Trends in Usability Research and Activities in Japan

Abstract

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.