"Looking into the Future Design from the Viewpoint of a User"

Getting up in the morning, finishing a day’s work at office or home, and going to bed … In every situation, we who live in the urban society are influenced by so many designed products and environments. Those products, environments, service and communications designed by someone may cause physical and mental stresses to us as difficulty of use. We who are busy living in the urban society, however, tend not to feel something is strange in our lives. We are extremely individualistic. But, it is also true that many livingware products around us have been designed for average but ambiguous target users.

Starting with environmental design, tripod design devoted itself to study development of original user-participatory design techniques and its application for a practical manufacturing methodology from 1987 to 1990, in line with the theme “design adaptation to each user.” In 1992, we started consulting service on system engineering development of universal design and introduction and practical use of universal design to companies. To date, with our support, more than 60 companies successfully introduced universal design. Especially since 1994 when we started the development of Handy Birdy that won many international universal design awards, we have been making efforts to study our original universal design achievement level evaluation program and its penetration and application. Having an attitude to “create design together with users” is our working policy that we always keep in mind, cultivated through our experiences. The policy is supported by our confidence that design work for “a single user” may bring precious “value” and “technique” to designers, which was studied during the early years while trying the barrier-free design.

Indeed, you can look into "the future design from the viewpoint of a user."

Satoshi Nakagawa