About UCDA: Research and Development

Universal Communication Design (UCD) is design that makes the information customers receive “easy to look at, easy to understand, and viral”. UCDA conducts research and development on methods to evaluate and improve communications’ design so that companies and organizations (senders) can transmit easy-to-understand information.

Design and Copy

Design (visual) and ad copy (words) should be thought of as information’s interface. We set indicators for “ease of understanding” by objectively evaluating the transmission ratio and readability to research design for “easy to look at, easy to understand, and viral” information transmission.

System Software

We are also actively engaged in software development to spread UCD. For example, we are developing software for objective and swift analysis and evaluation, for example, usability evaluation software, design effectiveness measurement software, information content measurement software for printed materials, etc.

Major Activities

• Analysis:
  Software development to calculate print ratios, analyze form, and evaluate design
• User support:
  Software development to support the hearing impaired; consumer-generated media software development

Customer Relationship Management

“Customers Manage the Relationship” (CMR) is a new management system that prioritizes customers and where customers themselves have choices, rather than a customer relationship management plan where businesses manage customers in a one-sided manner. The UCDA is conducting research a step ahead of others on this customer priority management system, still in the research stage in Japan.

Research

What do customers want, and what is needed? Research know-how is necessary in order to deeply and broadly understand customer needs. We are working on research to get a handle on customers’ latent demands, beginning with analysis to improve communication tools and usability evaluation.

Images

Images effectiveness in making information easy to convey via emotions varies significantly based on the environment in which the images are shown or delivered. The UCDA studies images with high transmission efficiency for receivers.