After studying graphic design and Japanese language and aesthetics, Chris moved to Tokyo in 2001 to begin his design practice. He co-founded AQ in 2004.
As managing director, Chris leads the design process, working with teams to clarify ideas, and transform them into beautiful, hard-working products.
Chris teaches Designing Everyday Life in Modern Japan, a course on the history of design in Japan at the University of Illinois.
Eiko co-founded AQ in 2004, and leads user research and workshop facilitation in Japan. She believes all good relationships start from listening, and strives to always keep her ears open.
Drawing from her roots as a communication designer, Eiko works with clients and designers to ensure that products and services have the right message and feel.
Tomomi is a project director and partner at AQ. She started as a junior project manager in 2009, making endless to-do’s and bug reports, before embracing facilitation skills and the practice of UX and service design as key to delivering useful tools and services.
After building up our UX consulting practice, Tomomi moved from Tokyo to Paris in late 2014. She focuses on expanding our opportunities for experimentation and growth, while working closely with the team to maintain the health of our project portfolio.
Visit Tomomi's Webite
Michi is a UX researcher with a focus on fieldwork, coordinating and facilitating interviews for the team to better understand the users that we design for. Her ability to build rapport with just about anyone serves her well in this role, and she delights in coming up with unexpected solutions for clients and her team.
Before joining AQ, Michi spent a few years building and operating educational software for SMBs.
Em is UX Lead at AQ. Originally hailing from the US, she moved to Tokyo at the beginning of 2018 after working at ustwo in Sydney, Australia. User centered design is her passion, and she has shipped many successful products, including the launch of inflight wifi with the airline Qantas.
In her free time, Em enjoys playing video games, studying Japanese, and cuddling with her two dogs. In a past life, she traveled the world with a professional choir and played the part of a turnip in an Opera.
Yumi is a UX researcher. After studying user centered design as a student, she specialized in research and has conducted usability tests and user interviews for more than a decade. She sees her daily work as a way to make it easier for people to grasp the essence of the products and services they encounter.
Yumi is also a passionate dog lover. She volunteers at a shelter and is studying to be a dog trainer, in a quest to complement her command of UX with DX (dog experience).
Sachiko is a UI designer with extensive experience in supporting the growth of early-stage startups in Japan and internationally. It's taught her the importance of building bridges between design, business, and engineering - a practice that she continues to pursue in her work at AQ.
Sachiko is a cat lover and taught herself voice assistance technology in a quest to build a cat talk interpreter app for humans. In her free time, she paints murals on bakeries. You can usually find her drinking a cup of milk tea.
Amelie is a Product Designer at AQ with a passion for human-centered design. Starting from her time in the music and fashion industries in US and Europe, Amelie has continually drawn inspiration from working within teams of diverse professional and culture perspectives.
After previously living in Fukuoka, Amelie moved to Tokyo in 2023, and can be found alternately exploring the city through its museums and cafes, or taking long hikes in the mountains.
