Chiho gave a presentation at the Good Design Award Seminar 2016, held on April 28th in Matsuyama. The event was hosted by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion and Urban Design Center Matsuyama.

Titled “Design Process Rooted in Empathy”, her talk introduced the design process of infield design based on empathetic thinking and co-creation, including some actual cases. The audience was a mix of local SME manufacturers, designers and the Urban Design Center members. The topic of “user observation for achieving empathy” drew special attention, with questions from the floor on effective ways of utilizing observation results, the difference between observation and web research, etc.

The Seminar was held in combination with a briefing of the Good Design Award applications, where Chiho is also a jury member. It was the first of its kind to be held on the island of Shikoku, and the room was filled with an audience exceeding its capacity of 40. The photo shows characters in the famous novel Botchan set in Matsuyama.