Visioning design for making the law familiar - Four utilization models of the law
Authors: Inaba Takashi , Yamazaki Kazuhiko , Hiratsuka Shota 
Published: June 2023

The Japanese government has proposed Society 5.0, which is now known as the 4th Industrial Revolution, and the use of open data is attracting more and more attention and rapidly changing society and industrial structure. In line with these changes, the existence of law is also being called upon to change. However, while it is "extremely important to make the judiciary more familiar and accessible to the public," [Note 1] this has yet to be achieved. Rapid innovation has led to the creation and expansion of markets that have no legal system in place, and the law is still left to only a few experts.This study aims to create new social value by exploring the ideal form of law suited to the current social situation. We will also utilize design as a means to achieve this goal, and summarize the results as a case study of initiatives in the fields of law and design.3. This study contentBased on the aforementioned background, we surveyed domestic and foreign cases of advanced efforts regarding the Japanese people's awareness of and relationship with laws, and presented the characteristics of these cases. Based on these characteristics, we proposed a vision of "Law and Design for All. Finally, we will discuss and summarize the process that led to the vision proposal and discuss what is needed for collaboration in the fields of law and design in Japan.In this paper, we show what a "vision utilizing law and design" looks like, based on the current research we have conducted. In addition, the definition of vision in this study is "a desired vision of the future based on an individual's intrinsic motivation.4. research resultsA literature review was conducted to examine the Japanese people's awareness of the law. The survey revealed that they perceive that current laws are made by lawmakers whom they trust but do not trust, and that they are not involved in the process. In addition, they are not aware that they are making the laws, and are only required to decide and abide by them without knowing it. As a result, we believe that the problems are that they do not know that the law exists, they do not know how to use it because they do not know it, and the law is not up to date.We surveyed examples of activities, technologies, and services to solve these problems, and categorized them according to the target areas. As a result, we were able to classify them into LegalTech, OpenGovernment, GovTech, CivicTech, and Others (cases of utilization other than technology). It was found that there is a major trend toward the use of open data and citizen participation.In addition, a workshop was held to survey individuals' awareness of legal issues and use it as a reference for creating a vision. The theme was "issues and desires that you feel in your daily life that you think are related to the law. The participants were asked to write their awareness of legal issues on post-it notes and paste them on imitation papers. The reason for the ambiguity of "I think it is related to the law" was not the fact that the law is actually related to the issue, but rather to find out "what the person who wrote the post-it thinks is related to the law.As a result of the workshop, it can be said that the state that "Law and Design for All" aims for is a state where "people's awareness of the law is changing," "people are becoming more familiar with the law," "people are thinking about creating a better society," and "people feel their personal opinions are reflected in policy and law. It can be said that "people's awareness of the law is changing. We believe that law is subject to change, and that it is necessary to move from passive involvement to active involvement. Based on the above given conditions, we proposed a model in which law is viewed from the perspective of four relationships: "utilize," "protect," "improve," and “create.5. ConclusionBased on a survey of Japanese people's awareness of the law, case studies, and workshops, we have proposed a model that views the law from four perspectives. In the future, we plan to increase the number of cases in which this model is used and elaborate on it.The proposed model will enable us to understand the stages of legal utilization, and to realize the state that "Law and Design for All" aims to achieve through the cycle of the four stages. In other words, the "vision of utilizing law and design" can be described as the creation of a story that utilizes the proposed model.