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Yoshikazu Hoshino
Yoshikazu (Yoshi) Hoshino, Master Designer, has passionately devoted his life to working for NewDealDesign for over 22 years.
His wide range of design works includes everything from small wearables to an entire smart house, from young startup clients to big corporations. He has delivered over 30 real products to the market and won over 20 industry-recognized design awards, including A National Design Award and many IDEA Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards as a part of the NewDealDesign creative team.
Yoshi works tirelessly to create a plausible balance between safety and extreme risk, ensuring all details tell the right story of high-quality design. He relishes tackling the highly complex design issues found in our connected, always-on society.
Born and raised in Japan, Yoshi moved to San Francisco to attend California College of the Arts and immerse himself in the technology and design culture that prevails.
NewDealDesign: https://www.newdealdesign.com/
NewDealDesign’s Approach to Fusing Design and Technology
Yasu (Interviewer): Thank you for giving us this valuable opportunity to interview. First, could you tell us about the origins and characteristics of NewDealDesign?
Yoshikazu Hoshino (hereafter Yoshi): NewDealDesign is a design studio based in San Francisco, led by its founder, Gadi Amit. It was established in 2000, and I joined in 2001. We have a team that includes industrial designers, experience designers, design strategists, and mechanical engineers.
At NewDealDesign (hereafter NDD), we call ourselves a “technology design agency.” This is because we have a team that integrates multiple disciplines, not only industrial design (ID) but also strategy design (SD), experience design (XD), and product development (PD). We don’t limit ourselves to hardware design, but we also work in areas such as digital interactions, service models, and the building of brand identity.
Our small and agile multidisciplinary team at NDD can produce more innovative designs by being involved in the client’s product development process from the early stages. For example, by having strategists and engineers participate from the early stages of the design process, we can significantly enhance our understanding of the mission, insight into the target users, comprehension of the latest technology, and the feasibility of bringing the product to market. As a result, we can avoid creating designs that are aesthetically beautiful but difficult to implement or impractical.
Yasu: Your team structure is unique among design agencies and studios.
Yoshi: Yes, it’s rare for a mid-sized design studio to have specialists in four different disciplines. This unique structure of NewDealDesign is the result of continuously adapting to the changes in the world. We believe this team structure is highly effective in deriving feasible solutions. For example, in complex projects like autonomous robots, it is extremely difficult for designers to judge the feasibility of unprecedented, advanced ideas, even with 20 years of experience. However, having engineers on the same team can eliminate such concerns and gain deeper technical knowledge from the early stages, allowing designers to expand their imaginations even further.
Additionally, by involving strategists and experienced designers in the design team, we can propose physical products and new user experiences and service models that accompany them. Unlike 20 years ago, today’s design process has become extremely complex. Even I, who mainly handle industrial design tasks, am constantly required to deepen my understanding of other design fields.
A Turning Point: The Project with Fitbit to Design Innovation
Yasu: Was there a project that served as a turning point for arriving at this unique approach?
Yoshi: One of the major turning points was the project with the representative startup of wearable health management devices, Fitbit. We received this project as a purely industrial design project, but it became the trigger for formally incorporating strategy design and experience design into NDD’s operations.
Yoshi: I still vividly remember when the two founders of Fitbit visited NDD in 2007. At that time, no wearable trackers or smartwatch product categories were linked to smartphones. When I heard their vision, I was surprised by their innovation.
Originally, Fitbit was conceived as a product to address health issues such as obesity. However, as we deepened our understanding of Fitbit, our NDD team began to wonder whether there might be a different approach, given the enormous potential of the idea. Gadi, the founder of NDD, has a keen ability to see one step ahead of the client’s vision. Even if someone has no health issues, everyone desires to live a healthy life, right? Therefore, we suggested positioning it not merely as a product to solve health problems but as a product that enables (empowers?)everyone to live a healthier everyday life, which opened up far more business opportunities. Although the work we were commissioned for was industrial design, we proposed this business strategy and brand message to Fitbit, and they accepted it. After that, similar products flooded the market, marking the beginning of the history of wearable trackers.
Yoshi: We also incorporated many of NewDealDesign’s suggestions into the interface design. It felt too mechanical to merely display data collected by cutting-edge sensor technology as numbers. We thought there should be an interface design that would allow users to intuitively engage with the data and enjoy the health management experience in their daily lives through Fitbit. That’s when we proposed a UI expression where a flower graphic grows according to the user’s achievement of their goals. This allowed users to see their current progress at a glance easily, and when the flower fully bloomed at 100%, it gave them a sense of accomplishment. NewDealDesign places great importance on emotional aspects that resonate with users. At the time, graphic designers were responsible for UI design as part of the industrial design process, but after this project, strategy design (SD) and experience design (XD) were officially incorporated into NDD’s design operations.
The Innovative Design Born from the Project with Intel and the New User Experience It Brought
Yasu: I remember when Fitbit first came out; it was a groundbreaking wearable device. I recall being excited by the design, which visualized its use in everyday life, even though there were no similar products in the market then. I understand that many of NewDealDesign’s new proposals, which Fitbit had not initially expected, were incorporated into the final product.
From what you’ve mentioned, the thought process of incorporating strategy and experience design from the early stages to create a completely new product usability and service experience seems to have emerged from this project.
Yoshi: Another turning point was the design project with Intel. We designed a 2-in-1 portable device that can be used as both a laptop and a tablet.
The project with Intel, where a completely new detachable hinge structure was proposed
Yoshi: At the time, Intel was looking to enter the market for processors for smart devices, and they needed a flagship product that would be both innovative and serve as a showcase. As such, they aimed to create a hybrid device that could meet two seemingly opposing requirements: being a fully functional laptop with a mechanical keyboard for tasks such as emailing and document creation while also being a lightweight, thin tablet for web browsing and streaming content. At the time, no devices successfully met these two requirements at a high level.
After devising various ideas to solve this difficult challenge, we arrived at a completely new detachable hinge structure. By having a mechanical engineer join the team to prove the designer’s original idea, we created a proof-of-concept (PoC) prototype that functioned exactly like the real product and presented it to Intel. Even though it was a completely new concept, by proposing it alongside a PoC that worked like the final product, we were able to convey the potential of the idea to the client and received approval for commercialization. These two projects—Fitbit and Intel—greatly influenced the current design approach of NDD, where the four teams of SD, XD, ID, and PD work in fusion.
Yasu: (While handling the prototype presented during the interview) The feeling and ease of operation of this hinge are very satisfying. It’s not just about the mechanical novelty or the fun of the gimmick; it has been refined to the point where it creates new use scenarios. I’m also impressed by the consideration of materials and manufacturability, which have been carefully thought out even for mass production.
I now understand that the experience and know-how gained from Fitbit and Intel’s projects have contributed to NewDealDesign’s current approach and that these projects are vital for creating truly innovative designs.
Designing for the Coexistence of Humans and Technology with the Serve Autonomous Mobility Robot
Yasu: Another project that personally left a strong impression on me is the autonomous delivery robot “Serve.” Could you tell us more about this project?
Yoshi: Serve is an autonomous mobility robot designed to cover the “last mile” in logistics, where the final leg of delivering goods to individual customers still relies on human labor. At the time, we started the design and engineering work in collaboration with Postmates.
Autonomous mobility robots evoke complex emotions in humans. While people may find them very convenient, they may also worry whether this is truly the direction the future should be heading. In response to these concerns, we explored what kind of design could integrate seamlessly into communities without instilling fear in people.
Yoshi: As we went through various ideas, we arrived at a design inspired by the familiar silhouette of a shopping cart. The shape of a shopping cart is something that people subconsciously recognize as familiar. By incorporating elements that people have already seen and experienced somewhere, the design naturally becomes more approachable.
Moreover, American urban landscapes are colorful and varied, particularly in diverse cities. You’ll find buildings constructed 100 years ago alongside vibrant murals that add life to the streets. Instead of giving Serve a clean, futuristic design, we deliberately emphasized mechanical elements to evoke a slightly nostalgic impression. By giving the robot a personality through its expression and color scheme, we aimed to ensure that it would blend naturally into the diverse cityscapes of America.
In this project as well, not only industrial design but also experience design and engineering were involved from the early phases of development.
The Core of a “Technology Design Agency” That Supports Innovation Through Frontier Spirit
Yasu: Listening to the detailed background of each process and the teams involved, I can clearly see NewDealDesign’s values and philosophy. Furthermore, the final designs all reflect a consistent attitude toward new technology.
Yoshi: NewDealDesign, as we call ourselves a “Technology Design Agency,” has a very positive attitude toward technology. To put it another way, our mission is to understand both the negative aspects and the skepticism that people may feel toward technology while proposing new solutions that harmonize the ever-evolving technology with the resulting lifestyle changes to enrich daily life. The final design output may sometimes push the latest technology forward in a very advanced way, or other cases, like with Serve, it may intentionally exude a slightly nostalgic atmosphere. However, this is always the result of collaboration with the client and is not about adhering to a specific NewDealDesign style. We believe that the uniqueness of NewDealDesign lies not in the appearance of our designs but in the creative process itself.
Yasu: By the way, you have moved from Japan and lived in the US for quite some time now, Yoshi, but I imagine you still retain your Japanese sensibilities. Are any aspects of American design or culture that stand out to you as particularly different from Japan or other countries?
Yoshi: One major difference I feel is the deep-rooted “frontier spirit” in American culture. For Americans, there’s tremendous value placed on being the first to reach unexplored territory. The creation of the product category for wearable trackers by Fitbit is a good example of this.
In America, there is an abundance of entrepreneurs who take on challenges and investors who support them. As a result, there are countless failures, but these are not viewed negatively; rather, they are recognized as a natural outcome of pushing into new, uncharted areas. This perspective is reflected even in education. Teachers encourage students to have unique thoughts and express them in front of others from an early age.
In the design field, when you propose unexpected designs that pleasantly surprise clients, they are extremely pleased. Even if that proposal isn’t ultimately chosen, presenting such unexpected ideas makes the meetings lively, and various opinions and ideas emerge from the participants. These creative discussions are very helpful in making the final correct choices.
It’s not enough to logically propose only solutions that meet the requirements. Designers are expected to deeply understand the client’s larger mission and propose designs that push it even further.
As I mentioned earlier about NewDealDesign, what is most valued here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is creating innovation and being the first to pioneer unexplored territories. The team assembled to support this mission is a “Technology Design Agency” like NewDealDesign.
In a world where technology evolves so rapidly, simply pursuing aesthetic ideals as a designer is not sufficient. It is crucial to deeply understand the client’s vision, accurately analyze users’ voices and thoroughly consider the feasibility of manufacturing from the early stages. Only then can we propose advanced designs that are ahead of their time. To achieve this, it is essential to assemble a special team that functionally integrates not only designers but also strategists and engineers.
A Deep Resonance with the Philosophy Behind Innovation-Driven Design
Through my interview with Yoshi Hoshino at NewDealDesign, I gained a deep appreciation for the thinking, processes, and team structures involved in producing truly innovative designs. I was struck by how deeply committed they are to each aspect of their work.
Ultimately, I also realized how design should create new value, not originate only from regions like America and Silicon Valley, but in a broader, more essential sense.
Lastly, I would like to thank NewDealDesign and Yoshi Hoshino for this invaluable opportunity.
NewDealDesign: https://www.newdealdesign.com/
