From product design to UI design

After I joined the company in 2015, I was responsible for the design of products such as freezers for trucks to enable refrigerated/frozen transport and drones for bridge inspections. After this, I participated in a wide range of work in addition to product design. This included appliance design and video direction for exhibitions to show DENSOʼs technology to car makers and user research to find the preferences of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Furthermore, through my experience working with HMI design of Lexus digital meters and HUDs, I now belong to a team responsible for UI design. As I learn new things every day to keep up with the increasing range of activities in DENSO designs, I am broadening the scope of my designs, such as my involvement in UI design work to digitize in-house paper forms.

Creating designs while gaining genuine experience

During modern UI design development, it is possible to confirm designs quickly using a smartphone. For example, I realize that the interesting part of UI design is repeating the cycle of actually looking at and touching items myself during minute investigations of button variations to check whether something is truly easy to use while being able to quickly make improvements. When I created an ingredient management app targeting restaurants outside Japan, I was not able to experience the actual locations due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, after surveying the on-site conditions remotely, we re-created the workflow of the restaurant, for example demonstrating the flow from the preparation of refrigerators and ingredients to cooking in the conference room and were able to move forward with investigations and improvements. It is important to build up actual experiences little by little in such a way to expand your imagination as a user while designing.

Solving problems over a wide area is now the focus of work

It is not the case that I had a strong interest in art university or college originally. I was interested in architecture and computer science, but when I learned that there was a university where I could study both computer science and design, I enrolled thinking I could learn a wider range of fields. As an undergraduate, my major was product design, but the environment allowed me to take courses from a wide range of fields, such as graphics, web, and space, in addition to product design, and I spent my days building a foundation for design as a whole.
Product design tasks frequently aim to solve a societal problem, such as items useful during a disaster or items focused on medical treatment. Learning the process of aiming to solve these problems, investigating, and repeatedly testing has become the focus of my work at DENSO designing over is current wide area.

Prioritizing growth as a designer

DENSO DESIGN has a climate that encourages its members to study and grow. When it is necessary to improve oneʼs skills, there are opportunities to proactively take courses inside and outside the company, and before the coronavirus pandemic, there were many opportunities for overseas business trips.
On my first overseas business trip, I went to Indonesia. As part of a preferences survey of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, I conducted interviews on my own in crude English and deeply felt the differences with Japan. I also realized the difficulty of communicating in a foreign language. Through a business trip that lasted less than a week, I deeply sensed the importance of understanding the conditions onsite. I was able to experience input that cannot be obtained through desktop research many times soon after joining the company. A few years later, I was dispatched alone to a motor show held in Germany where I surveyed the latest vehicle trends and HMI, collaborated with German design companies, and experienced local mobility services in-person.
Though it may make sense as a designer, the strength of DENSO DESIGN is an environment that makes such things second nature.

Tension when your actions are tied directly to the results

Because DENSO is a large company, I thought that the work for which I am responsible would have a small impact on its output, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Even fresh recruits are sometimes assigned big projects, and I strongly feel the influence of my work.
In my third year at the company, I was responsible for appliances and video creation for an exhibition to show off the companyʼs technology. While technological hearings with the requester and exchanges with the mock-up manufacturer and video creation company were proceeding, I moved forward with creating ideas, such as what kind of display items to create and how to appropriately show off the technology, at the same time. Of course, this kind of situation is intense, but because the things you say and think are linked to the overall output, there is a profound sense of accomplishment when the project is complete. Conversely, I can clearly see some things that I regret, so there are also times when I feel like I should have done something here... I feel that one of the interesting things about DENSO DESIGN is the ability to repeatedly take on such challenges.