Invited Speakers

Born in Tokoname City, Aichi Prefecture in 1966. After graduating from Kanazawa College of Art majoring in industrial design, he worked as an industrial/interface designer at a manufacturing company where he designed video cameras, digital cameras and medical equipment. He was awarded many prizes including machinery industry design award of Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun and good design award of Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization. Focusing on restructuring the design development process, he took a major role in framing design strategy and implementation/driving of HCD development process as a head of usability design group in 2007. Since he wrote a book entitled "KANJIRU Presen" (meaning design delighting), he has given so many lectures on universal design. In 2010, he studied the northern European welfare at Egmont Højskolen and Krogerup Højskolen (both in Denmark). He founded Gradie Corp. and has been president & CEO.

He is currently a member of The Accessible Design Foundation of Japan, Kyoyohin-net and also part-time lecturer at Kuwazawa Design School.