A paper first-authored by Minami Morikawa, a first-year master's student, has been accepted as a Research Report in the Journal of the Science of Design, the English-language journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design. It is scheduled to appear in the November 2026 issue.

This exploratory study divided smartphone UIs into object-first (selecting the target first) and task-first (selecting the operation first) designs, and compared brain activity measured with wearable fNIRS, operation errors, perceived ease of use, and task duration across four application–task combinations.

Top: the experimental setup. Bottom: graphical abstract. The combinations ATM-TUI and Shopping-OUI showed lower Fp1 hemodynamic change, fewer operational errors and shorter durations, and were judged easier in 35 of 38 choices.

Morikawa M, Suzuki F, Nagamori Y. An Exploratory Comparison of Object-First and Task-First User Interfaces across Four Smartphone Application–Task Combinations: A Preliminary Multimodal Study Using Wearable fNIRS, Coded Errors, Perceived Ease, and Duration. Journal of the Science of Design (in press, 2026).