Design Matters Tokyo 2023
On Jun 2nd and 3rd I joined an international designer event in Tokyo -- which is not the first one I'd joined, but is the largest one I've had in these years. People came from different countries visit Japan to join the event, and the host did make that worthy.
So here comes my first note article! Cheer! 🍻🥂
I spend 30 seconds checking if this is the first article of this note before I wrote that subtitle. By the way, Did you know that July 17 is 📅 World Emoji Day? I picked up this information while searching for the method to type emoji.
Sorry for that meaningless opening of the article.
Anyway, I attended Design Matters Tokyo 2023 -- An event for designers all over the world to meet, share knowledge and experience, build up networks, and make the world a better place together. (Okay, I said it twice.)
Based on the data I collected through talking to random participants, this event makes the participants very happy since this is a good reason to travel to Japan. Everyone loves Japan. They are so eager to visit Tokyo -- especially after the COVID era. About 4 people were telling me this was a 2-week trip to attend this 2-day event.
And to be honest, I agree with them. This is a beautiful and interesting place you'd want to spend your time on.
The event was held at Ronpokki -- the well-known Minato City area that has lots of tower buildings and fancy offices (and bars). The DMM office is definitely one of the most attractive ones.
I am personally a fan of teamLab, and DMM owns teamLab in some way…? I'm not sure about the detailed relationship between these two, but the office with interactive digital art has already told me lots of things. So after we step into the office, there was a tunnel with animals consisting of flowers, after the tunnel, it was the event. That was lots of "wow" even before the beginning.
Talks, Sharing, Tech, AI… Oh, AI
The event has a very nice lineout of the speakers and the workshops being hosted. I was a little worried about if the only thing I would hear about in the event is design thinking stuff (I'm not very into it unless Don Norman is the speaker -- everyone has 1 or 2 designers they are too admire to be not interested in). It turns out that lots of topics are interesting and full of new information. Makes me wonder how the hosts found all these guys and have them talk on different topics.
AI is a very popular topic just as predicted, however, the speakers brought out several points which make people think a lot. That is a very nice direction to see in the design community. I appreciate people thinking about how to use AI as a tool instead of seeing them as enemies. However, I don't go with when people calling it AI.
Afterall it was the algorithm crawling around the data and bring it together. Yep as a psychology major who had some interests in cognitive science and Neural Network I understand we are not that different from "Using the past memory to make guesses between what we do and what the world respond to us, but anyway, big data is another thing to me.
The discussion here would continue forever if I want to explain my struggles here.
SO here is one example I really like: The guy from Nike said he is not able to generate a image for the "Goddess of Victory Nike" without his own brand symbols. Below are part of my tries with a random site I found on the internet (I've used up the trial of MidJourney while no one was playing with it ).
it's a fair result that the Goddess Nike does not existed in the modern era. If we bring this concept to medical scenario: While a disease or virus has extincted 1,000 years ago, you won't expect the doctor to say, "Oh you're caughing, and your stomach feels funny? Heck it should be the one I've read in the history book. Let's see how we deal with it."
Make sense? Huh? However, The possiblitiy is still there. Anyone could get illed with the virus we believed that would never show up again, of with a new type of the virus.
The "AI" doctor would never ever be able to find out COVID-19 before 2018. Yes, at the beginning of everything the human doctor thought that was just flu. Flu kills lots of people every year. Everything does MAKE SENSE even without any recognition of COVID-19. I cannot say would this change something or not. The world being weaker than we've used to imagine we would be during the COVID era. (You can see that if you have played Plague Inc.)
The issue that the "AI" not be able to find the Greek goddess in the internet, is a very good sign for us to know that "the amount of the data" would easiliy decide if a thing should be valued. This is a commercial one, however, this can also result issues to medical, hiring, and lots of the area that would be supported by algorithms. The image is easy to understand, but the issues are not.
Specular Workshop: Be Responsible for the Future World
This section is about a nice workshop I joined in the event.
Simply speaking, imagine an alpha (where everything is held by mega companies instead of the government, or you can say it's a VERY VERY capitalism society) future world and design the transport service.
The base of the imagination provided by the instructor is:
"People lives in centralized city. I imagined a big nest.
The company who hires the employee would pay for plans.
The AI and technology would ensure that the person with expensive plans can live wonderful life.
To provide this kind of service, people do not have privacy -- at least not to the machine.
I'm not going to write down what I planned and designed during the workshop here. I just think everyone should think about this type of thing once a while.
I've always wanted to be a person who can be more related to "the world" so this comes to me very often: What is the world I want to live into
Mingling!
I can write thousands of texts for each topic I've heard in the event, that is how interesting everything was. However, the mingling part need to be mentioned in this article.
As mentioned in the other section, people from many countries went to Japan for the event. The parciticate rate from Asia country (Japanese people or residents in Japan is not included) is rather higher than I imagined. In my past job I've worked with people in the US, EU, Australia & New Zealand ,Japan, and of course my local place. However, I'd never talk to people work in South Asia.
While website design and apps in my place are heavility affected by Japanese and the US culture, I am astonished almost every time I saw websites and apps in South or South East Asia. The passion colors, cultural design in both visual and systemathic side -- tells stories about the countries. It's pretty nice to be able to talk to these people in the events and learn from them.
The location of the event -- should be a very important attribute that attracts the participants, which makes Design Matters Tokyo to be one of the most meaningful events I've joined. Design matters, Tokyo matters, Japan matters, and actually, Asia matters, while we're frequently turning a little bit "mute"
Workshop with people from various of culture
As an Asia-born-Asia-raised person, I was educated to become a information experience specalist (at least I think I am) in the US. It's difficult to say what I feel about digital product design is more affected by which side. However, in this event I'm able to meet and learn from Asian culture. It's not about developement process or design scrum, it's about the way people think, and the way people deal with issues.
Shared Responsibility
Asia is a very large area in the world which has large population and the rich cultures. In comparison to Western culture, we are more shy about our opinion. However, in the "AI Era", the amount of data might define the "Correct Answer" of almost everything -- try to stand on the stage, in the center of the world, and send important message for the culture.
At the end of this paragraph, I just want to recommend this book. If you are able to read my words (I'm not good at writing ) then you MUST read this.
No one paid me for this. I'm a pure fan.