People have their own ideas and perspectives, and each have their own inspirations and roots from the past. Although those episodes may appear to be random at glance, dots connect to lines and somehow link to what they do now. Different people have different roots, and do different designs, and we are here to realize that in “Diggin’ Roots”.

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This time we will look into the roots of Risa Yuguchi, who is influenced by her parents and their work manufacturing together with coterie magazine culture. She has been involved in web production, service development, and community management since the early 2000s.

Risa Yuguchi

UX Design Director / Design Engineer, Flying Penguins Co., Ltd.

After working for a web production company and an operation company, Risa is currently engaged in UX design and consulting at Flying Penguins Co., Ltd. She specializes in B2B  service and UI design. She supports service development through technology and design daily. An Adobe Community Evangelist, she runs the Adobe XD user group in Tokyo.

1. What is your philosophy behind design?

I am committed to eliciting and nurturing the passion of my clients and the people I collaborate with.

I have a lot of experience in contracted production, and I have found that the clients I work with are not always highly motivated. With start-ups, there are a lot of people with no clear idea of what they want to do, and with large companies, some people tell me their company has given them assignments, but they don’t know where to start. I think there are quite a few people that are suddenly assigned to web production under instructions from their company like this. I don’t think these people lack passion, but feel as if there is a distance there because it is unfamiliar territory for them.

This is why I feel that it is important to facilitate and nurture their passion by facilitating the project myself in order to ensure the smooth success of the project. First, I organize the situation, how we can use development to create a solution, and how the end user would use it and make everything concrete.

Once we know what we can do to some extent, they start making requests, and our mutual enthusiasm starts coming together. It starts to feel like you’re a team when they start making specific requests and ways to make them a reality, and you can expand your possibilities from there.

２. What are your ways of boosting productivity?

Actually, I am becoming less and less particular as the years go on. I used to be particular about a lot of things…

I used to love customizing my computer settings and was very particular about what I used. When I was teaching at a vocational school, I traveled across the county with my heavy MacBook and A4-sized Wacom pen tablet. I remember falling down the stairs a couple times because it was too heavy (laughs). Regardless, I was insistent on using my own tools no matter what.

But now I think I can do it with whatever tools and gadgets are available at the time. The reason I let go of my particularities goes back to when I was an instructor, where all of my students were using computers with default settings. If you were to customize too much without knowing the defaults, it would become difficult to teach. There is also the cost involved with having to reconfigure every new computer; I currently think I don’t need to bother with it.

Due to my work, I like to be familiar with useful tools so that I can show people them, but I try not to stick to one tool. I realized that it is better to be flexible and adaptable, especially when working with others.

３. Who has been your greatest influence?

I am the type that does not have many role models, but if I had to choose, I would say that I was influenced by my parents. My father was interested in computers from early on, so I had access to computers at home in the early 90s. I grew up watching him doing engineering, so I quickly realized that designing digitally, which wasn’t done much at the time, could become a career.My mother was great at handicrafts at a level that let her make money, and she would sell handmade items, make handmade kits, and write and sell books using her knowledge. Seeing her make money from up close using her skills may have had a big influence on my career. Making things in general was a natural part of my environment, and that is where my roots are. Incidentally, my mother is still very curious and creative to this day, and is a strong 60-something that studies Adobe Illustrator to factory produce stamps, and is looking to place orders via Alibaba (laughs).

Her mother, Chieko Yuguchi’s website can be seen here.

4. Is there anything particular that might be the roots of your designs and ways of thinking?

Web content in the 2000’s, maybe? The 2000’s was a time when individuals had their own websites, and it was a lot of fun.

I would often visit the website of a graphic designer that published a Photoshop course, because it had good explanations and was interesting. It was also a time when drawing communities on the internet thrived, with each sharing their techniques on their own websites. Even then I probably liked getting information more than I liked the websites themselves. I also did some work to compile and publish my knowledge, and I was featured in magazines from time to time.

I have always loved communities and learning content where you can exchange information like that, so I still put out information and hold events myself. I have always wanted to use more of my favorite tools like Fireworks and XD, and to see the user population. It was hard to hold any events for a while due to the pandemic, but we successfully held an Adobe XD event in December 2022!

５. What were you into as a teenager?

I loved to make Doujinshi (Fanzine) in my teens and 20’s!

I mainly worked on secondary works for my favorite games, and my favorite was “Atelier Marie”. It was an early title in the Atelier series, and I fell in love with it when I first saw it featured in a game magazine. I mainly drew and bound manga, and because drawing digitally was not widespread at the time, I collected screen tones, and would think about how expensive they were as I did. It brings back memories (laughs).

Since I often attended Doujinshi events, I acquired knowledge of printing, bookbinding, merchandise creation, and the set-up naturally. The experience was surprisingly useful at work, and I feel glad I did it often. I also had to plan my manga production backwards starting from the event dates, which may have served as a basis for my project management now.

6. Are there any services that inspired you in terms of design?

This isn’t that recent, Pinterest gave me a shock when it came out. The image layout was neither a grid nor side-by-side, which was revolutionary. I was impressed again when I read an article describing how close the designers and engineers worked together in developing and implementing Pinterest’s services.

These days, I find it more interesting to hear about what kind of theory is at work behind things rather than the design. For example, Google and Apple have been offering icon font systems for years as well. They are generators that allow you to change the thickness and color of icons, and are an interesting example of fusing design and systems.

Related links

Adobe XD User Festival 2022

This event was held on December 3rd, 2022, run by Yuguchi for Adobe XD users.