Mercari R4D Researcher Receives Best Interactive Presentation Award at HCG Symposium 2023

Mercari R4D Researcher Miyuki Fujiwara has received the Best Interactive Presentation Award at the HCG Symposium 2023. Fujiwara received the award for joint research performed with Ari Hautasaari (University of Tokyo Graduate School Project Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies) and Rintaro Chujo (University of Tokyo Master’s Student, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies).

The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Human Communication Group (IEICE-HCG) hosted the symposium from December 11 to 13, 2023.

• Name of award
  • IEICE Human Communication Group Symposium 2023—Best Interactive Presentation Award
• Award recipients
  • Miyuki Fujiwara (Mercari R4D)
  • Ari Hautasaari (University of Tokyo Graduate School Project Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies)
  • Rintaro Chujo (University of Tokyo Master’s Student, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies)
• Presentation title
  • How sharing your preferred communication style impacts price negotiations on an online marketplace

▶Click for the full list of award winners (available only in Japanese)

The award-winning research was a joint effort shared with Ari Hautasaari (University of Tokyo Graduate School Project Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies) and Rintaro Chujo (University of Tokyo Master’s Student, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies), who are members of the Value Exchange Engineering project, a comprehensive partnership program between Mercari and the University of Tokyo. Through two types of experiments, the researchers discovered how communication between users was affected by using badges that showed the communication style that one user wanted the other party in the transaction to use in the comments of the Mercari marketplace app.

▶See the details of the research here (available only in Japanese)

Comments from award recipients

Miyuki Fujiwara (Mercari R4D Researcher)

For this research topic, the idea of seeing what would happen if we asked users to use a badge to indicate their preferred communication style was born from casual conversations with research partners Ari Hautasaari and Rintaro Chujo. We wanted to investigate this question immediately, and so in 2023, from the beginning of the summer until the fall, we performed experiments and analysis and were deeply immersed in writing the text of our manuscript. I found the processes of joint research and discussion exciting. I think what won us the “Best Interactive Presentation Award” was that we conveyed the burning curiosity we had toward our research directly to our audience. What we are looking forward to is the social application of our ideas, which is the next step after research. Through the design of the badges, we would like to help guide human behavior to create a comfortable forum for communication.

Ari Hautasaari (University of Tokyo Graduate School Project Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies)

Our joint research project was born from discussions with Miyuki Fujiwara on ideal forms of communication. In January of 2023, we created a Slack channel, and Rintaro Chujo joined us as a project member. I’m ecstatic that the results of this academic research, shared between Mercari R4D and the University of Tokyo RIISE researchers, and of presenting the findings of the project to the institute for the first time have netted us the “Best Interactive Presentation Award” of the 2023 HCG symposium. As we aim for both international research and the attainment of “ideal communication” going forward, I believe that our research is capable of growing into something that will make a contribution to society.

Rintaro Chujo (University of Tokyo Master’s Student, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies)

I am enthralled by how the first results of our joint research project with Miyuki Fujiwara of Mercari R4D have been received. Hautasaari and I are human-computer interaction specialists, and Fujiwara is a linguistics expert. At first glance, these two fields seem to be a world apart, but you could say that the research topic came to be for the first time precisely because it brought together researchers with such diverse backgrounds. We owe this award to the collaboration born from the comprehensive partnership project “Value Exchange Engineering” shared by Mercari R4D and the University of Tokyo RIISE. I am deeply grateful to the many people who supported us, including Kawahara. Based on the results we’ve achieved, going forward we will push for both research and social implementation in order to improve communication further.