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Takegawa Lab. - xFuture Lab.
Takegawa Lab. - xFuture Lab.
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  2. Question of the Future

Question of the Future

Greetings


Smartphones, apps, SNS and so on are having a huge impact on the way people think and act. This is accompanied by an increase in social problems such as the danger posed by people walking along looking down at their phones, intense online criticism, fake news, and ‘media illiteracy’. In response to questions such as “How can I overcome communication issues?”, “Why do people feel nervous?”, “What factors are necessary to change people’s thoughts and actions?”, and “What’s a method for conducting effective groupwork online?”, Questions of the Future seeks the essence of human perception (how a person sees things), cognition (how a person understands/explains things), and psychology (how a person feels).

Another change to daily life has been the way the spread of subscription, which allows us to use what we need, when we need it, has transformed how things (including applications and services) are circulated. In subscription businesses, a transaction is not completed simply by selling something; it is necessary to ensure that consumers continue to use that thing. In addition, in a modern society overflowing with ‘things’, it has become difficult to differentiate according to those things alone. This raises questions such as “How can we discover new user markets?”, and “What on earth are the requirements and experiences that those new users are really seeking?”. Questions of the Future uses a UX (User eXperience) research method to clarify these problems.

In Questions of the Future, we use cognitive psychology to delve to the core of the human psyche, and use the UX research method to explore how we can establish a better relationship to people and things.

Prof. Yoshinari Takegawa

Project

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Does changing the face of an online lecturer improve test scores?
An attempt to increase motivation in online lectures
Does consumers’ desire to purchase increase when teleshopping products are introduced by an avatar?
Boost sales with an online avatar!
Does changing an interviewer’s face stop interviewees feeling nervous?
A digital mask to control interviewees’ degree of nervousness
Does the nudge effect increase the number of opinion-exchange comments?
Utilizing peer pressure positively in online groupwork
Does changing the line-up of video with a time-lag make it easier to watch online dance lesson videos?
Lag; it’s the ultimate hindrance to online dance, but can we turn it to our advantage?
Does using ‘shakuri’ affect how good you are at singing?
We got AI to sing! An analysis of what people perceive as good singing

© Future University Hakodate, Takegawa Laboratory, All Rights Reserved.

Does using ‘shakuri’ affect how good you are at singing?



We got AI to sing! An analysis of what people perceive as good singing

When singing is rated in karaoke, the more accurate a singer’s pitch is, the higher the score they receive. However, when humans hear singing, rather than a singer with accurate pitch, it is a singer who incorporates the shakuri technique who is perceived as talented. Shakuri is a singing technique in which the singer, before producing a certain pitch, deliberately produces a lower sound and then returns to the original pitch. Accordingly, in this research, we investigated whether the length and pitch difference of shakuri affects how ‘good’ singing is. Survey participants were presented with two variations of a song incorporating shakuri, and asked to choose which they thought constituted better singing skills. This act was carried out in three sets of six questions. The variations listened to by the survey participants were created using AI, and comprised songs in which the length of shakuri was 20%, 40% and 60% longer than the original sound, and in which the pitch difference was 1 semitone, 2 semitones and 3 semitones lower than the original sound. The survey results showed that it was a length of 20% longer and a pitch difference of one to two semitones lower that were perceived as the best. This shows that it is shakuri with a short length and small pitch difference that sounds best to humans. If you want people to think you’re good at karaoke, rather than trying to be pitch perfect, try introducing a little shakuri.

Does the nudge effect increase the number of opinion-exchange comments?



Utilizing peer pressure positively in online groupwork

An increase in online lectures and groupwork has reduced the opportunities for learners to exchange opinions, and it has become difficult to ‘help each other maintain and increase motivation and improve skills’, which should be the advantage of groupwork. Therefore, in this research we use nudging and verify whether it enables us to maintain motivation in groupwork. Here, nudging means getting people voluntarily to act in a desirable way, without controlling their behavior. Our experiment method involved creating 8 groups of 3 people and having each group create a program and share it with the other groups online. Then, over a period of 5 weeks, we had subjects comment each week on the programs created by the group members. We divided the groups into 3 sets: 3 groups to whom we presented a ‘nudge image’ (a graph of the average wordcount of comments) as a reminder at the end of the week, 3 groups to whom we presented only a written reminder, and 2 groups to whom no reminder was presented. As a result, we found that while the amount of commenting decreased for the groups who did not receive a reminder, for the group who received the nudge image the amount of commenting not only did not decrease from the start, but actually increased. We consider that this result is due to peer pressure, and as such is partly influenced by the specifically Japanese personality trait of not wanting to act differently to other people. Regarding the comments that followed the presentation of the nudge image, a large number of comments offered advice on program coding, or motivational messages. In our next experiment, we will investigate whether commenting can be further increased by presenting a nudge image of a falsified graph that displays wordcount statistics that are actually higher than the average.

Does consumers’ desire to purchase increase when teleshopping products are introduced by an avatar?



Boost sales with an online avatar!

A character used online as a representation of oneself is called an ‘avatar’, and more and more people are incorporating avatars into their lives as a communication tool. In this research, we verified whether, even when products were actually being introduced by a beginner salesperson, consumers’ degree of trust in the salesperson, and their desire to purchase, increased when they saw products being introduced by an avatar whose appearance they had chosen according to their personal preferences. As a result, it was found that selecting a preferred avatar did lead to an increase in trust and purchase desire. The avatars included a banana character that was not considered appropriate for customer service, yet we were surprised to see that there were some consumers who liked the character and whose purchase desire increased accordingly. By changing a salesperson into an avatar that appeals to each individual consumer, we can expect to see teleshopping products sell better than ever. It is difficult to find a unique avatar that is loved by everyone, but it is easy to have each consumer choose the avatar they like. As it is only online that an avatar’s appearance can be changed so easily, this sales method is can be said to be unique to online shopping.

Accomplishment
Sasaki, M., Noto, K., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Practice Progress Visualization System to Support Piano Teachers,” In Proceedings of International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC ’23), pp. 267 (Aug. 2023).

Does changing the line-up of video with a time-lag make it easier to watch online dance lesson videos?



Lag; it’s the ultimate hindrance to online dance, but can we turn it to our advantage?

With changes such as the adoption of street dance as an Olympic event, and the introduction of dance as a compulsory class in schools, dance is becoming a familiar part of our lives. Accordingly, there has been in increase in online dance content, meaning that it is now possible to be taught dance by a professional, from the comfort of one’s own home. However, the problem with online dance lessons is that, when there are multiple students, factors such as the Wi-fi connection in each student’s house can cause lag to occur, which makes it impossible for students to keep in time with each other, thus making it difficult for individuals to notice if they are getting it wrong. Therefore, in this research, we investigated whether modifying the video image sent from each student and lining up the images on the screen affects how easy it is to watch the video and to notice when one is out of time. We conducted two experiments, in which the images of students were displayed as a 3x# grid. In the first experiment, when students watched the dance lesson the images were arranged randomly, with no consideration for the difference in lag. In the second experiment, the images were ordered according to lag. After each experiment students answered a questionnaire, the results of which showed that ordering the images made it easy to find images with a small degree of lag and thus to spot when one was out of time. Furthermore, it was found ordering the images also made it easier to look at the screen, and to dance.

Accomplishment
Imai, R., Matsui, R., Yanagisawa, Y., Takegawa, Y., and Hirata, K., “Survey on the Effect of Video Delay in Online Dance with Multiple Participants,” In Proceedings of the 25th HCI International Conference (HCII ’23), pp. 375–-384 (July, 2023).

Does changing the face of an online lecturer improve test scores?



An attempt to increase motivation in online lectures

The development of information technology has led to an increase in lectures held online, enabling participants to attend lectures whenever and wherever they like. However, the problem with online lectures, when compared to face-to-face lectures, is that participants have difficulty maintaining concentration. In this research, we verified whether desire to view the lecture, and concentration, can be increased by enabling online lecture participants to choose an avatar lecturer of which they like the appearance. As a result, it was found that when participants chose avatar lecturers that they liked, they found it easier to understand the lecture content and became less likely to grow bored. In addition, they even obtained better scores on the test that is based on the lecture content. Why don’t you try using your favorite avatar to increase your motivation and test results?

Accomplishment
Kojima, N., Takegawa, Y., Terai, A., and Hirata, K., “Effect of Preference for a Lecturer Disguised as an Avatar on Desire to View Lecturer’s Video,” In International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, pp. 278–280 (Dec. 2022).

Does changing an interviewer’s face stop interviewees feeling nervous?



A digital mask to control interviewees’ degree of nervousness

Using a digital mask which responds to the movement of a person’s face and alters the expression of an animated character, in the manner of a V-tuber, we transformed an interviewer’s face from ‘original face’ to ‘fierce expression’ to ‘kind face’ and investigated how this affected students’ level of nervousness. As a result, we found that, compared to the original face, using the digital mask reduced the interviewees’ nervousness. Furthermore, we found that the kind face relaxed interviewees’ nerves more than the fierce face. Thus, wearing the digital mask enables an interviewer both to reduce an interviewee’s nervousness by using the avatar with a kind face when taking the interview, and to increase an interviewee’s feeling of nervousness, where appropriate, by using a fierce looking avatar.

Accomplishment
Noguchi, K., Takegawa, Y., Tokuda, Y., Sugiura, Y., Masai, K., and Hirata, K., “Study of Interviewee’s Impression Made by Interviewer Wearing Digital Full-face Mask Display During Recruitment Interview,” Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction, pp. 323–327 (Nov. 2021).