Mitsue Conference 2019 "KAIZEN DAY" Event Report

On 22 November, we held our Mitsue Conference 2019 "KAIZEN DAY (in Japanese)". Despite the cold rain that fell in Shinjuku that afternoon, we'd like to thank the over 70 attendees for their participation.

As I wrote in my previous Column titled "Mitsue Conference 2019 "KAIZEN DAY" Event Information (in Japanese)", our inaugural Conference hosted six seminars, each on a different theme (UX, video utilization, SEO, CMS, accessibility, and guidelines), on the same day.

Session Overview

Commencing with Hiroshi Ushioda's "Realizing Website Improvement Through the "Weaving" of Design and UX" in which he explained, while contrasting the two keywords UX and UI, the crux of website improvement in an easy-to-understand manner.

This was followed by Mitsuteru Miyano's session titled "Corporate Video Blunders and Failure: Prescriptions for Improvement". Although it's been some time since online video usage became popular, this session specifically highlighted errors that tend to occur in video production processes, such as at the requirement definition, proposal planning, and release stages, as well as strategies to prevent such issues.

In his session titled "With SEO, what Improvement Measures are More Important than Display Performance?", Katsuhiro Araki introduced a range of SEO strategies such as keyword selection, page titles, and site structure optimization.

In his session titled "Committing to a Business Diet with CMS Transfer," Hiroyuki Shinha from our Systems Dept. discussed how to select a CMS that's both ideal for client companies as well as web professionals. He further shared the background as to why we recommend WebRelease from among the numerous available CMS products.

Kiyochika Nakamura's "Start Today! Understanding Current Web Accessibility - Assessment and Tips for Improvement" highlighted some of the issues related to accessibility and introduced methods for finding and improving them. As shared content was relatively simple for webmasters to implement, I believe that the session will prove useful.

Lastly, in my session titled "Improved Design Consistency for Improved Branding," I discussed the significance of creating and maintaining design guidelines. In this era of information overload where customer contact points continue to diversify, brand quality together with reinforcing "consistency" is becoming increasingly important.

On Reflection

In comparison with our usual longer seminars that focus on a single theme for 2 hours, at our Conference the percentage of first-time attendees from companies with which we have no business ties was relatively high. I believe that this Conference provided much opportunity to introduce our technical strengths in a broad yet light-touch manner.

Through a post-Conference questionnaire, we received feedback that included comments such as "really good", "I learnt a lot all at once", "While the conference was long and contained much information, it was not draining", "It was great - free and with good content", "I hope you continue hosting such events in the future", etc. From our perspective, it's still too early to conclude the scale of our Conference's success, however, at least it has been well received by attendees.

Nevertheless, as this was our first hosting, upon reflection, there were some "areas for improvement" that we've noted for the future. While I believe there were some attendee inconveniences, they have provided us with the opportunity to work on possible enhancements to our regular seminars too. Furthermore, if a similar Mitsue Conference is planned and held next year, we will work to ensure our content is even more fulfilling.

Finally, at the beginning of next year, we will be hosting our Web Design Trends 2020 seminar (in Japanese) at which I will be speaking. Applications are currently being accepted, although please note the seminar will be given in Japanese.

We look forward to your application.