MATERIALITY 1

Technology innovation and new creative experiences

The Wacom Pro Pen 3 was developedin tandem with the Wacom® Cintiq® Pro27 tablet. The pen greatly enhances thedrawing experience, with detachable parts
that can be replaced to suit the user’s
work style. This means customizable grip
thickness and center of balance, as wellas the option to have a side switch or
not—and any combination works. Thispen works on EMR.

Joohoon Lee

Hideyuki Hara

Wacom Linear Pen technology wasfirst incorporated into the pen designed
for the FMV LOOX from Fujitsu Client
Computing—a Wacom Technology
Solution customer. The sharp nib makes
it easy to see the exact location the pen istouching. This pen works on Active ES®.

Far leftJoohoon LEE
Executive Principal Technologist
EMR Module Development Leader

Lee was born in Seoul. After graduating from Pohang Universityof Science and Technology with a degree in Materials Science,
he joined Samsung Electronics in 1996. There, he worked
at the Mobile Communications Business division, where heserved as technical director for the development of the S
Pen and other products. He left Samsung in 2019 and joined
Wacom in 2020 following an invitation from Wacom President
Nobutaka Ide.
Left_Hideyuki HARA
Vice President
AES Module Development Leader

Hara is from Shimane Prefecture, Japan. He developed
an interest in the theory of relativity from a young age andresearched theoretical physics in university. After earning his
master’s degree at Nagoya University in 2008, Hara joined
Wacom. He became involved in designing the Active ESmodule in 2013 and, in 2020, became the lead developer on
the project.

SHALL WE TALK?
How technological innovation will elevate the future
Leading the development of Wacom’s core technologies—electromagnetic resonance (EMR®) and activeelectrostatic (Active ES®)—are Joohoon Lee and Hideyuki Hara. The two talented engineers agree: Wacom isa technology company. Their words reveal their pride in their work, for it is engineers like themselves who areresponsible for paving the way to the future—not through business acumen but through a focus on technology.

50

A fondness for scienceleads to a career at Wacom
Let’s begin with you, Mr. Lee.
Could you tell us a bit about yourbackground?
Lee I was born and raised in theGangnam District of Seoul up until
university. I’d gotten a bit tired ofthe hustle and bustle of Seoul asa teenager, so I decided to go to atechnical university away from Seoul,
where I majored in materials science.
Did you always enjoy the hardsciences?
Lee I took all kinds of lessons when
I was little, like painting and piano,
but mathematics suited me best.
So, naturally, I chose a university ofscience.
How did you come to join
Wacom?
Lee I used to work at Samsung, but
one day I realized that I had alreadydone everything that I wanted to dothere. Just when I was thinking that I
wanted to work in a new environment
where I could delve deeper into
unknown areas as a engineer, Mr.
Ide—who I already knew—reached
out to me. I took my time to think
everything through, but eventually I
decided to come to Japan because I
was intrigued by the possibilities thatlay before me.
Mr. Hara, did you also likescience as a child?
Hara I grew up in the town of Taishain Shimane Prefecture, Japan, a short

5-minute walk from the famous Izumo
Taisha Shrine. I’ve always hated being
told what to do [Laughs.], so I never
took part in any after-school lessons
or clubs. Instead, I would read books,catch insects outside, and spend a
lot of time doing crafts. I liked mathand science class in school. I was
fascinated by a scientific comic bookon the theory of relativity, so I ended
up going on to graduate school anddevoting myself to the research oftheoretical physics.
Why did you leave sciencebehind to join Wacom?
Hara Although I did like working
as a scientist, I have loved creating
things since I was a kid. I think thatsomewhere deep inside, I had a pentup desire to create something. Also,
when my parents bought me myfirst computer in high school, I was
so excited about being able to draw
digitally that I got myself a pen tablet,which happened to be a Bamboo
tablet from Wacom. I rememberedthat tablet when I was applying forjobs, which eventually led to joining
Wacom. That was in 2008, so I havebeen with the company for 15 years.

How Active ES works
Mr. Hara, you lead thedevelopment of Active ES, Wacom’s
active electrostatic technology. Could
you describe how it works?
Hara In case of electromagneticresonance (EMR), the development
is led by Mr. Lee here. In EMR, amagnetic field emitted from the sensor

51further, how can we take this matured

key. You can’t think just as a Wacomof inconvenient or perplexing

technology to the future? That is myengineer or just about the Wacom

experiences that make us think, “Whatfocus now. My immediate challenge

device you’re working on. You haveis to consider how to build a businessmodel that leverages the technologicalto mobilize all of your knowledge

does it mean?”Gaining a newfound appreciation
for drawing / writing combined withvalue of the professional pen toproblems—even if it means defying
practice and history—and in so doing

digital technology—could considerably

provide solutions based on EMR
technology.

challenge yourself to reach a levelthat you can be satisfied with. I think

Wacom’s responsibility to refine
technologies to help facilitate thisthink like a businessman trying

this kind of mindset is necessary

scenario.

to reach new markets; instead, I
approach challenges first from theparticularly for young engineers, inSince I am a technologist, I don’tand senses to search and solve

Business and market
development is important, but
technological innovation is evenbelow an LCD screen generates aninductive current in a pen’s coil, which
is used to transmit information suchas the position, tilt, and pressure of
the pen. That means that the pen
does not need a battery. Active
ES technology, on the other hand,requires a battery-powered pen.
Static electricity from the tip of thepen is used to transmit information on
the pen’s position, tilt, and pressure.
The benefit of EMR is that the pen
doesn’t require any batteries, but you
do need sensors behind the liquid
crystals to generate the magnetic
field. Meanwhile, Active ES eliminates
the need for dedicated sensors for thepen.
What are the benefits of ActiveES?
Hara One notable feature is its
versatility. Touchscreens have becomecommonplace since the advent ofsmartphones, even in computers.
If you’re going to incorporate touch
sensors anyway, it’s fairly simple
to design a system that uses
those sensors to acquire positional
information about the tip of a pen.
That’s why many PC manufacturers
have incorporated Active ES. In fact,
much of our Active ES technology
is sold to original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) for PCs andtablets.
What are the advantagesof Active ES over other similar
technologies?
Hara The protocol name of a digital
pen is just a name. Think about

52

languages—the ability to speak
Chinese or German, for example,
doesn’t confer any specific advantage
in and of itself; in the same way, there
is no great advantage or disadvantage
to the protocol itself. What is importantis not the kind of signal that’s emitted
from the pen but rather the kind ofperformance we achieve. That is
why it is so important for Wacom tofocus on how far we can push thistechnology and to take responsibility
for it, which I believe is our strength asa company.
Since Active ES is a relatively
versatile technology, could it be
adopted in areas that are not yet
digitalized?
Hara Absolutely. Since an Active ESsystem hinges on a touch sensor anda controller, it is easy to spread usages
by adapting to different protocols. It
is also relatively easy to control riskin terms of manufacturing and the
supply of parts. As such, it is suitable
for applications in education and otherfields relating to social infrastructure.

The future of EMR
Mr. Lee, where do you wantto take Wacom’s proprietary EMR
technology going forward?
Lee Wacom has been developing
EMR technologies since thecompany’s founding. As Mr. Harasaid, use of digital pen technology
is growing rapidly. So how can wedraw on Wacom’s unique strengths
to enrich the world of EMR in a waythat is unique to Wacom? To go evenmore important to you to create newexperiences.
Lee Exactly. Since Wacom is atechnology company, I think it is vitalfor us to create value by making themost of the technologies that only
we have at our disposal. And that isexactly what I wanted to do when I
joined this company! I think we will find
our next big story—the next innovationin Wacom pen—through this process.
Once we engineers produce results, I
am sure that the business side of thecompany will follow through.
Hara I fully agree. If you’re in anenvironment in which people do not orcannot challenge themselves, talented
engineers will become frustrated
and quit. But if you build a corporate
culture that pushes people, they willgrow and will naturally want to keep
working here.
What would you say is thephilosophy of “Wacom-ism” sharedby the entire engineering team? For
example, big-picture thinking, logic,
and intuition are all necessary skills
for creative thinking and technologicalinnovation.
Hara I think it is important toencourage people who can see
the big picture to express theiropinions and incorporate them intodevelopment. I myself am an engineer,so others probably see me as a very
logical person. I keep a technology
roadmap in my mind, and I’m inclined
to assign team members to theroles where they can best use theirindividual talents to work towards ourdestination.
What about you, Mr. Lee? Whatdo you value as an engineer?
Lee I think a broad perspective isenrich our lives. I believe that it isWhat are your thoughts, Mr.

order to grow.
Lee?

technology and then integrate thetechnology into the business side.

SHALL
WE
TALK?

You mentioned youngengineers—what do you think of

Lee I think that what awaits us isa connected society, one in which

Wacom’s?

all information and all devices are

Lee When I first started here, I wasworried because everyone was soconnected. Devices may be controlled

quiet. But when I began making an
actual effort to speak with them, I was
pleased to see that there are in fact alot of good engineers here who havea lot of grit. They all have their own
skills and passions. I’m sure that thenext person to lead Wacom is alreadyamong them.

may switch to using voice input toissue commands. It’s not surprisingthat people worry about what will
happen to drawing / writing with aIs there a futurefor drawing / writing
Lastly, what do you think will be
the future role of drawing / writing witha pen?
Hara Considering that the Industrial
Revolution ended in the 1860s, laptop
computers appeared around 1990,
and smartphones appeared in theearly 2000s, it is clear that humanscience and technology has madetremendous progress in just the past
150 years. I have no doubt that we willsoon see very small devices with asmuch processing power as a presentday PC. Technology will continue
making things more convenient andlead to less hassle. However, while
things have become easier and moreconvenient in today’s society, people
are feeling tired, too. It’s exhausting tohave access to so much information
at any given time, and we’ve become
restless—we feel that we always haveby artificial intelligence (AI), and people

pen.
However, I don’t think that AI will beable to fully replace human ingenuity.
That’s why I want to explore how
we at Wacom can support people’s
creativity and imagination. Goingforward, I believe that Wacom’s
engineers must tackle such issues as
they try to envision the next digital pen
and do the work to make it happen.

I hope we can show
future generations how
great it is to draw /write by hand.

Design is all about thedetails.

to be doing something, all of the time.
In the world we live in, I think that theacts of drawing / writing are extremely
important to help us organize ourthoughts. As technology continues
to drive efficiency, I think there will
come a time when drawing / writing
will be valued again. Our image of thedigital world is one of immediacy, withno room for errors or flexibility, but
I think this may reverse to a certain
degree. We may see a comeback53