Hi 👋, I'm Seisho Manabe, a seasoned freelance designer with over 20 years of experience. I craft exceptional design solutions that elevate brands, products, and user experiences.
Having worked at industry-leading design consultancies such as IDEO and frog design, as well as in dynamic startup environments, I bring a wealth of expertise and experience to craft holistic design solutions.
SERVICES
Product Design
Crafting user-centric product experiences that harmoniously address both business needs and unmet user needs. From ideation and concept generation to prototyping, user testing, and iterative refinement, I guide the design process to ensure exceptional outcomes.
Brand Design
Developing compelling brand strategies and identities that create a cohesive and immersive brand experience, encompassing visual elements, messaging, and brand interactions that resonate with your target audience and reinforce your brand's values and identity.
Design Consulting
Providing expert guidance to optimize design processes, foster cross-functional collaboration, and enhance overall design capabilities. I offer UX audits to evaluate and improve the user experience of your products, as well as design reviews to provide constructive feedback and guidance for your design teams.
Additionally, I provide support in hiring exceptional designers and design leaders, ensuring you have the right talent to build a strong and effective design team.
Interim Design Leadership
Bringing my extensive experience in design leadership to quickly fill the gap in your organization.
As an interim design leader, I establish a strong design vision, provide mentorship and guidance to your design team, and help recruit and onboard a permanent design leader to ensure the long-term success of your design initiatives. This is 6 months package,
BIOGRAPHY
A life's work of embracing both the inspirational and the rational to create positive impacts through design.
Currently, Seisho works as a freelance designer/design director as well as consulting on various design-related topics for startups and organizations.
Most recently, Seisho took on the Chief Design Officer role at B2B fintech startup Pliant. Taking part in senior management for strategically involved through the lens of design. Building and leading product design, brand design, research, and content design teams.
Supporting the development of a digital company credit card solution that fits right into every company's setup flexibly. Focused on improving the user experience, brand building, and fostering a customer-focused design-driven culture. Ultimately, creating a company payment solution that turns the lengthy and costly process into a delightful experience.
Previously, Head of Design at Azena a Bosch IoT startup. Building a design team that covers designing a platform with multiple products, brand/communication, design system, and research that informs many decision-making.
Before moving to in-house positions, Seisho played the role of director at frog. He was acting as connective tissue between all disciplines in the frog team and ensuring that the strategic-creative vision is successfully articulated and executed on programs and across other related initiatives.
Prior to joining frog, Seisho worked at IDEO and was one of the first start-up members to establish IDEO Tokyo studio from scratch. He had been involved in a wide range of activities for developing IDEO presence in Japan.
Seisho is coming from a multi-disciplinary design background with a strong emphasis on human-centred design. He is interested in the nuances of human behaviours in different cultural contexts and designing experiences that take into account the human senses and subconsciousness.
EXPERTISE
Over twenty years of design experience have yielded a diverse skillset that touches on every part and many kind of projects.
BRINGING DISCIPLINES TOGETHER
Extensive experience on bringing various design disciplines, technologists and business strategists together to help innovate or/and solve complex problems for organisations.
BUILDING TEAM AND WORK CULTURE
Extensive experience on building strong teams, putting processes in place and promoting design culture in organisations.
KEEPING BIG PICTURES WHILE SEEING DETAILS
Extensive experience on supervising and directing projects to make sure that the vision and high-level strategy are kept and refected in details.
EXPERIENCE
Multi-disciplinary design background with a strong emphasis on human-centred design. Playing role of design leader for the past decade. Leading teams tackling different types and sizes of challenge -- from corporate to startup, opportunity area exploration to product implementation in a wide range of industry and business models.
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© 2018 Seisho Manabe. Made in Germany.