Designing the Future, Together.
At KMD, we engage directly with real-world challenges while questioning what the future should be and creating new forms of connection through media design.
For KMD, companies, municipalities, research institutions, and civic organizations are not just clients or providers—they are partners who question, envision, and act together. Through collaboration between KMD’s labs and its partners, and drawing on the diverse expertise of our faculty in Design, Technology, Management, and Policy, we transform ideas into prototypes, prototypes into social implementations, and implementations into forces of societal change.
KMD’s co-creation framework consists of three main types:
Research Centers, which form cross-industry consortia,
Joint Labs, where multiple KMD labs collaborate on a specific topic, and
Collaborative or Contract Research, conducted between an external partner and an individual KMD lab.
Research Centers
This is a co-creative research organization where diverse stakeholders from industry, academia, government, and civil society collaborate to address high-impact public challenges that hinder the realization of a desirable future society.
Transcending the interests of individual companies or institutions, it pursues innovations that serve society as a whole—conducting continuous research that spans from the creation of technologies and designs to their implementation in systems and culture.
As a “co-creation engine for shaping the future,” it brings together partners from across sectors—industry, academia, government, and the public—to reconstruct the very framework of future society through the integration of technology, design, policy, and culture.
Fusion Industry Research Center (FIRC)
The Fusion Industry Research Center (FIRC) is an academic organization dedicated to co-creating a future society by accelerating the social implementation of fusion energy.
It contributes to building a sustainable and inclusive fusion industry through research activities in three areas: a think tank function for policy proposals and international trend surveys, a co-creation platform connecting industry, local government, and citizens, and support for demonstration sites.
Quantum Future Society Design Research Center
Quantum technologies (computing, communication, and sensing) possess the potential to transform both technological innovation and social structures as foundational technologies following AI and the Internet.
Their advancement and widespread adoption will normalize secure information sharing and advanced decision-making, transforming people’s lives and values, and providing an opportunity to reconstruct social systems and economic structures.
This center explores the social implications of quantum technologies as “Future Society Design” and serves as a global hub leading social transformation in the post-AI, post-digital era.
International VR Research Center (2010-2014)
The International Virtual Reality Research Center was established from 2010 to 2014 under the leadership of Professor Susumu Tachi, the pioneer of virtual reality research in Japan.
Positioning VR as a key foundational technology of the 21st century, the center served as an international hub aimed at promoting its social implementation through collaboration between academia and industry.
Joint Labs
This is an industry–academia collaboration framework in which KMD’s diverse labs and partner companies join forces to envision the future and conduct joint research and development addressing complex, multilayered social challenges.
By bringing together expertise in Design, Technology, Management, and Policy—the essential domains for solving contemporary issues—this framework supports the creation of new products, services, and social innovations.
Feel Tech
Building on research in haptic-sharing technology from the “FEEL TECHⓇ” project, which KMD has been conducting in collaboration with NTT DOCOMO since 2022, KMD and DOCOMO established a joint lab called FEEL TECH Lab in October 2025.
FEEL TECH is DOCOMO’s initiative that uses the Human Augmentation PlatformⓇ to expand human sensory experience through networks—converting and sharing another person’s movements and sensations in ways tailored to the recipient’s body and perception.
In the area of haptic sharing, the project aims to enable a new form of communication that allows people to more deeply convey emotions and experiences by sharing the sensation of touch according to how each individual feels it.
Synesthesia Lab
Formed through an alliance partnership,
this experimental R&D lab studies
synesthesia and related experiences.
We actively partner with companies, researchers,
scientists, artists and other like-minded
collaborators to bring unique ideas to life.
Joint Research
Industry–academia collaboration with the power to transform society is at the core of KMD.
At KMD, each faculty member connects their area of expertise with real-world social challenges, promoting collaborative and commissioned research with companies, municipalities, and organizations.
By combining KMD’s creativity with the implementation capabilities of industry, we create future technologies, industries, and new forms of social value through prototype development, social experiments, and service design.
Partner Stories
Everyone’s Mindscapes
The Key to the Future: Neurodiversity
Joichi Ito Collaboration with KMD “Everyone’s Mindscapes” exhibit
The Yabu Model
Using Cutting-Edge Digital Technology to Eliminate Disparities and Revitalize Local Communities
Yabu City Collaboration with KMD “The Yabu Model”
Interactive Museum
New, Engaging Experience of Viewing Cultural Assets
Toppan Printing and KMD “Interactive Museum”