Schedule of Events

This article presents an outline of information on the usability activities in Japan with a focus on the last 10 years. Although there were many activities in academia, substantial efforts were made in industry, and both activities coincided to form unique usability engineering in the country. Because of the language barrier that exists in many Japanese usability engineering professionals, just a few works have been presented at international conferences. This is the reason why the tried to summarize in English the usability engineering activity in Japan.     

Schedule of Events

In this study, the effect of the user choice on social responses to computer-synthesized speech is investigated. Three previous findings about social responses to computer-synthesized speech (i.e., social identification, proximate source orientation, and similarity attraction) were tested using the choice paradigm. Social identification and proximate source orientation effects were found even when users had chosen a computer voice at their discretion. In addition, the primacy effect in the user choice prevailed: Participants were more likely to select whatever voice that they heard first between two options. The similarity attraction effect, however, was negated by the cognitive dissonance effect after user choices. The robustness of social responses, its implications for human–computer interaction, and the importance of the user choice in voice-interface designs are discussed.     

Schedule of Events 2010

Jirotka, M., and Goguen, J. A. (1994). Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues. 296 pages, US$52.50. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc. (ISBN 0–1238–5335–4)

Dillon, A. (1994). Designing Usable Electronic Text: Ergonomie Aspects of Human Information Usage. 175 pages, Cloth $75.00, Paper $32.00. Bristol, PA: Taylor &; Francis, Ltd. (ISBN 0–7484–0113‐X)

Oppermann, R. (1994). Adaptive User Support. 253 pages, US$49.95. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (ISBN 0–8058–1655–0)

Landauer, T. K. (1995). The Trouble with Computers. 296 pages, US$27.50. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (ISBN 0–262–12186–7).

Weimer, J. (1995). Research Techniques In Human Engineering. 504 pages, US$63.75. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR. (ISBN 0–13–097072–7).