With a deep passion for design thinking, strategy and research of emerging technologies, I design concepts and strategies for digital and real experiences.
Having lead projects involving startups, spatial design, hospitality, human machine interfaces, AR/VR as well as virtual production, I am able to draw from a wide spectrum of knowledge as well as deep technical insights, allowing me to create cutting-edge yet human experiences.
Key Skills
- Research and Future Visioning:Â From hardware startups to the metaverse to AI, having been involved and researched many trends, I get under the surface of the buzz-words and separate the wheat from the chaff.
- Consumer and Human Need Analysis: Identifying user needs through design thinking and ‘jobs to be done’ approaches, while still looking for deeply rooted human needs, that are not accounted for by typical business models.
- Prototyping:Â Creating prototypes and POCs for stories, spaces, interactive activations or applications using both 2D and 3D fast prototyping techniques, to test assumptions.
- Interaction Design: Designing easy to understand interaction systems and human machine interfaces, especially as they cross from the physical into the digital worlds.
Experience
Now
April 2023 - Associate Program Director at Wunderman Thompson
- Executing a complete revamp of a leading global FMCG corporation's local website to optimize consumer experience in both brand and product discovery
- Consulting with the UI/UX team to identify relevant use cases and optimize the user journey across several brands
- Guiding and managing a development team of 15 people across front-end and back-end, including daily stand-ups to achieve client goals
- Discovering the overall digital cross-channel strategy and suggesting a new system that optimizes both sign-up, engagement hurdles and overall CDP system optimization
Tokyo
January 2020 - March 2023 - Account Supervisor at TBWA\HAKUHODO
- Creating experiential concepts and strategies for live shows, interactive installations, physical-virtually connected spaces and AR/VR apps.
- Managing expectations with product stakeholders and defining user needs and features of each product, while managing technical development with vendors, including:
- Kinect controlled transparent display installation: furthermore, facilitated content development and guided UI development
- Physical-Digital fusion live show on LED stage, which adjusts virtual background according to camera perspective: furthermore, managed development of all the virtual spaces within this show
- Interactive AR app and its UI, from content to wireframe and exhibition install
- Creating interior design and space design for exhibits and installations, including 3D simulations with SketchUp and TwinMotion.
- Preparing and running stakeholder and production team meetings on a regular basis, facilitating and mediating inter-disciplinary, multi-cultural teams across several departments both intra- and inter-organizationally.
2019 - 2020 - Project and Production Manager at iLUKA
- Managed interior design build of the biggest temporary hospitality site for Rugby World Cup 2019, of 3000 PAX capacity.
- Located, vetted, briefed and contracted suppliers for interior construction.
- Managed multi-million USD budget for interior build and entertainment program, including after project reconciliation.
- Assessed risks in build structure, logistics schedule and planned for operational contingencies for the 6 month operating period
- Connected off-site creative teams and production suppliers to create creative deliverables to order, including interior and exterior design
- Facilitated bilingual client meetings over Vectorworks design plans to coordinate A/B-construction vendor with C-construction vendor requirements, including health and fire safety requirements.
- Created and signed off mood-boards with stakeholders and sourced finalized materials
Kyoto
2015 - 2019 - Self-Employed Project Manager
- Ran ‘mini-agency’ type business providing website creation, video creation and post-production.
- Conducted client hearing and defines goal statements and matching SOW, to match the client’s needs.
- Translated these SOW in development tasks and creative tasks and outsourced each to suitable parties.
- Managed production timelines and budget while identify development risks, scope creep and planning for contingencies.
- Sourced and combined a web deployment system for Wordpress run websites, that allows outsourcing key functions to third parties.
- Sourced, vetted and recruited appropriate designers and developers for each project and managed them in the development process.
- Assisted startups in process automation for marketing processes, CRM integration and reservation systems.
Early Years
2009 - Assistant Project Manager at Albatros, Germany
- Developed the prototype UI of one of the first iPhone, touch interface based golf court apps.
- Developed prototype UI for wall-mounted touch displays for the same function, in a time before the first iPad release.
- Slashed prototyping time in half by coordinating UI development directly between Germany based C-Level management and Russia based developers.
2008 - Project Manager at Symposium Events, London
- Spearheaded and executed a complete redesign and recoding of the company website by introducing Wordpress and coding the client-facing templates in PHP CSS, transforming a simple blog into a magazine style portal.
Education
- Educated at Middlesex University in Film,Video and Interactive Art
Skills Overview
- Trilingual in English, Japanese and German.
- Post-Production: Video Editing (Final Cut Pro) Sound Editing (Logic Pro), After Effects
- Image Editing: Photoshop, Illustrator
- Web: HTML, CSS, Basic PHP, CMS (Wordpress), Google Analytics, CRM Automation
- CAD: SketchUp, TwinMotion, Blender
- Prototyping and Customer Journey: Mira, Figma, Keynote, Adobe XD
- MS Office & Mac Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, Keynote, Powerpoint
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All the stuff Ive done
Restricted Portfolio
OLD INTRO
I am an experiential strategist, creating experiences and products for B2C brands. I design concepts and strategy for Product launches, virtual and physical experiences, as well as retail and hospitality spaces.I am fully bilingual (Japanese, English) and with my wide technical and creative expertise I control and manage every phase of a product, from concept and strategy, over creative development and quality testing, to final delivery and operation of each product.
Key Skills
Strategic
- Research:Â Research existing data as well as planning and conducting qualitative and quantitative research to establish brand and product strategies.
- Needs analysis: Identifying customer and employee needs and building models through personas archetypes and/or ‘jobs to be done’ to provide human-centered solutions.
- Systems thinking:Â Exploring and mapping complex systems into journeys and maps and formulating concrete strategies and tactics.
Design
- Prototyping:Â Creating prototypes and POCs for stories, spaces, interactive activations or applications using both 2D and 3D prototypes, to test and verify assumptions.
- Interaction Design: Designing easy to understand interaction systems both in physical and digital worlds.
Product Management
- Stakeholder Management: Establishing all product stakeholders requirements and negotiating those needs into a coherent product SOW that delivers value to the end-user.
- Technical Management: Deep technical insight across a range of disciplines allows me to facilitate between technical execution teams and stakeholders, creating a coherent and value generating result.