Taking on multi-field challenges daily

Soon after joining DENSO, I was responsible for car navigation development and provided graphics for navigation content and mass production. After this, I was responsible for design related to the DENSO brand. I participated in projects ranging from booklet creation, product photography, exhibition design, and in-house signs.
In the Design department, the scope of things that could be designed was wide-ranging, and for someone like me from the Product department, there were many opportunities to learn when I was a newcomer. There were also many opportunities to brainstorm new product development in collaboration with other departments and businesses and many highly stimulating tasks in which people could share their opinions freely and easily regardless of their position.
I now belong to the User review team that was newly created in 2020 and listen to the true voices of end-users. Every day feels fresh as I take on new fields such as interviewing and MR/VR.

Carefully clarifying the thoughts of users

The User review team clarifies how the designs created by the Design department will make end-users feel and whether they will resonate. Using statistical methods, Kansei (emotional or affective) engineering, and vehicle ergonomics, we carefully unravel the thoughts and voices of users.
I had my first experience as an interviewer with this team. By talking with users directly and repeatedly asking profound questions, I worked to clarify the subconscious thoughts (insights) that even they did not realize they had.
The foundation of the Design department is that if you say you want to do something, you will be given the opportunity to try it. When a team was launched in the new field of user review, I said that I wanted to learn about interview research and was soon given an opportunity to study it. Your ability to move forward increases the more you let it be known what you want to do.

Becoming a designer again after maternity leave

I have two children and took four years of maternity leave to care for them.
After this, I returned to work as a designer and am grateful for the members of the Design department that welcomed me back warmly.
During maternity leave, I saw a lot of a world that I might not have been able to know when I was an office worker, took it in, and encountered the value systems of various people in society. I met people that are home during the day, self-employed people, and retired seniors and became interested in how they passed their time, thought, and lived.
This experience and the way of dealing with people I encountered is now very useful in my work.
As a company, DENSO considers both work and private life as very important.
They quickly introduced remote work to keep up with the times. Because I chose a place to work that matches my circumstances to a certain extent, I can now treat both my work and home life with care.

The thrill of advancing big projects as a team

Large teams are formed to advance a single project. When seniors were invited to the company for a user review, engineers, designers, experiment experts from the Research department, in-house organizations to conduct ethics reviews for experiments, and facility representatives joined forces to conduct experiments using a drive simulator. As the number of people increases, power is necessary to move the project forward, as are communication abilities.
When work moves forward and the problems in front of you become clear during these difficult situations, everyone working together smiles. You create something that makes the end user very happy, and all of your teammates smile. When you see this, you feel good, and it creates an atmosphere to make good things.
Because you are a team, there is synergy that is also thrilling.
When there is something very much worth doing in your daily routine, you are filled with happiness.