This year, I had the opportunity to attend my first CHI conference in Yokohama, Japan.
Having never travelled to Japan before, the conference was a great experience. It allowed me meet people and experience cultures from across the world in a way that would otherwise be unlikely. I appreciated the nice balance that Yokohama itself struck between being a lively and bustling city without the overwhelming tourist intensity I felt in Tokyo.

Being in Japan also gave me the chance to reconnect with colleagues from previous conferences who are based in the region, which led to an invitation to visit the Information Somatics Lab at the University of Tokyo. What stood out to me was the lab's noticeably different approach to research, with collaborations with artists and creative project directions that resulted in work that felt expressive, playful, and very exploratory.
This felt nicely refreshing compared to the more outcome-driven projects I'm used to, where research is expected to have clear economic contributions and use cases to achieve funding. Here, there seemed to be more freedome in pursuing unconventional and exploratory ideas where the economic contribution is less immediately clear.
This raises an interesting tension: works that are too far removed from any tangible outcomes can appear as a misuse of limited resources, however, exploratory and creative work is often the key source of unexpected innovation and breakthroughs. Creative, open-ended exploration expands the space of possibilities, and ideas that seem impractical at first can later underpin entirely new directions or technologies. The achievement of this balance was something I found incredibly impactful at the Lab.

Experiencing diverse cultures, meeting new and old colleagues, and discovering new ways to approach research feels like exactly what the conference is for.

Photos