About Our Lab | ARES Laboratory

About Our Lab

Research Fields

Our laboratory explores socio-technical systems in which people, technology, organizations, and environments interact. Drawing on ergonomics, safety engineering, and healthcare management, we aim to contribute to safer and more reliable systems. One of our core themes is safety management in safety-critical domains. Accidents and incidents are not caused by human errors alone. They often emerge from interactions among multiple factors, such as team coordination, information systems, and organizational culture. We focus on these underlying factors and their relationships to support the design of safer and more dependable socio-technical systems.

In healthcare, our recent work addresses patient safety issues associated with the internationalization of healthcare workers. We also focus on emerging safety challenges related to digital healthcare, such as electronic health records (EHR) and telemedicine. In addition, we use large language models (LLMs) to review incident reports and patient feedback, exploring AI as a collaborative tool that supports human judgment. Our work also extends to safety-critical domains beyond healthcare. These include railway and traffic safety, as well as VR-based safety training. Although the application domains differ, our perspective remains consistent that safety issues should be understood through the interaction between human, task, environment, technology, and organization.

Another important area is human-centred design for an aging society. We address older adults’ health behaviours, their use of technologies, and differences in technology acceptance between younger and older adults. We also participate in the international collaborative project “Later Life Workplace Index” (LLWI), which examines organizational practices and support systems for multi-age workplaces. Rather than viewing older adults simply as those who need support, we aim to help create environments where they can continue working safely and healthily while making use of their experience and strengths.

We also apply ergonomics to UX in daily life and service contexts. Our work covers social networking services (SNS), online services, and other user-centred systems, with attention to users’ characteristics and behaviour. Depending on the topic, we combine methods such as eye-tracking, questionnaires, interviews, behavioural experiments, wearable data, and natural language processing (NLP).

Overall, our laboratory connects safety-critical domains, human-AI collaboration, work in an aging society, and UX design. From a human-centred perspective, we aim to contribute to social systems that are safe, reliable, and easy for everyone to use.

Research Map

Visualizing our lab's activities and awards around the globe.

Student Theses

Ph.D. Dissertation

2025 Academic Year

Xinyi Chang

Challenges Among International Nurses and the Effects on Nursing Safety and Quality

2021 Academic Year

Sahar Hamido

A Study on Effective Support of People's Daily and Working Life in Ageing Society

Master Thesis

2025 Academic Year

Shota Inose

The Effects of Distress and Eustress on the Persuasive Effectiveness of Charitable Appeals

Miu Iwasa

A Qualitative Study on Japanese Perceptions and Evaluations of International Nurses

Takanori Urano

Risk Perception Strategies in the Emergency Department: A Comparative Analysis by Profession and Experience Based on Eye-Tracking and Debriefing

Taihei Okuma

The Impact of Introducing New Offside Rules on Referee Error Rates

Shizu Gotoh

Bridging Institutional Maturity and Public Attention: A Mixed-Methods Study of Telemedicine Institutionalization in Japan

Shuntaro Takahara

Exploring the Value, Challenges, and Support for Older Nurses in the Work System

Miyu Nakajima

The Effects of Psychological Ownership and Passion on Well-being in Oshi-katsu

Liantong Shen

A Multifaceted Analysis of Consumer Reactions to AI-Generated Advertisements: Perspectives from Advertisement Types and Consumer Goods Classification

2024 Academic Year

Kakeru Miyamoto

Effectiveness of VR Safety Training for Bicycle Users: Comparison with Conventional Video Training

Junjie Shi

Factors Influencing Attitudes Towards Shared Decision-Making: Perspectives of Hemodialysis Patients, Family Caregivers, and Healthcare Providers

2023 Academic Year

Ano Abe

Verification of the Promotional Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing on YouTube

Mengni Chen

Exploring the Medication Adherence from User Experiences of Smart Pill Boxes: A Qualitative Study

Hanshu Wang

Factors Influencing the Intention to Use Telemedicine in the Post-Pandemic Era: A Cross-National Study between Japan and China

Siyuan Zhang

Exploring the Well-being and Needs of Healthcare Workers in China During the COVID-19 Surge and Reintegration Stage

2022 Academic Year

Kodai Aoyama

Factors Forming Usage Habits for Wearable Sensors: A Comparison of Younger and Older Adults

Keisuke Shinoda

Factors Influencing the Intention to Use Telemedicine

Tomohiro Okutsu

Investigating Factors Leading to Japanese Aviation Accidents Using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS)

Bachelor Thesis

2025 Academic Year

Motoki Kawashima

The Effect of Task Proficiency on Changes in Self-Efficacy Associated with AI Use

Jing Qian

The Effect of Translation Method–Induced Cognitive Load on Willingness to Communicate (WTC)

Yuya Miyashita

The Effect of Product Appeal Types on FOMO Activation in E-Commerce Websites

2024 Academic Year

Haruto Amano

Impact of Customer Reviews on Online Shopping

Sae Fujii

Impact of the Alignment between the Destination and Design Elements on Impressions in Tourism Advertisements

Nobuaki Kurabayashi

A Comparison of Driverless Vehicle’s External Display Expression Methods to Bicycle Users

Naoto Tanaka

Effect of Producer’s Facial Expression and Photo Background on Food Packaging

Kensuke Cho

Impact of the Bottle Shape and Label Colour on Purchase Intention of Soft Drink

Takehiro Hanada

Effects of Social Incentives in Group Work

2023 Academic Year

Ryunoshin Akagawa

Identifying the Current Status and Causes of Presenteeism among Japanese Student Athletes

Takeru Takahashi

Factors Influencing Intention to Continue Using X (formerly Twitter) after being Charged

Daichi Williams

Elucidating the Effects of Auxiliary Road Traffic Signs and the Influencing Factors

Taihei Okuma

Improving the Interface of a Digital Scoring System: A Case Study

Liantong Shen

Extension and Application of an Incident Taxonomy Related to Electronic Medical Records

Masato Sakai

Effects of Presentation Speed and Subtitle Language on Comprehension of Foreign Language Audio Videos

2022 Academic Year

Takahiro Ominato

Comparison of Learning Effects Based on the Presentation Speed of Video Instructional Materials

Moto Mizuta

Influence of the Background Colour of Images on Food Impression in Online Shopping

2021 Academic Year

Ano Abe

Factors influencing the effectiveness of product promotion on Instagram by brand and influencer (in Japanese)

Naoki Kasuda

Impacts of mask on appearance and its mechanism (in Japanese)

2020 Academic Year

Atsutoshi Nakai

Exploring Factors Contributing to Railway Crossing Accidents (in Japanese)

Career Paths