strengthen the impac...

Kawaii is a Japanese cultural uniqueness that attracts attention around the world. This study focused on pink as a typical kawaii color. The goal is to clarify the relation of preferences in pink colors and fashion taste. Four pink colors were selected and used in our questionnaire to collect data about most kawaii and most favorite pink colors as...

Green environment such as parks and woods have been maintained as having healing and relaxing effects. These effects have been evaluated by biological reactions and contingent valuation method. Most previous studies are focusing on green environments where maintenance is done. On the other hand, there are many unmaintained green environments such a...

This paper describes our educational project using remote collaboration related to the design and implementation of virtual Kawaii robots and spaces by Japanese and American university students. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our planned 7-week collaboration from in-person to virtual with a resultant change in the target product...

With the development of economic globalization, more and more product designers are faced with the need of designing for customers from different countries. However, it is a challenge for designers to efficiently develop the desired mental images of certain products for target users with different cultural backgrounds. Our research proposed a deep...

We report on an extension of a cross-cultural collaborative project between students and faculty at DePauw University in the United States and Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan. The ongoing project uses cross-cultural teams to design and evaluate virtual companion robots for university students with the goal of gaining a deeper understandin...

We have been conducting research focusing on positive feelings for a long time. The objective of this study is to compare the positive feelings caused by motions of CG robots between a 2D monitor used for 2D display and a head-mounted display (HMD) for 3D display. The target positive feelings are excitement and relaxation. Our evaluation employs no...

Kawaii is a Japanese cultural uniqueness that attracts attention around the world. It has been considered as an important value that increases impressions on various products such as Hello Kitty. Since 2017, we have conducted our research on fashion and investigate kawaii fashion trends in Japan. Our recent study introduces deep learning as a new a...

Nowadays, the Japanese word “Kawaii” has been officially recognized internationally and used in many studies. Fashion is one of the top industries that is seems associated with “Kawaii” in Japan. This work focuses on Kawaii fashion that can be observed at Harajuku, the place that is popular for teenagers in Japan to show off their outfit coordinati...

This paper describes our remote collaboration project related to the design and implementation of virtual kawaii robots by Japanese and American university students, and affective evaluation of the robots. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our planned 7-week collaboration from in-person to virtual with a resultant change in the tar...

Kawaii is a Japanese cultural uniqueness that attracts attention around the world. In this study, we focused on pink as a typical kawaii color. Similar to our previous study in 2020, we selected four pink colors and used in our questionnaire to collect data about most kawaii and most favorite pink colors as well as the behavior in using pink produc...

In today’s ever changing world, it is very important to keep a holistic track of a user’s needs and wants. Maslow proposed that human needs can be organized into a hierarchy that ranges from base level needs such as food and water to top tier concepts such as self-fulfillment [1]. The notions of self fulfilment emerge from the emotional comfort tha...

In this paper, we analyzed the relationship between subjective and objective green view indexes obtained from a questionnaire survey of over 200 participants. By Welch’s test and estimation of the ordinal logit model, we clarified the characteristics of the distribution of subjective green view index and its relationship with the individual attribu...

In the 21st century, the Kansei/affective values of industrial products are considered very important. In this study, we focus our attention on “kawaii” as a Kansei value for future industrial products. We began our research to analyze kawaii attributes systematically with the aim of constructing kawaii products. “Kawaii” is a Japanese word that ha...

In this work, we objectively compared various Kawaii fashion styles that can be observed in Japan. In addition to our previously collected Harajuku-type Kawaii fashion database, we collect three kinds of traditional and contemporary “Kawaii” fashion images: Classic, Orthodox, and Street. To clarify the positions of these styles objectively, we comp...

As robots have been increasingly involved in human lives I modern society, it is necessary to further develop the robots that give positive impression to human. Therefore, we pursued a collaborative project in which Japanese and American university students designed and developed kawaii robots. Before and after the collaborative work, preferences o...

We report on a cross-cultural collaborative project between students and faculty at DePauw University in the United States and Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan that used cross-cultural teams to design and evaluate robotic gadgets to gain a deeper understanding of the role that kawaii (Japanese cuteness) plays in fostering positive human re...

This paper describes our approach to the design and implementation of virtual Kawaii robots and spaces by Japanese and American university students using remote collaboration. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our planned 7-week collaboration from in-person to virtual with a resultant change in the target product of our collaborati...

Kawaii is a Japanese cultural uniqueness that attracts attention around the world. In this study, we focused on pink as a typical kawaii color. Four pink colors were selected and used in our questionnaire to collect data about most kawaii and most favorite pink colors as well as the behavior in using pink products including clothing and makeup. Fro...

Because the color of lipstick is important for total fashion image, we tried to analyze the characteristics of colors of lipsticks of popular brands especially for Japanese female students. Preparing a database consists of 294 color images obtained from websites of lipsticks, we performed statistical analyses such as distribution chart and decision...

As robotic gadgets, and eventually robots, become increasingly common in daily life, it is critical that roboticists design devices that are accepted across cultures. Previous studies have examined cross-cultural differences in robot acceptance based on various design characteristics. Similarly, prior studies have examined cross-cultural perception...

Lipstick is one of the significant makeup tools for females of all ages. The current trend of lipsticks among Japanese undergraduate female is found to revolve around global contemporary luxury brands and also around more affordable brands with Kawaii-images. The goal of this study is to classify the characteristics of lipstick brands using color f...

Ten thousand children are admitted to emergency rooms due to accidents every year in Tokyo. The most frequent accident is a fall accident. Fall accidents may occur when climbing to a high place in a daily living space. Since injury prevention by human supervision does not work well, the World Health Organization recommends an environmental modifica...

Over a million of children die of a preventable injury every year all over the world. One of effective preventive measure is product improvement. Risk assessment for product improvement requires predicting child interactions with products. However, it is still very difficult even for advanced simulation systems to precisely predict how children int...

Kansei values are critical factors for manufacturing. Kawaii, an adjective that denotes such positive meanings as cute or lovable, has become even more critical as a kansei value. Therefore, we believe that kawaii will be a key factor in future product design. We focus on systematic study for kawaii products in terms of such physical attributes as...

Senior citizens require a certain amount of daily nutrition and calories to maintain their health, especially because they often suffer from reduced appetites. Since using kawaii spoons might increase their appetites, while they looked at various kawaii spoon designs, we experimentally estimated their mental states by measuring their biological sig...

This chapter introduces the background of the birth of kawaii engineering in Japan and describes this idea’s objectives. The second section of this chapter introduces kawaii’s cultural background and describes the cultural differences between Europe/US and Japan. Finally, the last section introduces our preliminary experiment in 2007 into kawaii en...

Affective values are critical factors for manufacturing in Japan. Kawaii, which is a positive adjective that denotes such positive meanings as cute or lovable, becomes even more important as an affective value (Chap. 1). Some research has evaluated kawaii feelings by various biological signals. However, since no detailed eye tracking has been condu...

Affective values are critical factors for manufacturing in Japan. The significance of kawaii, which is a positive adjective that denotes such connotations as cute, lovable, and charming, continues to grow as an affective value, especially since it plays an important role in the success of such brands as Hello Kitty and Pokemon. Based on this succes...

We performed affective evaluation experiments on both visual and tactile material perception of bead-coated resin surfaces in which the materials, the diameters, and the hardness of beads were expanded systematically. First, we performed an experiment on the similarity of the bead-coated resin surfaces to reduce number of material samples. Second,...

Affective values are critical factors for manufacturing in Japan. Kawaii, an affirmative adjective that denotes such positive meanings as cute or lovable, has become even more critical as an affective value and plays a leading role in the worldwide success of many products, such as Hello Kitty and Pokemon. Based on this success, we believe that kaw...

Chinese and Japanese culture have long been influencing each other. With the popularity of Japanese animation, comics, and game industry, Japanese kawaii culture has swept across China, especially among young Chinese people. In this chapter, we will introduce a study we conducted between Chinese and Japanese people to learn about their perceptions...

Photography is closely tied to the emotions of individuals. Therefore, an emotion-driven camera can be a natural consequence of photography. In the field of electroencephalogram (EEG) emotion detection in research laboratories, there have been many works; however, such methodologies are considered to be difficult to apply in a real-world environmen...

This chapter summarizes this book and the future of kawaii engineering.

To evaluate the affective value of industrial products, such subjective evaluation methods as questionnaires are commonly used, even though they have some demerits such as linguistic ambiguity and interfusion of experimenter and/or participant intention to the results. We began our research to objectively evaluate interactive systems by quantifying...

In recent years, Kansei engineering has become crucial in industrial fields. It works as a new value axis that differs from such conventional ones as functionality and price that have served as competitiveness sources in manufacturing. Based on the vast growth in the apparel industry and greater customer awareness and intelligent observation of var...

This chapter introduces the systematic study for kawaii artificial products using questionnaires. The physical attributes employed are color, shape, material perception (visual texture, tactile texture) and sound.

It is difficult to keep motivation for daily house cleaning as people must repeat the same task monotonically. Floor wiping is a task to wipe the entire floor, but it is usually difficult to complete the task due to such obstacles as furniture. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide a system that supports a complete and enjoyable floor...

In this work, we compared the styles of clothing observed from Japanese fashion and Thai fashion using colorfulness metric. To represent each country’s Kawaii fashion, we collected data based on each country’s subculture. For Thai fashion, we collected more than 600 fashion snaps from an Instagram account that sell clothes and accessories and were...

We have focused our attention on the affective value of “kawaii” as an additional value of industrial products and have been conducting research to analyze their physical attributes systematically. In addition, we have been studying measurement and classification of kawaii feelings by biological signals. From experimental results on changes in hear...

The objective of this research is to reduce the burden on medical staff related to the outer packaging and wrappings of medicine. Currently, generic medicines are being sold and there are multiple outer packaging kinds even for the identical medicine. For such outer packaging, various sizes and displays are adopted. The reasons why a large number o...

Millions of children die from preventable injuries every year around the world. Environmental modification is one of the most effective ways to prevent these fatal injuries. The environment should be modified and products should be designed in ways that will reduce the risk of injury by taking child–environment and child–product interactions into a...

The Japanese word kawaii, which represents an element of Japanese culture, is used all over the world to express emotional values. We have been conducting research on its measurement and classification by biological signals. We previously identified exciting and relaxing kawaii images. However, no experiments have targeted actual objects. Therefore...

Previous studies reported that rendering the fixation point is effective for suppressing visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). This study investigates why the fixation point has a VIMS suppression effect. Gazing-specific-place and gazing-specific-object are two properties of static-fixation points. To clarify which property is responsible for th...

We usually use the word ‘like’ when we see good pictures, e.g. in social networks. When we choose a picture that evokes the feeling of ‘like’ out of many pictures, we evaluate each picture based on our subjective and intuitive preference. We hypothesized that physiological responses arise when participants watch pictures that evokes the feeling of...

Although wearable vibration devices have recently been developed for experiencing the effect of low frequency while listening to music, few studies have actually evaluated the physical sensitivity. It remains unclarified what kind of music enhances such sensibilities as the excitement or the interest felt by users. We focused on two musical genres...

Stress is a major problem in modern society. Therefore, much research has focused on its reduction. Previous research has reported that people are relaxed by watching 2D video of natural environments. In recent years the virtual reality (VR) market has begun to grow, and the amount of such types of relaxation continues to increase. However, researc...

Even though many visually impaired people have a desire to exercise, they often cannot because they don’t have enough time or facilities. Based on this background, we developed an exercise support system that the visually impaired can use by themselves at home. However, previous systems require a dedicated stationary bicycle that we can’t obtain an...

Virtual reality (VR) continues to make remarkable advances. Many devices and contents for VR systems have been developed. In our previous research, we evaluated the feeling of excitement experienced through VR systems using biosignals and proposed the standard deviation of NN intervals (SDNN) and R-R interval variability (RRV) from electrocardiogra...

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have exploded as a type of popular communication, suggesting exponential appeal. Unfortunately, one reason for their rise is the potential of excessive usage, which leads to negative consequences that are associated with addiction. In this research, we assessed the symptoms of excessive SNS usage by studying user beha...

Affective values are important factors in manufacturing in Japan. Kawaii, an affirmative adjective that denotes such positive meanings as cute or lovable, has become even more critical as an affective value and is playing a leading role in the worldwide success of many products, including Hello Kitty and Pokemon. Based on this success, we believe t...

Ten thousand children are admitted to emergency rooms due to accidents every year in Tokyo. The most frequent accident is a fall accident. Fall accidents may occur when climbing to a high place in a daily living space. Since injury prevention by human supervision does not work well, the World Health Organization recommends an environmental modifica...

A million of children die of a preventable injury every year all over the world. One of effective methods is product improvement. Product improvement should be done in the manner that will reduce the risk of injury by predicting child interactions with products. However, it is still very difficult even for advanced simulation systems to precisely p...

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has made remarkable progress. Then, many devices and contents for VR systems have also actively developed. In our previous research, we evaluated a “feeling of excitement” of VR systems using biosignals and proposed the standard deviation of NN intervals (SDNN) and R-R interval variability (RRV) from electrocar...

It is still very difficult even for advanced simulation systems to predict how children interact with products in everyday life situations because the environment around children, including the layout of consumer products in their homes, constantly changes, and because children change their behaviors depending on the position of their center of gra...

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) technology has made remarkable progress, including the development of many devices and contents for such systems. VR contents that offer unknown experiences are especially entertaining when they incorporate actual feelings, for example, heat and cold. In this report, we describe the development of an interactiv...

Kawaii, a positive adjective that denotes such positive connotations as cute, lovable, and charming, becomes more important as one kansei value. It plays an important role in the success of many products. Based on this success, we believe that kawaii will be a key factor for future product design. In one of our previous study, we evaluated kawaii i...

We previously performed affective evaluation experiments on tactile material perception of bead-coated resin surfaces with different surface textures generated by such various physical attributes as resin materials, bead diameters and bead densities. Our results clarified the affective relation between beads-coated resin surfaces and related adject...

Virtual reality (VR) had a banner year in 2016. VR has attracted a lot of media attention because many companies have launched Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) and other related products. As a result, the term “immersive feeling” has become more widely known. In this study, we evaluate immersive feeling using HMD with fNIRS measurement and describe the...

The use of social networking sites (SNSs) continues to dramatically increase. People are spending unexpected and unprecedented amounts of time online. Such excessive and compulsive use has been categorized as a behavioral addiction. We assessed the symptoms of excessive SNS usage by studying user behavior and emotion in SNSs. In previous studies, w...

In recent years, the automotive industry has faced a decline in interest in cars and driving by younger generations, and so we want to find ways to increase driving attractiveness using in-vehicle systems. Since we believe that “feelings of excitement” are critical to increase the attractiveness of cars and driving, we created exciting contents for...

In recent years, kansei engineering has become crucial in industrial fields. It works as a new value axis that differs from such conventional ones as functionality and price that have served as competitiveness sources in manufacturing. Based on the vast growth in the apparel industry and greater customer awareness and intelligent observation of var...

Affective values are important factors in manufacturing. Kawaii, which is a positive adjective that denotes such positive connotations as cute, lovable, and charming, becomes even more important as an affective value. It plays an important role in the success of many products, such as Hello Kitty and Pokemon. Based on this success, we believe that...

Virtual Reality (VR) had a banner year in 2016. VR has attracted a lot of media attention because many companies have launched Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) and other related products. As a result, the term “immersive feeling” has become more widely known. In this study, we evaluated immersive feeling using HMD. For that purpose, we created two type...

As an input device suitable for operation in VR space, we developed a prototype in 2003. Comparison experiment results with other input devices, including game controllers, showed that our prototype had learnability and memorability advantages; that is, this device is suitable for intuitive operation in VR space. After the improvement of the device...

The use of social networking sites (SNSs) continues to dramatically increase. People are spending unexpected and unprecedented amounts of time online. Excessive and compulsive use of them has been categorized as a behavioral addiction. This research is conducted to assess the symptoms of excessive SNS usage by studying user behavior and emotion in...

Kansei values are important factors in manufacturing in Japan. Kawaii, which is a positive adjective that denotes such positive meanings as cute or lovable, becomes even more important as a kansei value. Some research has evaluated kawaii feelings by various biological signals. However, since no detailed eye tracking has been conducted yet, we empl...

Kansei value has been considered as one of the important factors in the manufacturing in Japan. Kawaii, which is a positive adjective that has such positive meaning as cute or lovable, becomes more important as a kansei value. Currently, there are researches that evaluate kawaii feeling by employing various biological signals. However, the eye trac...

Such affective impressions as the comfort and cleanliness of a residential space are crucial for its residents. Although it is sometimes difficult to maintain a good affective atmosphere in the inner-city area of a big city like Tokyo, the space’s appropriate structure might increase its impressions. To clarify the effect of a living room’s space s...

Worldwide use of social networking sites (SNSs) continues to dramatically increase. People are spending unexpected and unprecedented amounts of time online. However, many studies have warned about the negative consequences of excessive SNS usage, including the potential of addictive behavior. Therefore, detecting the symptoms of excessive SNS usage...

Kansei/affective values are attracting attention as a new evaluation axis of commercial value. We performed affective evaluation experiments on the tactile material perception of bead-coated resin surfaces and found that physical attributes change affective evaluations. Then, we planned to perform new affective evaluation experiment by adding hues,...

Even though some studies have confirmed that visually impaired people have superior tactile sensation abilities, few systems based on these advantages have exploited. In this study, we developed and evaluated an interactive system that utilizes the superior abilities of the visually impaired to increase their enjoyment in a video game application....

Kawaii is a Japanese word that represents one critical kansei value in Japan. Generally, it is translated into English as cute, lovely, or adorable. However, it has a deeper meaning since it also represents an element of Japanese culture and not just a word with a single meaning. Kawaii expression have become familiar to many people around the worl...

In recent years, Japanese young people are exhibiting less interest in driving. Since we believe that their interest can be increased by in-vehicle systems, in this study, we prepared a driving course that features exciting scenes and measured the biological signals of participants while they drove a driving simulator. We focused on the excitement...

The use of social networking sites (SNSs) continues to dramatically increase. People are spending unexpected and unprecedented amounts of time online. Such often excessive and compulsive use has been categorized as a behavioral addiction. This research is conducted to assess the symptoms of excessive SNS usage by studying user behavior in SNSs. We...

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has made remarkable progress. Then, many devices and contents for VR systems have also actively developed. In our previous research, we evaluated a “feeling of excitement” of VR systems. In this paper, we evaluated a content developed for PSVR. This content has a story and consists of various scenes. We perform...