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

Visiting Lecturer / Design Research Fellow

Jun 2019 - Aug 2019
KYOTO Design Lab, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Kyoto, Japan

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).

Experience Design Tutor Specialist

Jan 2019 - Present
Parsons School of Design, New York, US

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.

Chief Design Officer

Jan 2018 - Present
Artrigger, Tokyo, Japan

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.

Product Design Lead

Apr 2016 - Jul 2018
IBM, Tokyo, Japan

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.

Senior Interaction Designer

Apr 2013 - Apr 2016
IBM, Tokyo, Japan

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.

Junior Interaction Designer

Apr 2009 - Mar 2013
IBM, Tokyo, Japan

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.

It's raining somewhere - This is a poetic experience that allows you imagine a different world beyond your living place. When you press the umbrella button below, you will see the city that is raining now and the popular song in that country. It is a window to the world you don’t know. As for implementation, I used OpenWeatherMap API, GeoDB Cities API, Last.fm API, and Youtube Data API.
The Art of Eclipse Forecast - Data visualization project using d3.js and CSS Animation.

Skills & Proficiency

Design Thinking

Adobe CC/XD

HTML/CSS/Javascript

d3/p5/three.js

Framer

React/Node.js

Arduino