Case Study 01
Mori Bunka Kiosk
Rebuilt a 52-screen gallery kiosk for screen readers and switch access; wayfinding errors fell 31.2%.
Theo
Nakamura
I design interfaces, accessibility systems and motion for startups and cultural institutions in Tokyo.
About
Origin
Nakameguro, 2009
I started as a front-end contractor building ticketing pages for small Tokyo venues. Watching visitors squint at 11px type and mis-tap 28px targets taught me more about interface design than any course did.
Turning point
The audit that changed the practice
In 2017 a museum asked me to redesign a kiosk. Screen-reader testing failed on 41 of 52 flows. Fixing it took four months and became the spine of everything I do now: interaction craft and accessibility treated as one discipline, not two checklists.
Today I work solo, two clients at a time, shipping design systems and motion specs that survive contact with engineering teams.
Selected workFour projects,
Four projects,
measured after launch.
Case Study 02
Kanso Bank
Cut onboarding drop-off by 23.6% by splitting KYC into three resumable steps.
Case Study 03
Hazel Design System
142 tokens, 38 components; shipped a release in 6 weeks and cut design QA tickets 44.8%.
Case Study 04
Setouchi Captions
Live-caption reader for an arts festival; reduced task completion time by 18.4% on tablets.
Practice areasFour things
Four things
I actually do.
Interaction design
Flows, states and micro-interactions specified frame by frame, handed over as running prototypes.
Accessibility audits
WCAG 2.2 AA review with screen reader, switch and keyboard passes, plus a prioritised repair list.
Motion systems
Duration, easing and stagger budgets written as tokens engineers can implement without guessing.
Design-system architecture
Token structure, component API naming, and the governance rules that keep it alive after handoff.
Free resources
Files I use daily, free to take.
Writing
- Naming things before drawing themWhy component API naming should be settled in week one of a design system.Jun 2026
- Motion budgets, written downA one-page spec that stopped my handoffs from turning into animation debates.Apr 2026
- Screen reader passes on kiosk hardwareWhat breaks when a touchscreen has no keyboard and no headphone jack.Feb 2026
- The 11px problem in Japanese UIMixed kana and Latin type needs two scales, not one compromise.Dec 2025
Worked with
Mori Bunka Museum
Kanso Bank
Setouchi Triennale
Hazel Labs
Nihon Archive
Tsuki Health
“Theo rewrote our onboarding in four weeks and left us a spec our engineers still follow.”
Aiko Serizawa — Head of Product, Kanso Bank
“He found 41 accessibility failures we had signed off on, then fixed every one.”
Daniel Oyelaran — Digital Lead, Mori Bunka Museum
Two project slots open,
starting September.
Replies within one business day, JST (UTC+9). Calls booked Tue–Thu, 10:00–16:00.