Hackathon Keio Media Design style

　　　Friday we had a chance to experience something new in Japan. We decided to take part in a Hackathon. Term hackathon stands for an event, where people of different background (business people, programmers and designers) come  together for a day or a weekend and work on an innovative tech startup idea.This is a first event related to startups I am attending in Japan. And it was really interesting to see how Japanese culture fits startrups or coding culture. 

　　　The hackathon started on Friday evening at 6 p.m.. It was a bilingual event. There were a few foreigners attending, some of them didn't speak Japanese. While on the other hand not all Japanese participants spoke good English. The event started with introduction of the company ChatPerf (partner of the hackathon). Check out their website, pretty interesting product. http://chatperf.com/ It is a startup based in Tokyo. They have created a small device for iOS products that adds dimension of smell to user experience. The only drawback of it is that you have to manually input a cartridge with smell to the device. However possible applications of the idea are various. 

Images source http://blog.wishscope.com/特集ページ/2348/

      

       The goal of he weekend was to come up with an app for ChatPerf sent device. The main organizer of the event, ChatPerf representative was speaking most of the time in English. The first speaker he invited was presenting in Japanese, however he was talking about very interesting startup ideas. He has mentioned a company called Neurowear (http://neurowear.com/news/index.html). It is a Tokyo-based startup with a range of amazing products. Their core idea behind all of the products in to connect your brain waves to external devices for some purposes. I suggest you to have a look at those projects on their website, they are really impressive! Here are few videos. 

 

       After the speaker was done, we were supposed to start with networking. There were around 40-50 participants, our goal was to walk around the room and present our skills in order to build a team with others. Here Japanese specifics got involved. People stood up gathered in a big group but didn't know how to start and what to do... This lasted for a while. The the organizers remembered, that they forgot to announce the main topic of the hackathon: "Fun and Party game for Chatperf". Then we had to take initiative to our hands in order to form teams. Finally we were able to form 6 teams of 4-5 people with a coder, designer and business person in each team. 

      Than brainstorming session in each team started. Organizers have distributed Red Bull to everyone. Seems like Red Bull is not only associated with extreme sports, but also with Tech and startup events. The evening was over approximately at 10 p.m. and we were exited to start next day in approximately 12 hours. 

      Next day we had 6 hours to work on our idea, presentation, design and code. The presentations were scheduled for 4 p.m. By that time we were able to finalize our idea, product concept and our designers and programmer finished the app. 8 guests were invited to the event to judge. After the presentation, one winner were chosen. The winning team has done a great job and deserved the first prize. They received an offer from ChatPerf to continue working on their app and try to commercialize it later. Their idea was the following: an app for iPad used in restaurants and bars which have iPad (tablet) menus. Visitors are invited to play a game for a bonus. They are offered to guess a smell of a meal (multiple choice question). If they guess, they receive a discount on an item. 

      Our team JASS finished second. We were offering a smell guessing set with 12 smells and an app. Users guess smells while sitting around a table in a group. Whoever doesn`t guess correctly, has to do something (drink, for example). There are certain level of complexity, special "skunk" event and other surprises. We felt like that could become a nice present and an entertaining way to play in a big group (built around smell). 

    Overall it was great experience! Very fun weekend =) Here are a few illustrations of our idea and pictures from the event. 

Team JASS

Photo by Joerg Weisshaar

Hackathon participants

Photo by Koti Tsubouchi

Everything has a purpose or "the purpose"

     Exposure to a different set of classes here in Keio School of Media design has and still is shaping my thinking. I now ask myself more questions "why" and "what is the reason for that".

     It has been almost two months living in Japan. Time is just flying by! The more I look around and think, the more I discover. Many things that seemed strange in the beginning now seem to have logic behind them. Not all, but a lot more, that 2 months ago during those first days. 

     A few things are now clear. One of those I wanted to write about is umbrellas, just like this one: 

     Majority of Japanese people carry those around on a rainy day or when it is expected to rain in the morning. It is hard to find statistics, but it seems like 90% of Japanese have long umbrellas rather than short portable ones. I have asked my Japanese friends a few times about this issue but didn't have a proper answer. I never attempted to search for an answer in the Internet - but no luck. Finally I found a person who was able to figure out the logic. Satoru-san, our professor at KMD, has said that long umbrellas are stronger. It rains heavily during rainy season with very strong wing, thus umbrellas need to handle severe weather conditions. This actually makes sense. =) But why are most umbrellas are white and transparent? Satoru-san has come up with an assumption, that the material they are made of is the cheapest one. Which is also a strong assumption. 

       Overall in Tokyo situation with umbrellas is very interesting. You can buy umbrella for less than a euro and it will last. Many organizations and places have umbrellas in a special basket near the door, so people can simply use it. Some people leave their umbrellas in such boxes near a supermarket for others to use on a rainy day. When entering a building, you can often leave your umbrella at a special umbrella stand. Sometimes near entrances to offices and supermarkets you can find a machine where you insert your umbrella and it covers it with plastic (puts it in plastic bag) so that you don't spread water everywhere. Near entrances to some electronics stores you can find people giving you a plastic bag to put your umbrella while visiting a store. 

Kanji: logic and magic

     I have already mentioned Japanese Kanji in some previous posts. Once again, kanji are charachters used in Japanese language, they were borrowed from Chinese. 

      As once a week I have a Kanji class, all the time I discover something new. Until this moment I was always attempting to find logic that would help me memorize characters better. Sometimes it works, but often doesn't. For example this kanji means "alcohol"

this means a "person"

this means "fire"

 this means "oil"

 this means "sea"

  Graphics of those kanji relate to the meaning behind them. 

     However more complex kanji comprising of other smaller kanji exists, making it more difficult to memorize. For example this kanji  means "week": 

     The last category that I have uncovered is kanji that to me make no sense at all (to this moment). For example this one means "big" 

and this one means "dog"

 Is there a logical connection? The connection I am looking for is not there. However logic is still there: dog is a relatively new word in Japanese and when creating a character for dog they had to readjust some other character. This is how our kanji teacher explained relation of those two. But everything has a meaning and its purpose, we just need to search better to find it!