After a decade of a professional software engineering career in the web/mobile app industry, I started a new journey in service design at the RCA to develop my critical thinking and user-centred design expertise. The design skills built at the RCA and my professional engineering experience enable me to engage in service development from many aspects from the beginning to the end: from user research, ideation, and prototyping to implementation. I continue contributing to the growth of the start-up service as a design engineer. With these unique skillsets, I continue contributing to the growth of start-up services.
Yosuke Hatanaka
Portray Introduction –
You can see how Portray helps a new team member get involved and build meaningful relationships with colleagues, preventing isolation.
Background: a newly emerging workforce –
people are becoming working more flexible not only place-wise but also organisation-wise. That shift has accelerated since the COVID pandemic.
Loneliness: a challenge for a new workforce –
Loneliness is urgent to address for the remote and liquid workforce, particularly in three aspects: 1) starting during the period of change or transition, 2) a strong and insidious down cycle in relationships, and 3) contagiousness.
Two key insights
Problem statement
Portray is a powerful communication catalyst that strengthens a team relationship in an emerging remote and liquid workforce.
In Collaboration with:
Softwire is one of the UK's most well-respected boutique digital design, delivery and support agencies and is recognised as one of the UK's best mid-sized companies to work for.
Softwire collaborated with Yosuke as they both explored the potential of a new form of work that allows workers more flexibility and autonomy in the coming new workforce era.
The journey of my degree project started with my personal situation. I have worked remotely for years and mostly learnt remotely due to the pandemic and have often struggled to develop a meaningful relationship with my cohorts working in remote settings. That experience encouraged me to work on the project which tackled the loneliness and isolation that people working/learning remotely have, including me.
However, remote working/learning has many benefits such as flexibility and autonomy for workers and learners, less energy consumption and GHG emission by reducing human transportation, and more chances for global talent acquisition for organisations. I strongly believe this form of work brings humans to the next stage and will work hard to make this trend a new norm in the world.