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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