Studio D is a design, research and strategy consultancy with offices in San Francisco and Tokyo. We specialise in getting teams on the ground, anywhere in the world, figuring what is going on and applying what we learn to make an impact.

Most of our work is, and will remain confidential.

This is our fourth year in operation.

We freely admit to this being an experiment to see how far we can push our ability to deliver world class results with minimal infrastructure. The studio is run by myself and K, and our hiring cadence is in keeping with past years.

This year the core team spent half the year based out of San Francisco, the other half in Tokyo in order to set up a new office. The working principle has always been to have a home-base that inspires day-to-day. This is inherent in the fabric of Greater Tokyo, a city whose topology generates a disproportionate amount of serendipity.

This moment in history

The rise of human centered design and the consequent language of empathy masks a greater truth: that the intent behind the research is often not in the best interests of the people they pertain to serve. Furthermore, we’re at a critical time in the history of humanity — the rise of ML/AI driven decision making puts a greater distance between the decision makers, and those affected by those decisions. We need more people with the nuanced skills to connect with users, customers, constituents, and use their voices and diverse experiences to effect how organisations think and what they do next.

To this end we’ve redesigned the design experience from the ground up and, as you will read below, we proactively address the gap in skills we commonly see, and the need to reframe mindsets.

Beirut

The advantages of being an Asian of Indiscriminate Origin (AIO)

Our philosophy is that we are only as good as our local crew. Most of the fixers we use are hired locally, tho we occasionally deploy international fixers that can operate at a high level across cultures.

What are the skills that make for a good international fixer? That person is well-travelled, curious about other cultures, not hung up on their own culture, well-networked, is a natural multitasker and fearless. Some have a superpower they are not aware of — something I refer to as being of Indiscriminate Origin (IO). It allows them to be taken as a local, and thus ignored by the majority of locals, wherever they travel. In this line of work, blending in is a distinct advantage and provides the space to operate unimpeded, from Lagos to Laguna.

If a person’s features are too closely aligned to a particular (locally recognised) ethnicity, for example in Central Asia those features could include “stereotypical” Han Chinese, Japanese or Korean, they are more likely to be taken as an outsider. Thus being of indiscriminate origin is a distinct advantage. The spread of people of Asian-ancestry around the globe means that being an Asian of Indiscriminate Origin (AIO) often provides a natural advantage. Such is the world in which we operate.

Beirut

I’m sensitive to how this sounds, and put a high value on cultural diversity within my teams. I also understand how my white presence impacts the kinds of interactions I’m capable of having, or at least how they start out, and seek to balance that bias on all of my international teams.

Whilst being of Indiscriminate Origin is a competitive advantage for the international fixer role, everyone has the potential for meaningful social interaction, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity or any other number of obvious and non-obvious attributes to the local communities on the ground.

To apply for a local fixer role, sign up here. Everyone welcome.

Shanghai

Executive Assistant?

It’s been a busy year. In 2018 I’m planning to spend more time on strategic projects, and am looking to hire someone to ease my current workload. The ideal applicant is well organised, self motivated, culture-curious, and will need to be able to work closely/remotely with me.

Alumni

Good to see Studio D alumni, Lauren Serota move to Yoma Bank to work on mobile banking services in Myanmar and Venetia Tay head up Audience Insights at Mozilla. Both organisations are lucky to have them.

Harare

We wish our Zimbabwe crew good fortune during the political transition. On the most recent Studio D project in-country, it was the level head of our local fixer, Pamela (who at that time was 4-months pregnant) that ensured we only spent one night detained by the security forces. Our crew had spent the day running rural interviews, took a turn off a main road to a bumpy dirt track to go deeper into the bush. After twenty minutes we came across a village that was obviously preparing for a political rally — a few hundred people sitting in groups — under the shade of large trees, in the grounds of a school compound, and along a wall. We pulled to a stop, our local crew went to figure out what was going on, and I sat on a low wall surveying the scene.

After a bit of to and fro with the local authorities, whose permission we required to run interviews, we decided to decamp to a nearby village, and return when the event was over. Being mistaken for journalists is a challenge in many countries, even more so at that time in Zimbabwe’s history — Mugabe was then 91 years old, and there was a lot of infighting and jostling within ZANU-PF as to who would take over when he was gone. It was a politically charged environment in which to ask questions, let alone questions about money, the theme of our research.

On returning to the village to run interviews a policeman “requested” an appointment at the nearest town. It turned out that by sitting on that wall, I had aligned our group with one political faction, and thus alienated our group to the others. In the eyes of a local politician, our leaving had proven our guilt.

The policeman escorted us to the nearest town where, arriving at dusk, we were detained overnight in the local bar-cum-love-hotel-cum-brothel so that a member of the local security apparatus could travel up the next day to interview us. Pamela, Cara and myself understood the gravity of our situation, and went into survival mode. It was a tense 24 hours.

I won’t share how it ended.

The report from Zimbabwe is here.

Yoshino

In Studio D, the metric for a good project is that it changes the life-trajectories of the team. In January this year we published a report that explored the impact of aging, and declining populations — Japan will lose 40 million by 2050, and China will lose 400 million by 2100 respectively. Listening to life-stories is the most heartwarming aspect to this work, and the timeline of our Chinese respondent in her 90’s was something to behold. Read the report: Transformation: Aging in China and Japan.

As a value-add to Loftwork, our partner on that project, we also trained up their novice team.