Career Profile
Masaki is an Award-winning Creative Technologist specializing in critical, interdisciplinary, and human-centered research. He is in the Design + Technology program at Parsons School of Design to refine UX research methodologies and explore the planetary scale problem-solving beyond user-centered design. He is from Tokyo, Japan and majored in Computer Science at the University of Tokyo. Previously he worked at IBM Design for 10 years as a UX/UI designer to bridge human and technology. Masaki has an expertise in finding right questions to solve and turning them into valuable functions because he believes we cannot come up with a great solution without a great question.
Experiences
Research the alternative and sustainable futures of Kyoto city using experimental and interdisciplinary design research literature for socio-technical problems such as speculative design (by RCA), transition design (by CMU), circular design (by IDEO).
Tutoring +100 students for UX/UI design process and implementation. Identify students’ ideas and problems and give appropriate guides from UX research methods to programming techniques such as html/css/javascript, Adobe software, Maya and Unity to realize students’ creative ideas.
ARTRIGGER is a startup for artists. We’re making a brand-new portfolio tool using blockchain technology. As a chief experience officer, I contributed to implement FOLLY: Matching service between creators and recruiters via creative portfolio. Implemented and launched a service through incremental iterations of Build / Measure / Learn cycle. Organized a scrum development team consisting of two designers and three developers, and doubled the development velocity. Structured mid-term a business and UX roadmap based on customer experience and succeeded in raising $ 1 million in funding.
Focused on bridging technologies to reach the market. Designed a creative and sustainable business ecosystem to solve customer problems by utilizing design and business methods.
Formulated a UX/UI of an enterprise application in collaboration with IBM Watson and AI researchers, and reduced the time taken by the worker’s task by 30% as a result. Led two visual designers to redesign a UX/UI of a manufacturing industry client’s responsive website. Defined personas and developed concepts, sitemaps, wireframes, and prototypes using the human-centered approach.
Reformed a UX/UI of an education industry client’s website in collaboration with a project manager and raised the number of customer’s application by three times.
Projects
Current engineering projects are here. More projects are in my new portfolio.