Takehiko Ohno’s research while affiliated with NTT DATA Corporation and other places

To create innovative services which satisfy user needs, participatory design approach was adopted. We conducted service design workshops both in Japan and Denmark to see the effectiveness of our design game named "ICT Design Game". ICT Design game is a design method to create future ICT services. As a result of our workshops, the tools of the games, such as pictures and video-clips, helped the participants to understand the user and the technology and to create new service ideas. We also found the differences in the process and the results in spite of fixed and well-defined procedure of the method.

Although many Internet services exist that can raise our quality of life, there are still many non-active users who cannot fully enjoy the convenience of the Internet and its potential even when they have computers in the home. To deeply understand this failure to use the Internet, we conducted a field study, and arrived at an integrated model depicting the psychology of active/non-active computer users. Our model enables us to understand the psychology of the users and the external factors affecting them and sheds light on how non-active users are stuck in a negative loop. Users that received a support service designed on our model dramatically changed their attitude and started to use the service actively.

The authors employ behavioral theories of human motivation and affect and present an explanation for why some CSCW experience is satisfying and engaging for a user. In a longitudinal experiment, participants were divided into four groups and solved two open-ended problems together using a video-conference system. Traditional metrics of usability and product acceptance were examined with respect to psychological variables such as personality, background knowledge, mindsets (i.e., implicit beliefs) and feelings toward group members. The results show that group-level mutual affect and implicit beliefs on one's ability (e.g., whether intelligence is fixed or malleable) are strong predictors of system usability and acceptability judgments. It is proposed that evaluating one's experience with a CSCW system is a meaning-making process and that the variables that modulate this process also influence subjective judgments of usability and acceptability of a complex collaborative system.

This article reviews human-centered design and introduces the activities of the ICT Design Center (IDeC) of NTT Cyber Solutions Laboratories, which is striving to create user-friendly information and communications technology (ICT) services by utilizing various techniques of human-centered design and cognitive psychology.

This article describes some case studies of designing the paper manual for replacing an Internet router for a home network. Constructing a method for designing easy-to-understand paper manuals for novices is one of the most important tasks at the ICT Design Center. We show how we improved the manual, which is now being distributed to actual users.

We describe recent efforts to reduce human error in network maintenance work. Through careful observation and analysis of maintenance work conducted according to a procedure manual, we have been able to identify a number of hidden risk factors in the way that work is carried out.

We propose two design concepts for the user-friendly manual and compare them in an experiment. The first concept, which focuses on user comprehension, is to use one picture of the completed wiring. The second concept is to uses a series of steps from left to right with the goal of making the user follow the order. Trials show that participants presented with material based on the first concept tend to follow their own mental-model rather than the manual. Material based on the second concept also failed to make users follow the order. Some implications for the refinement of manual design are derived based on the results.

Although many Internet-based social services exist that can raise our quality of life, there are still many non-active users who cannot fully enjoy the convenience of the computer and its functionality even though they have computers in the home. In order to analyze how to enhance computer usage, we conducted a field study and arrived at an integrated model that enables us to deeply understand the psychology of active/non-active computer users. Initial design guidelines for activating the non-active users are derived from our model.