Design X AI: Creativity, Culture & Craft in the Age of AI
Hey, Product Friends! 👋
Welcome to Tokyo Design Community — one of the leading AI-driven product design communities in Japan, where design meets technology, business, and the tools shaping what comes next. We're all about practical insights, real-world experience, and learning together.
This session, we're keeping creativity and craft right at the center. As AI becomes part of how we all build, the real magic still lives in the human layer: the idea, the taste, the culture, the reason behind the work. So we're going beyond the tool and beneath the surface with two creators who build with heart. ✨
You might be wondering...
✨ How does creativity actually flow from a first spark of an idea all the way to a real, finished thing?
✨ What does building with AI look like when the goal is a genuine creative output, not just a prompt?
✨ Why does the same product look completely different depending on where in the world you open it?
✨ How do design, psychology, and culture quietly shape the products we all use every day?
✨ What research questions actually reveal where users are getting stuck?
What we'll do together:
Andrea's talk on her creative journey, from idea to real output, with a peek behind the scenes 🎨
Phoebe's talk on how great products get localized across cultures, with real case studies
Q&A and honest conversation about where creativity and product design are heading
Networking
This isn't a polished, corporate keynote. It's a real, open conversation with real human connections about how we're all learning to create in this new AI era. 💬
Meet Our Speaker — Andrea Márquez
andsiosa
Topic: Beyond the Prompt
A look at how creativity moves from a first idea to a real, finished piece, and how AI fits into that journey without flattening the fun.
Andrea Márquez started her journey in the design world as a graphic designer who fell in love with web design. She holds a Master's degree in Animation and a specialization in UX/UI Design. She is an Adobe Ambassador, content creator, Awwwards Jury member, and works as an Art Director at an advertising agency in Miami. But what she loves most is exploring ideas, experimenting with new technologies, and combining different mediums and industries to bring those ideas to life. 🎨
Meet Our Speaker — Phoebe Yu
UX designer, ex-Amazon. YouTube content creator (128K subs)
Topic: How To Adapt Software Design Across Cultures.
How does Google Maps work differently in India? How come Yahoo Japan hasn't changed its website design in 20 years? And what questions can a designer ask to create software for users in different parts of the world? In this talk, I'll go through stories of how companies successfully localized their products to different regions. At the end, we'll explore research questions and AI tools to help ensure what we design solves for a specific user group.
Phoebe spent her early career designing payment products at Visa and Amazon — the screens people glance at for three seconds before tapping "confirm." A few years ago, a question started nagging at her: why does an interface look completely different depending on where in the world you open it? That question turned into a YouTube channel, now sitting at 126,000 subscribers and about 8 million views, where she picks apart how design, psychology, and culture collide inside the products we all use every day. She'll walk us through real case studies of how companies have localized their products for users around the world, and the research questions she used to pinpoint exactly where people were getting stuck. 🌏
Our Community: Where Curiosity Meets Opportunity, Theory Meets Practice 💫
We're a diverse, welcoming collective of:
👩💻 Product Managers
🎨 Designers & Creators
🧑💼 Builders & Entrepreneurs
🛠️ Developers & AI Engineers
📈 Marketers 📚 Students
✨ A supportive, judgment-free zone to exchange ideas and grow together
🙌 We'll check in with everyone beforehand to ensure a smooth, delightful experience!
🗓 Sunday, September 27
🕙 10:00 PM JST 3:00 PM CEST / 9:00 AM ET 6:00 AM PT ·
💻 Google Meet | Online