“The Person Who Connects the Research” Part 2: A Conversation About Intentional Serendipity

Hi! This is Shoichi Fujimoto (@sho-1) from Mercari R4D’s Research Acceleration Team. I joined R4D as a research administrator in April of 2020, talking to both those who do and those who apply our research, and working on anything and everything that helps drive our R&D efforts. In Part 1 of this series, I gave an overview of my work as “the person who connects the research.”

Previous article: “The Person Who Connects the Research” Part 1: An Overview of the Job That Expands and Builds Upon People’s Curiosity

For this article, I’ve invited R4D Researcher and longtime coworker @fujimiyu (Miyuki Fujiwara) for a conversation to provide deeper insight into my role as “the person who connects the research.” I work with @fujimiyu to coordinate research by getting involved in her areas of interest and motivations, and getting her involved in the various challenges and debates going on within Mercari, to in turn expand the scope of projects. Today, I want to delve into the actions and values of “the person who connects the research” from @fujimiyu’s perspective as a researcher.

At the “Real Flea Market” event at the Mercari office

Left: @sho-1, Center: @fujimiyu, Right: @inomari

Introducing @fujimiyu

sho-1: @fujimiyu, thank you for agreeing to talk with me today. I’ve been looking forward to reminiscing with you! Could you give us a brief self introduction?

fujimiyu: Sure! I specialize in text comprehension and Japanese language education, and I work on research dealing with various aspects of communication. I was a fan of the Mercari app before I joined the company. In 2020, I contacted R4D proposing a research topic based on the Mercari app, and initially joined as a visiting fellow. Then, in June 2022, I officially joined R4D as a researcher.

Reference: Miyuki Fujiwara
Reference: Communication on the Marketplace App

sho-1: Thanks for introducing yourself. I remember your first research topic well. I thought it was really interesting and a really important topic for Mercari to tackle! I’m glad we were able to work on it together. Now, let’s look back on everything else.

First project as a visiting fellow

@fujimiyu: After I first got a reply from the R4D team, I started talking with @misato and @tago (who no longer works at Mercari) about my research topic, but there was no mention of narrowing the scope. When doing collaborative research, usually everyone boils down the research topic together, so R4D’s approach was very new to me. I distinctly remember wanting to prepare some documents for meetings and being told that we didn’t need any documents yet. As this was all happening, and before we moved onto the initiation stage, I joined R4D as a visiting fellow.

@sho-1: At that time, our manager @tago tasked me with coordinating your arrival, and that’s how I ended up being in contact with you. By the way, I was the one who came up with the title “visiting fellow.” Your title was originally “outsourced researcher,” but I wanted something a bit more “research-like” and professional.

@fujimiyu: Giving me a professional-sounding name really helped me fit into the R4D team.

@sho-1: After you joined, I set up some discussions with members in other teams, such as the Language Education Team (LET), the analytics team, and the branding team. Through these discussions, we started a research project on the challenges faced by non-Japanese-speaking international students when using a marketplace app.

@fujimiyu: I was officially welcomed to R4D as a visiting fellow and started this project in November 2020. However, I was scheduled to move to Uzbekistan to work as a university professor from March 2021. So, we only had a short amount of time to achieve results, which was a little stressful.

After you joined the project, we started to make some concrete progress with establishing the research topic, monitoring progress, setting up discussions with relevant departments, creating user consent forms, and devising ways to bring up matters to the R&D Ethics Review Committee. At the end of each meeting, it was clear what steps we needed to take before the next meeting, and this motivated me to analyze everything in time and move the project along quickly. We announced the results of the research at an internal study session on March 9, 2021. I had to leave the country on March 17, so it was a tight schedule.

You also took care of organizing the internal study session, setting up the event, facilitating the session on the day, and even brainstorming with me to organize the key points for my presentation materials.

If we hadn’t determined the research topic in time or had been unable to produce results before I left Japan, I might have just focused on my work in Uzbekistan and parted ways with R4D. Being able to produce results on a tight schedule gave me the confidence to continue research with R4D. Thanks to you, I found myself wanting to get back into doing research with R4D, and that led me to my current position.

Leaving Uzbekistan and officially joining R4D

@sho-1: I was happy to hear that you wanted to research with us again at R4D. And, the momentum we gained from that initial project gave you another chance to join the team as a visiting fellow after you moved to Uzbekistan.

You also helped us organize the Value Exchange Engineering Symposium, which is an online symposium held in collaboration with the Research Institute for an Inclusive Society through Engineering (RIISE) at the University of Tokyo. For this event, you filmed a video with Professor Hautasaari Ari on the theme of communication studies.

Video featuring @fujimiyu and Professor Ari, planned and facilitated by @sho-1

@fujimiyu: That was just after I moved, so filming the video was a bit of a challenge. There wasn’t much time to film or write the script, and we started filming at 6 AM local time in Uzbekistan, so I woke up at 4:30 AM to prepare!

@sho-1: I didn’t know it was that early for you! Thanks for doing that. I think a lot of people at the company enjoyed the video.

@fujimiyu: Before we published that video, I was often asked what R4D actually does. Now, it feels like more people know what we do. That’s why PR is also important.

@sho-1: At the time of filming the video, you were also working on research with R4D, right?

@fujimiyu: Yes, exactly. After I moved to Uzbekistan, I started looking for the next research topic I could work on with R4D. You provided me with some hints, showing me a document called the Voice of Customer (VOC) newspaper, which is a collection of user feedback, and telling me about discussions at Mercari concerning the phrasing of communication we send out to users. You also set up some casual discussions between R4D and members in the Customer Service team. Drawing inspiration from those opportunities, I thought about research involving communication between users, or research on messages sent by the Customer Service team.

@sho-1: At that time, the VOC newspaper was a goldmine for potential research topics; I shared this content with many researchers after getting the necessary clearance. I feel that creating opportunities for researchers to connect with other people and access information is an important task as a coordinator.

Could you tell us what happened after that?

@fujimiyu: I came back from Uzbekistan in May 2022 and joined R4D in June 2022. After I came back to Japan, I started to attend RIISE meetings and lectures held by Professor Ari. Through this, I became friendly with Professor Ari and we decided to start a joint research project. The results of this project were awarded the Best Interactive Presentation Award at the HCG Symposium 2023, which led to more awards at other conferences.

Even before this project, you had coordinated communication with Professor Ari and helped us work on the R4D video together, which laid the groundwork for our collaboration. I feel like it was meant to be.

Serendipity created by “the person who connects the research”

@sho-1: Thinking back on your work with R4D gave me the opportunity to look back on my own role as “the person who connects the research.” I was always conscious of discovering points of connection between your areas of interest and the various tasks and discussions people were engaged in at Mercari, and expanding on those ideas. @fujimiyu, what did that look like from your perspective as a researcher?

@fujimiyu: As we were talking, the word “serendipity” came to mind. But for you, @sho-1, I’m sure there’s an aspect of intentionally creating serendipity. I get the impression that you work hard to connect those who do the research and those who apply the research in all different ways.

@sho-1: Yes, I call myself the “research matchmaker.” Sometimes I create a good match between those who do the research and those who apply the research, and sometimes things fizzle out. You may be right that my job is more like sowing the seeds to create serendipity. There have also been times when I find out later on that people have come together in ways that I would never expect.

@fujimiyu: There’s a certain saying I like: “Hints come from what you don’t know, answers come from what you do know.” Researchers can often have a narrow view of their own work and be unsure how to proceed with their research or who they should collaborate with. Having someone like you find ways to link our interests to Mercari’s current tasks and discussions and create opportunities for collaboration is a big help for us researchers. I think being able to coordinate people and tasks like that requires broad knowledge that spans multiple disciplines. Having that knowledge is also important for finding connections between fields that are not normally associated with each other.

@sho-1: I mentioned this in Part 1 of the series as well, but I think that taking a wide range of courses in both science and humanities as a student has helped me in my current role.

In conclusion

@sho-1: @fujimiyu, thank you for talking with me today about your past work and providing your point of view on “the person who connects the research” as a researcher. You taught me new phrases like “intentionally creating serendipity” and “hints come from what you don’t know, answers come from what you do know,” and I really learned a lot. I can’t believe it’s already been five years since our first project together! Thank you for your time.