Btrax is well-known for its multicultural business that connects Japan and the world. The company is regularly updating the website, but the services they provide are not tangible and its's hard for potential clients to understand the business at a glance.
This was a good start to adjust myself to the internal team. Previously I was working under Agile/ sprint environment and it helped me a lot to serve as a PM. I put all “to-do” lists into each ticket on Asana, and pushed the project forward by leading the scrum meetings. I quickly leaned about the new team and worked closely with each member. The best practice I learned was that it’s critical as a UX designer to understand what the business needs are, and how to trade-off and prioritize what we try to achieve with the website..
The client in the US is expanding their business in Japan to launch products for “healthy aging”. We conducted interviews to provide an overview and share insights of people aged 45-65 in Japan, with a focus on their perspectives on “Healthy Aging”. We provided a comprehensive report that contains individual results and overall takeaways. Also we shared 2 prospective personas to highlight the potential target users for the study focus.
This was actually a contractor project from a marketing agency in San Francisco, and we completed the project without hearing voices directly from the client company. On the day before the agency presented the report to the client, we had a meeting to discuss the contents, especially around the cultural findings. The following day, the agency contacted us that the presentation was a great success and the client was impressed!
They’re new to Japan, and expected us to help them to know about the Japanese market. Japanese people have high standard toward what to eat, and tend to consume natural ingredients instead of relying on tablets or energy drinks. The products they use are limited, but because of the high motivation to be healthy, once they meet with a product that meets their demands, it will be a huge success in Japan. Cultural adjustments are critical for any multinational products.
The automobile manufacturer are feeling behind with the digitalization in their front business. They launched a project team with an aim to achieve the two major goals: a) (for internal) improve the efficiency of dealer operations, b) (for customers) streamline the process for estimate. The project includes updating design for both front-end and back-end systems. The front-end app is mainly for sharing estimates with the customers who visited a dealer. The back-end website is for internal sales representatives and technicians so that they can easily check the service contents and auto parts to serve customers.
My area was back-end designing, and I worked under the high pressure of quality and time constraint. This is the reality of any design project, and I found myself growing a lot with this project. Also the client left us a lot of freedom on designing without forcing their preferences, so I really enjoyed designing this complex back-end system. Especially I'd emphasize those lessons learned:
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