Japan maybe a heaven of cool and weird gadgets, but it is also a
country where they are strangely encapsulated by many technological constraints. Voltage is different (100V), standards are different, and quite often, and when it comes to UI language, even with the most advanced gadgets, can be produced with a single language.
All these circumstances make it difficult to determine, whether they truly brings a new value to our lives and perhaps, might even become more than a quirky system for a sole market.
In past ten years, I have worked for Nokia in Finland for five years, then in China and recently in Japan. Most of the time my work involved field work and user tests of which result was utilized for products, roadmaps, and design concepts. I hope this background gives me a slightly more objective view to what I experience as everyday trivia.
For the time being, I hope you all bear for my slow start in this enormous blog world, and hopefully this will bring something to think of on both ends of the line.
Fumiko Ichikawa, info@tokyo-stories.com
