Yuta Takeuchi
Japan
CAREER Enrolled in April 2011; Completed master’s degree in March 2013
I was in an information engineering laboratory as an undergraduate, and I’ve always enjoyed using my hands to build things. At KMD, I was part of the “Reality Media” project, where we brought engineering approaches to manufacturing. At first, I just thought that we would have a lot of fun building things, but the Reality Media approach gave me fresh, new perspectives about working back from human perceptions to design the experience that you want to provide and incorporate it into a system. My research focused particularly on virtual production systems in which people could copy and paste real-world tactile sensations to easily allow others to have the same experience. Our slogan in the project was “Demo or Die,” because it was virtually impossible to communicate what our research was aiming for without people actually experiencing it. Those words were inspirational, and we created many, many prototypes. Today, I work as a technical director and planner at an advertising agency. I still value the attitude that I learned at KMD that “experience is everything”.
(This article was written in March 2014.)