Jan Chipchase

From my time at Nokia, I've seen the 99% positive and occasionally negative impact that communication tools can have on people.

As touch-screens have become more popular, they have retrained how we interact with images we see on many surfaces.

China in particular is an absolutely fascinating place to be. Culturally and politically and economically it's becoming more and more relevant. If you look at how China is perceived in different parts of the world, you can recognize it's very dynamic. It's also challenging what it thinks of itself.

There's a whole load of stuff in life that is worth documenting. You see it every day but don't even notice.

I specialise in taking teams of designers, psychologists, usability experts, sociologists and ethnographers into the field. It's called 'corporate anthropology,' but personally I'm more comfortable with 'design research,' because I'm not an anthropologist by training.

There is close to zero trust in institutions in Afghanistan. The mobile carriers have more trust than the banks.

Even if you don't state your ethnic background anywhere on LinkedIn or whether you are married with children, a scan of your photos and other people's photos featuring you will make it far easier to deduce.

The ability to identify someone at a moment's notice by snapping a photo of him or her, to trigger an immediate influx of data about the person behind the face, will forever change the world.

What do you think is the world's most recognisable container of information? It's the human face. We are constantly reading each other and responding.

Cultural comparisons are good because they can tell you about what's similar, but also sometimes they make it easier to see obvious differences.

I spend a lot of my time looking into people's bags and handbags - with their permission, of course.

It will be interesting to see if Seoul's urban vocabulary of numerous, ever-present interactive screens will translate to other cities such as Beijing, London, and New York. It will also be intriguing to see if smaller cities and towns adopt aspects of Seoul's screen culture throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.