Research
Games for senarios creation(,emergence or awakening) -New-
It's an exciting process to make up an idea of new technology or service. However, if you want the idea to be accepted by the market, you have to know the requirement and the desire of customers. And, in order to creat an idea by combining existing technologies or products, analogical thoughts and communications enlighted you and will push you forward.
We have developed Analogy Game and Innovators Market Game, where your talent of innovation will be evaluated and cultivated. Currently we are also developing new games for scenarios creation by using various visualization methods and interface to the Web. We do not talk about Web 3.0, because this is Web Infinite where the Web created a new Web of intelligence.
The eyes draw auxliniary lines in noticing a scanario -New-
Human's eyeballs move with drawing a line connecting certain parts of the presented image when the human notices a scenario underlying the part. This phenomenon has been found in the laboratory, when we were observing the process of chance discovery from visual information.
Although this tendency is easy to understand, it has a strong impact to practicability of chance discovery: A potential consumer looking at a poster may be impressed by the advertised product/service if the poster is so well designed as to lead his/her eyes to drawing a line. A marketer thinking of some new market strategy can bring out a new scenario when the eyes draw a line on a scenario map (like KeyGraph below) of market.
Product design and Marketing
Every product developed in one company share some concept, which may be not appear as concrete words. However, customers can hardly see the concept from advertisement. It's difficult even for the company itself perfectly to understand the thought of its developers or the designers. By visualizing words in the comments of designers, we are able to externalize the concepts and the thoughts shown as red nodes i.e., nodes which don't so appear frequently but embrace an important value. In an extension of this method, we can also clarify the difference of viewpoints of different sections in the same institute of the same company. Read more...
Data visualization: for the creative system design
We analyze data on customers/consumers, conversation, earthquakes, medical treatment etc, and develop technologies to make these visible on a two dimensional screen, and support the awareness of the most interesting spots. These spots represents "chances" which are formally defined as events which are significant for making creative decisions.
All in all, chance discovery a research domain for developing T&T (thinking and talking) methods and information technologies for realizing the decision making based on a flash with grounds.
- TsuruTool, on the Potential Model -New-
- TsuruTool, applied to Sushi bar
- TsuruTool, applied to Japanese actresses
Discovery of the disastrous signs
There are a huge number of earthquakes in the areas close to troughs and filled by active faults, as in Japan. Such an area is called "a nest of earthquake". It is difficult to focus on a riskly nest of earthquakes, or on an area which has not been regarded as a nest but may encouter a big one in a near future, because all important dynamics are lying under the ground.
A big earthquake can occur someday at districts which have infrequent quakes but are sorrounded by areas of frequent quakes. With the extended method of "Chance Discovery" we can mark such risky districts from easily available data on the history of earthquakes, such as the news flash of earthquake on TV. The techniques can detect signs of a physical change caused by a liver disease and chances of treatments.
Data Crystallization: Finding latent dynamics
Our labo focuses on developing techniques and services for aiding people make creative action plans based on tools for aiding the meta-cognitive awareness of what they said and their own line of sight.
Even if the real "chance" is not included in the available data, human can become conscious of a hidden significant event underlying a vacant space between events which are not visually connected in the graph. The Data Crystallization visualizes such hidden connections which have not been possbile to be shown up as nodes/lines corresponding to events included in available data. Hidden leaders of a human group, hidden oppotunities for creating new products/services, hidden intentions of negotiators etc have been realized so far.
Conferencing for market creation and systems/products design
At business conference or assembly, participants seek chances, i.e., important events for decision making (customers' behaviors to which salesclerks should pay attention, appearance of new products which may turn into a popular item if advertised suitably, etc), by exchanging, choosing, and combining future scenarios proposed for strategic action planning. A chance shall be detected at the crosspoint of multiple valuable scenarios.
We are designing communication places embracing the possibility to enhance chance discoveries, for profit-gaining decisions and designs.
Human-resouce finding
In an enterprise, some members may talk infrequently but make a significant influence on the decision of the group. We have an effective method for finding such "dark" leaders.
The process of chance discovery has been accelerated by employing our original visualization tools, e.g., KeyGraph, IDM, etc that enables to show a human network visible even in a case a dark leader plays an essential role for the group or for the society.
The sight of insight
Can we witness the moment of human's insight and enlightenment? We study the phenomena in the cognitive process of human(s) in choosing something valuable and interpreting its value - i.e., in the process of chance discovery in the real life. Here, we study how artworks, products, and services make influence on the process of viewers' active intelligence leading to the cognition of latent value based on the conversational contents and the data on eye movements.
Animate cities
The city is a complex containing money, products, services, people and other various elements. However, if the mainspring of the activity is lost, even the big city like Tokyo cannot be demonstrated the real value and will be confronted with economical difficulty. By what approach will a city be able to be activated?
The approach from the systems-design study is to externalize latent values of the city, and integrating humans, products, and services in the city run for realizing the value. We are challenging to externalizing the latent values of some "shabby" places such as under railways, by writing a shared photo diary and visualizing the diary for promoting meta-cognitive awareness of the latent values.
Health Communication
Creative Activity Activated by Criticisms
In previous creative activity, criticisms against other's idea have been regarded as taboo. Brainstorming is the best example in which attendees should accept other's idea and improve it. However, ideas must have defects which have to be improved. In that time, criticism is so important to improve and obtain good ideas. How are criticisms made effectively? We are studying about new discourse methods to support for creative activity. We try to propose discourse design methods and built an environment for innovation.
Making Annotations on Documents for Mining Hidden Opinions
Human communication must be asymmetry. When a person A expresses his/her opinion to other person B, a whole opinion of person A will be never understood by a person B. it is difficult to notice the asymmetry communication in daily life. However, if people try to obtain lacked information, people can obtain hidden opinions. We focus on methods of making annotations on documents to mine hidden opinions. We are studying a method to reduce cost and effort of making annotation.