Founding Designer
Designing the interaction model for an AI-native industrial platform. Created an AI Constitution framework for ethical agent behavior, 50+ component design system, and multi-agent architecture for autonomous workflows.
Global Director, Innovation
Led global innovation strategy bridging design thinking with emerging technology. Drove AI-native product concepts and cross-functional innovation programs.
Director of Experience Design · Edge AI Consultant
At Slalom Build, led experience design for enterprise clients including Toyota Woven City. Concurrently consulted for TDK Corporation on edge AI sensor platform UX — CES 2024 Innovation Award.
Head of Technology
Led technology for immersive brand experiences across Japan. Directed Audi immersive launch event with generative visuals, spatial audio, and AR performance — bridging physical and digital experience design.
Director of UX — Visual Design & Design Systems
Transformed UX across two premium audio brands and 60+ products. Led platform migration from bitmap to vector rendering, negotiated Monotype embedded font licensing adopted by Audi, BMW, Porsche. Drove market position from #5 to #1.
Director of UX · Director of Technology for Visuals
Led UX for Gobbler's cloud collaboration platform for creative professionals. Concurrently directed immersive technology and real-time visuals at Further Future festival — pioneering the intersection of art, technology, and electronic music.
Director of Software Products
Led software for the C.24 — a Bluetooth LE MIDI keyboard launched at Google I/O 2012. Invented OS-level audio latency solution (USPTO Patent 9,165,476). Pioneered hardware-software integration for mobile music creation.
Product Manager, Traktor
Managed product strategy for Traktor DJ software — one of the world's leading digital DJ platforms. Bridged hardware controller design with software feature development across a global engineering team.
Research Lab
Research lab at the world's largest electronic music distribution platform. Explored next-generation music discovery, playback technologies, and platform innovation during the digital music revolution.
Consultant · PM
Consulted for Pioneer Electronics on DJ product ecosystem. At NHK Enterprise (Japan's national broadcaster), served as PM/Consultant bridging Japanese media technology with international standards.
Product Management & UI Group
Joined when QuarkXPress held 95% of the global publishing market — Forbes, Condé Nast, NYT, Rolling Stone. Progressed from visual design to product analysis. Contributed to Quark Interactive Designer, a JavaScript-native non-coding authoring tool for interactive media. Macworld Best of Show.
VJ / Creative Technologist — Immersive Experiences
A parallel creative practice spanning two decades — real-time generative visuals and live performance at EDC, Ultra Music Festival, Detroit Movement, Burning Man, and international venues. Blending code, art, and music.
Keisuke Shingu
Product UX Planning & Design Engineering
Tokyo / San Francisco
My roots trace back to the dawn of desktop publishing — designing with QuarkXPress when pixels were still earning trust over ink. That foundation in craft-level typography and layout carries through two decades of work across every screen: mobile wearables, embedded hardware, tablet, desktop, and 8K living-room interfaces. I've shipped 60+ products, hold a USPTO patent, and led enterprise UX consulting for globally recognized brands including Audi, Rakuten, and Denon Marantz.
Beyond product design, I design audiovisual immersive experiences for the music industry — real-time generative visuals, spatial audio installations, and interactive stages for festivals and live events. It's where my craft meets my passion: sound, light, and interaction merging into architecture.
Every new medium deserves a new interface.
The Medium is the Message — Extensions of Our Senses
Marshall McLuhan saw what most technologists still miss: the medium itself — not the content it carries — reshapes how we see, hear, and feel. Every technology extends a human sense. A 1-inch display with physical buttons extends touch. A voice-controlled speaker extends hearing. An AI agent extends thought itself. When I designed 60+ products across embedded firmware, mobile, and TV interfaces, I wasn't choosing between features — I was deciding which sense to extend, and which to protect. The interface must honor the sense it serves.
Human Agency in AI — Storytelling, Guardrails, Trust
AI agents are collaborators that must earn trust through transparent behavior. In my recent AI projects, I designed an AI Constitution: seven principles governing how agents communicate uncertainty, escalate decisions, and defer to human judgment. This draws from Anthropic's Constitutional AI, OpenAI's deliberative alignment, Google PAIR, Apple's HIG for ML, and Microsoft HAX. Every agent needs a story — consistent personality, honest limitations, graceful failure modes. Guardrails are not restrictions. They are the architecture of trust.
間 (MA) — Designing the Space Between
In Japanese aesthetics, MA — the interval, the pause, the space between — is not emptiness but potential. The silence between notes that makes the music. The void in a Zen rock garden that gives meaning to the stone. Isao Takahata, co-founder of Studio Ghibli and my professor at film school in Tokyo, taught me that the brush used sparingly stirs the imagination more powerfully than the brush that fills every corner. He also taught me to be my own harshest critic — not a critic of others' work. That discipline opens me to every perspective my teammates bring. I think as the customer, the business owner, the person living with the solution daily. This is not minimalism that merely reduces — it is purposeful emptiness that invites participation. Dieter Rams arrived at the same place from the other direction: as little design as possible. The space between human and machine is not a gap to fill with features, but a space to honor.
The Invisible Interface — Designing for Flow
The best tool is one you stop seeing and start being. Csikszentmihalyi called it flow — where skill meets challenge and self-consciousness dissolves. I've lived this as a VJ at EDC and Burning Man, where milliseconds of latency destroy the connection between intention and expression. I've designed for it at Native Instruments, where Traktor must disappear so the DJ thinks in sound and narrative — not buttons. This is MA in motion. Immediate feedback, minimal cognitive overhead, controls that anticipate intent. The best AI interaction feels like thinking alongside a collaborator, not operating a dashboard. When the interface vanishes, the art begins.
Let's build something together.
I'm open to Staff/Principal Product Design roles where hardware, software, and AI converge.