In her day job, she is challenging herself to find ways to embed customer perspective and design thinking in the BtoB business, as the company is in the midst of a broad transformation from a camera company to an optical processing machine and healthcare company.
In this context, it is very difficult for her to realize the ideal processes within the company as a designer. It is not an easy task for her to make senior management, who have different backgrounds and ways of thinking, see the value of design thinking and change the organization and processes themselves. The current situation is that the team is steadily clearing up the issues one by one, trying to understand the viewpoints of engineers and managers and how they can constructively gain their sympathy.
When she is honestly dealing with organizational issues, she sometimes forgets that she is a designer, which is far from a mindful environment for a designer. Kaori will talk about how she continues to output as a freelance designer to keep her sense of being a designer fresh, whilst dealing with challenges in her day job as well.

Kaori is a service designer at Nikon supporting new business development in the BtoB divisions, and also a freelance design consultant for both small and large companies. She also has experience designing UI for cameras, and she won the Good Design Award best 100 and iF design award.

In the past she changed jobs and was involved in the launch of a small venture company that creates AI based on design thinking. She has a wide range of experience from cameras to BtoB services, even conducting ethnography to investigate the actual conditions of people working in sheet metal processing factories. She is energetically active because she believes that the power of design will certainly be of use in uncertain times like now.

In her private life, she is likes to make leather bags and baked sweets, and is inspired by the ideas of a 5-year-old child every day.