Mogic considers

Long interview continues

We will be posting long interviews from time to time this year, and I talked about the new "About Creativity" section.

Since the release is still some time away, I'd like to give you a quick preview of what's to come.

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- First, I would like to ask you about "creativity you can hold in your hands." Since Mogic is an IT company, our productions are mainly digital, such as programs and web design. But why do you make calendars and novelties in-house as objects?

Yamane: Why do we have to come up with the idea from scratch, select the materials, create the design, send it to printing, inspect it, package it, and ship it all by ourselves, when a typical company would just add a logo or change the colors?

- Yes, it is. The question arises as to whether it would be better to hire an outside expert to do the work since it would be time consuming and expensive for someone in-house to do it.

Yamane: I guess this has something to do with how we view creativity. This is a bit of a detour, but let me start with the background of the times we are currently in.

Today, we are overflowing with things. So it is easier to buy things than to make them, and if I were to count the number of times I have experienced making something new from scratch with my own hands in a year, I would say less than three.

I might install a new application or change the pattern or shape a little, but mostly I combine things that someone else has made. It's not that there is anything wrong with combining things, it's just that we live in a very convenient world.

But when that becomes the norm, I wonder how we can learn about the feelings and processes of those who are trying to create something. It is not possible to create something from scratch in the true sense of the word, but I try to create something as close to a zero base as possible.

When you just buy something, it is difficult to realize why they decided to make it or how they wanted to express themselves. I guess we try to make them ourselves in order to trace the feelings of the creator.

It's like we are trying to build from scratch, taking time to confirm what we want and what we are comfortable with one by one.
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Somehow, when I look back on what we talked about later, I feel like a stranger.

[To be added at a later date] Click here for the rest of the interview article.
h ttps:// www.mogic.jp/category/interview/13694

All aboard, leave the rest to me

It is difficult to keep providing a service to someone.

With IT, people say that once you create a program, the rest is semi-automatic and easy, but this is a pitfall.

I found a clear expression, and I quote it

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More People, Not Faster
Yoshito Kuranuki (Author)
h ttps:// gihyo.jp/book/2023/978-4-297-13565-2

When developing new functions in a program, we build on top of the structure that already exists.

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If we were to compromise temporarily under pressure, it would be ideal if we could take the time to redevelop the product immediately afterwards with the same functionality as the compromised product, with uncompromised quality, but that would be difficult for those on the business side to accept.

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After a few years of doing so, the software is in a state where "there is no way to get around to adding any more features. Engineers are highly anxious and stressed about adding features to software in such a state. Such temporary compromises due to pressure and other factors are called "technical debt" as a kind of debt or liability.

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In other words, it is best to assume that it is impossible to return something that has been made messy and complicated to its simple state.
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If you let the momentum carry you, the start is light.

If you keep trying to do this and that for speed, you will get stuck in two years.

Even after searching for highly skilled people, increasing resources, and increasing motivation, the speed, quality, and volume all decrease from the beginning.

The creators, including engineers and designers, know better than anyone else that they are maximizing an invisible technical debt, even if they do not say so.

In essence, they are paying extra for the interest that technical debt brings.

Yet what happens when ostensibly businesses continue to proclaim their bold strategy of pursuing scale?

Unable to resist the mechanism of an organization that pushes with brute force in the cause of a powerful vision, the most powerful engineers and designers are quitting.

The reason is that there is no way to solve the overshadowing structural problems at the individual level.

Unfortunately, technical debt becomes visible only there.

This is why it is difficult to "keep up" with IT services.

From another angle, I think that if we can continue to provide our services, we are clearing someone else's technical debt on their behalf.

The journey is good, but leave the return to us.

A salt-connected bond

I had placed one heaped salt on each side of the outside door to ward off evil spirits in the office, but decided to stop after a break in dealing with the Corona disaster.

When a conical mold is filled tightly with salt and placed upside down, a dignified white mountain is formed.

It was often the case that although it looked beautiful and had a wicked feeling, it fell apart after a while.

In particular, the heaped salt placed outside the first floor door often fell apart.

Why is that? I finally understood when the intercom rang in the evening when I was talking to him and it crossed my mind that maybe something not good was happening.

A young father's voice says, "Excuse me, the salt on the door, ...... my child touched it and crushed it, ...... it seems unusual. I'm sorry, my child touched the salt on the door and crushed it.

The member replies, "Oh, well, I'll be right there."

As I went down the stairs, I saw no one, indeed, the area around the dish was still cluttered like a sandbox.

Even after that, when people forgot about it, the mountains of salt were broken down without people knowing.

Eventually, even though I couldn't see them, I was convinced that it was a good sign that small children were playing with them.

When I decided to stop heaping salt in this way, I was strangely curious about them.

In this world, there are connections that people do not know they have.

look ahead during a critical moment

A member recently asked me, "I received a rather sketchy request (ball) from a partner, how should I handle this?

In business, work exchanges are compared to catching a ball, expressing that the ball is in the other person's hands and it is coming this way.

A rough ball is probably a consultation where the recipient is unable to take immediate action.

Naturally, it would be nice if we receive an organized story that is easy for us to understand, but it does not necessarily mean that the other party is throwing a rough ball with bad intentions.

I will take up one obvious situation.

If you were buying a house for the first time, what questions would you ask your real estate agent?

He seems to say, "It would be nice if a family of four could live comfortably, supermarkets are nearby, and schools are close by, and I am also concerned about public safety.

That should seem like a rough enough ball to the other party.

Therefore, there is no malice on the part of the person asking the question, and the cause lies in a different place.

It all started when I casually threw a big ball.

To restate it precisely, it is not casually, but rather, it is something that is thrown because it has to be thrown.

For this to happen, there is a background of gathering information because it is still an unfamiliar field, but without superiority, and being forced to speak to the other party in a bashful manner all together.

If we expect that they will be pleased with the ball, we think they will be pleased if we return the rough ball, which they do not feel bad about, with a clean, organized and less informative ball.

In the real estate agent's words, "First, please list three things that are important to each of the four members of your family. Then, put them in order, number one, number two, and number three. Finally, the four of you can show them to each other and make a unified number 1, 2, and 3 for the family, which will make things easier.

If this is the case, my response was that it might be a good idea to consider one move ahead to improve the rhythm of the opponent, even though it might take a little effort.

I can't do addition or multiplication.

Intuitively, we know that adding happiness to happiness does not double happiness.

Probably the same thing would be true for happiness* happiness.

This and similar kinds of things are full of things like satisfaction and hope.

Then, what about those who work?

It is possible to have twice the number of people working as those who work + those who work = twice the number of people who work.

However, there are cases where the amount of work to be done + the amount of work to be done = not twice the amount of work to be done.

I think one way to go beyond the artificial intelligence boom is to aim for such a place.

Here comes the jerk chicken.

A kitchen car (food truck) of Jamaican jerk chicken came to our office.

The smoke was billowing as the sweets were made on the spot, and the crowd enjoyed a festive atmosphere for the first time in a long time, competing for a turn at rock-paper-scissors-scissors and coveting the leftover new sweets.

An evil person might ask, "Why do I have to ask you to come all the way to the kitchen car? But if it makes the place we work together more enjoyable, there's nothing wrong with that.

What is curiosity?

What is (having) curiosity? One theory says that it is "the feeling of wanting to fill in the gaps between what you assumed in advance and what actually happened.

Yes, it was really supposed to be this way, but when I think it is strange, I want to investigate the cause and the situation anyway.

I dare to think of the opposite meaning here.

In other words, what does it mean to be "incapable" of curiosity? I mean, what does it mean to "not have curiosity"?

At first glance, this question may not seem necessary, but it is surprisingly often asked.

Then, since it is the opposite of the first definition, there will be "no discrepancy between what was assumed in advance and what actually happened" or "it was not assumed in advance in the first place".

If there is no discrepancy, there would be no desire to investigate anything, so I will eliminate that part, and focus on the other part, "it could not be assumed in advance," which is why it could not be assumed.

That's because we can't assume anything because we have little or no knowledge of the situation.

Without a minimum of knowledge, it would be difficult to imagine the patterns that are about to occur.

That said, it is not easy to learn something you don't know.

I think it is better to be in an environment where people can naturally learn basic knowledge in order to have curiosity.

Curiosity itself is not the goal, so it is not something I am aiming for, but I think it is more interesting if everyone is excited, so I am creating all kinds of mechanisms to expose people to things they don't know.

Thinly and gingerly

The rain that blessed the crops has passed, and the sky has become clear and sunny.

As usual, we begin our activities on the roof of the office.

But first, I dozed off in a folding deck chair.

When a swallow flutters on a fluttering cloud or a zelkova flutters in the breeze, something you want to do comes to mind.

Oh, how I wish it had been a while since we've all had a pile of croquettes and a cold craft beer.

Past the Corona Disaster, we are warming up in the crawlspace.