Fumitaka Takehiko, Service Designer and Studio Producer, Tangity Tokyo, Dennis Tischer, Head of Tangity Germany, and Megan Wang, Vice President, NTT DATA China

If we think of collaboration, we think about the Design Network. What is your vision about collaboration? And how important is teamwork for you?

Fumitaka: The Tokyo vision of collaboration is to have an organically connected, diverse and location-free team collaboration. Since the Covid-19 situation, remote-work makes easier to collaborate on projects and also easier to access diverse talent across global.

Tangity represents your community of designers across several markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. In this era of uncertainty what is the role of Tangity?

Dennis: With Tangity being a global community we bring in various local perspectives, such as micro trends, cultural changes and state-of-the-art solutions. We use these insights to bring transparency into this era of uncertainty by identifying trends early and exchanging best practices within our community.

Megan: China is a unique market and Chinese user behavior is very different, which means that our team’s knowledge and capability can be limited to Chinese customer. With close communication with our colleagues at Tangity, we can keep an open mind, learn global trends, and be more creative and competitive than other local players.

In recent years China has changed a lot, and many parts of China are now global. In large cities, user behavior mimics US and European markets, and as a joint global team, we need to know global trends.

Design realities bring together diverse expertise, numerous skills, and knowledge in local cultures. But what role plays your partner and clients within Tangity projects? Have you noticed a different approach during the lockdown?

Dennis: A lot of our clients who insisted on onsite presentations for projects before the pandemic were forced to remote work during lockdown. At Tangity we had to be both a design partner for our clients but also their guide through this transformation towards remote work with our design driven methods and digital tools such as MIRO, Mural, Teams and Slack. Our success during the pandemic has proven that projects can be done remotely. Many of our clients diversified their project approach after lockdown, combining onsite presence with remote collaboration.

Megan: Tangity uses Miro, but we didn’t use it at the start. Now, in our work with a JLR digital transformation consultant, we starting using it more, allowing us to work across sectors and markets with a common tool, and that really helps us.

Our success during the pandemic has proven that projects can be done remotely. Many of our clients diversified their project approach after lockdown, combining onsite presence with remote collaboration.

Great brands start from within. What is the impact the Tangity has in attracting design-minded talents allowing the community to grow stronger and create world-class solutions for diverse industries?

Megan: With top world-class industry lead customers and all great teammates, we are offering talents an innovation environment. We are willing to listen and learn from others, when we are looking for new talents, we are not only looking for “culture fit”, instead we are looking for “culture add” and for people who bring new dimensions, and strive to build teams with a variety of voices and outlooks.

We want to give our clients a clear perspective on innovation by putting humans in the center and giving innovation a clear purpose.

Tangity is a collaborative platform for innovation; what does innovation mean?

Dennis: Too often innovation is followed by creating labs or innovation units, while there are missing goals, clear commitment and sustainable innovation governance. Even more important, innovation is driven by fear – the fear of being disrupted, of losing market share, of becoming meaningless.

We at Tangity believe that innovation needs to follow a purpose and should not be driven by fear. Through our global collective, we combine diverse perspectives on trends and market movements with our NTT DATA heritage of technological understanding. Through this collaborative approach, we want to give our clients a clear perspective on innovation by putting humans in the center and giving innovation a clear purpose.