I'm Kaoru Sato. I make things.
I design product with a focus on slick user interfaces for complex user needs. I also make music and write.
I currently work as a freelancer with several long term customers, predominantly focusing on the design and build of complex business information and workflow products. My primary focus is on the public and third sectors and the arts, and projects and businesses that focus on a net zero carbon aspiration.
Previously, I co-founded and was creative director of The Guild, a digital design and build agency that specialised in crafting exceptional user experiences across web, mobile and virtual metaverses. I have agency, consultancy and freelance creative experience going back to 1995, covering web, print, digital marketing and advertising.
I've won and been shortlisted for various awards, notably PPAi, Revolution and BIMA for my work with Microsoft and Centrica. My work on the Beck's Bier website was highly regarded by both trade and mainstream press, receiving kudos in New Media Age (site of the week), The Observer and The Daily Star. My weblog, the draGnet was placed among the top 50 British blogs by .net Magazine.
I am a transgender woman, undergoing transition. Please refer to me using she / her pronouns. Thank you.
Services
User experience
Your users' needs match your needs by ensuring that the usability and usefulness of my work is unparalleled.
Design and build
I craft excellent products from design through to build, utilising expertise gained across multiple channels.
Visual identity
The aesthetics and values of your project are in safe hands with my skill and experience building brands online.
Selected customers
Public Sector and adjacent
Transport for London / Arts Council England (Creative Partnerships) / Independent Transport Associates Ltd (ITAL) / Home Office / RAMM for Exeter City Council / West Lothian Council / OFCOM / UK Border Agency
Private sector
Zero Carbon Farms / Primary Talent International / WGSN / Pantone / Camilla Staerk CSDK / Future Classics Fashion / MM Films / Beck's Bier Art Sponsorship Programme / Artrocker Magazine
Third sector
British Film Institute / Jeans for Genes and Genetic Disorders UK / British Heart Foundation / Amnesty International
White Label
Purple Crane Software / Digirati
Testimonials
Kaoru is a consummate professional who has demonstrated an ability to accurately interpret the requirements of our clients. We have been working with her on various projects over the past eight years, during which time she has produced some very intuitive user interfaces that support the many workflow requirements our clients have. I would therefore, have no hesitation in recommending her to anyone who has the opportunity to work with her, as a Customer, Partner or Supplier.
— Sandra Weston, Project Management lead, Sheila Evo Group, Independent Transport Associates Ltd. (ITAL) | Read case study
We’ve been working with Kaoru on a regular, on-going basis now for ten years. She is very much an integral part of our team here at Purple Crane working on client projects and in-house marketing. Her creativity combined with excellent problem-solving and communication skills continues to help us provide an excellent service to our clients on many, varied projects. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Kaoru (as long as she still has enough time to continue working with us)!
— Chris Bond, Director and Co-founder Purple Crane Software | Read case study
I can't recommend Kaoru enough. On my project (at Arts Council England) she was professional, friendly, rapid in response and able to get under the skin of our organisation to know exactly what we needed and then deliver it with minimal fuss.
— David Armstrong, Head of e-communication and digital media, Department of Energy and Climate Change
Selected work.
Due to the confidential nature of much of the work it is unavailable on this public website. Extended case studies with visuals and other artefacts are also available. Please contact me to request a password.
Mobile app for subterranean farm yield tracking
Zero Carbon Farms are a cutting edge AgTech company that builds and operates 'Controlled Environment Farms', providing a future-proof and sustainable solution for growing.
My partners Purple Crane and I were tasked to develop a mobile solution for tracking crop yield from seed weighing through sowing and propagation, growing and harvest in s pilot farm deep underneath inner city Clapham, South London.
Challenges included ensuring ease of use in a dark, noisy, wet and physically demanding work environment in an extremely time sensitive workflow, where the users were farm operatives clad in PPE style clothing, complete with gloves.
My UX research process led to the design of a tablet based app that required minimal interaction onscreen. Most of the workflow could be performed using NFC token taps (as with to Oyster card readers) and selective use of implicit validation rules (no screen tap means "OK").
My role: UX research, product design and build
- Turning business requirements, user interviews and in farm workflow observation into user requirement specification and wireframes
- Prototyping UI for script based tests with farm operatives, supervisors and business sponsors
- Development of look and feel
- Development / build / testing of user interface
- Visual design of user interface elements
- Working with developers to ensure visual consistency and excellence and the constant checking of user experience against initial requirements
- Product demos with supervisors and farm operatives.
Technologies I've used
- Authoring
HTML5 / CSS3 / Javascript - Libraries
JQuery / Bootstrap 5 / Datatables - Bespoke development
Single page PWA compliant mobile app, NFC scanning integration - Prototyping
Omnigraffle, HTML / CSS
Relationship
- Customer: Zero Carbon Farms
- Software development partner: Purple Crane Software
- Project duration: January – May 2022
- Project control: Scrum
Real-time railway management software
ITAL is a software solutions provider with a long track record delivering productivity improvements to transport services and infrastructure providers such as rail operating companies. They bring innovative software based solutions to complex situations by utilising their deep sector knowledge in clever ways.
ITAL’s detailed knowledge of the rail industry has resulted in the Sheila Evolution Train Crew Management System (now known as Merlin), a groundbreaking solution that allows train crew managers and train service controllers real time tools to manage the movement of crews across the network and control the rescheduling and rerouting of train services, especially in response to incidents on the network that might in other circumstances lead to disruptive and lengthy delays. Allied with a mobile app used by drivers in train cabs allowing fast communication of instructions and schedule changes, Sheila aims to give sensitivity to crew management in a way that has not been possible before.
Since early 2021, Sheila Evolution has been deployed at MTR Elizabeth Line, Southwestern Railway and Abellio Greater Anglia, with further deployments to come.
Kaoru is a consummate professional who has demonstrated an ability to accurately interpret the requirements of our clients. We have been working with her on various projects over the past eight years, during which time she has produced some very intuitive user interfaces that support the many workflow requirements our clients have. I would therefore, have no hesitation in recommending her to anyone who has the opportunity to work with her, as a Customer, Partner or Supplier. Sandra Weston, Project Management lead, Sheila Evo Group, Independent Transport Associates Ltd. (ITAL)
My role: Business requirements analysis, user research, product design and build
- UX lead on project steering group (software architects, railway sector experts and ITAL board sponsors)
- Turning business requirements into user requirement specifications across all the modules of the system
- Working day to day with industry specialists and customer representatives to make sure that the user's pain points are represented and tackled in the final solution
- Prototyping UI using Mockingbird and hand-coded web pages
- Development of look and feel across web and mobile
- Development build of user interface
- Visual design of user interface elements based on ITAL and Sheila product branding
- Working with lead developers on the web and mobile teams to ensure visual consistency and excellence and the constant checking of user experience against initial requirements
Technologies I've used
- Authoring
HTML5 / CSS3 / Javascript - Libraries
JQuery / Bootstrap 3 / Datatables / Openstreetmaps with Leaflet.js layers - Bespoke development
SVG based abstract rail network map layers with Google-like panning, scrolling and other interactivity - Visual design / draughting
Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator - Prototyping
Mockingbird, Omnigraffle, HTML / CSS - Mobile
Xamarin Forms
Relationship
- April 2015 – April 2022
- Customer: ITAL Group
- Software development: in-house
- Project control: Waterfall with Agile-esque sprints
White label design services
I can also come into your software development organisation and work, "on demand" as your in house UX / UI / visual design resource.
Purple Crane Software are a small, London-based software development comapny with whom I have a long and mutually beneficial relationship. They forego the cost of having a permanent UX / Design hire on their salary, while I get to work with clever people on some of the very interesting business tools that they develop. One of the most satisfying small projects was the design of Purple Crane's own website, where I was able to use some of my photography skills, as well as learning Umbracco, a CMS that was new to me.
We’ve been working with Kaoru on a regular, on-going basis now for ten years. She is very much an integral part of our team here at Purple Crane working on client projects and in-house marketing. Her creativity combined with excellent problem-solving and communication skills continues to help us provide an excellent service to our clients on many, varied projects. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Kaoru (as long as she still has enough time to continue working with us)! — Chris Bond, Director and Co-founder Purple Crane Software
Role: UX, UI, Design and points in-between
- UX lead, UI designer and developer and visual designer where they have a project need
- Helping with new business activity where required
- Design and development of in-house marketing materials
Relationship
- Partner: Purple Crane Software
- Relationship: Ten years, ongoing
- Project control: pizza, beer
Experience,
- 2011 - present
- Product / UI Designer, UX consultant (self employed) Predominant focus is on the design and build of complex business information and workflow systems. Selected customers include: Zero Carbon Farms, ITAL Group (Independent Transport Associates Ltd.), Primary Talent International;, Genetic Disorders UK / Jeans for Genes Day, Pantone, WGSN, 11890.ie. White label services for Purple Crane Software, Digirati Ltd.
- 2004 - 2011
- Co-founder / Head of User Experience / Creative Director
The Guild (subsequently PSP Rare Digital) Full service digital creative agency that I co-founded in 2004, specialising in work for third and public sector organisations and the arts and media sectors. We completed projects for Arts Council England (full web build), British Film Institute (digital rebrand) and more. The Guild offered consultancy, design and build, branding across web, mobile and 3D virtual metaverses. The Guild became part of PSP Rare Group in 2009.
- Co-founder / Head of User Experience / Creative Director
- 2001 - 2004
- Digital strategist / creative (self employed) I worked on a freelance basis in several capacities from art director for hire to strategist and consultant for organisations such as Scottish Courage breweries and Arts Council England. For The Arts Council, I helped form the digital strategy for Creative Partnerships, a revolutionary government funded programme to reinvigorate creative education in English schools. During this time, I also created digital advertising campaigns for companies such as Halifax Bank of Scotland, Vauxhall Motors and Paramount Pictures.
- 2000 - 2001
- Creative Director
Chemistry Communications (now part of Publicis Groupe) Chemistry was born from a merger between TPDi (below) and Manifesto, a direct marketing agency. I was part of the management team that helped steer the new agency through its first couple of years, working with brands such as Beck’s Bier, Kronenbourg 1664, BT, Channel 4, Sony and Goldfish (Centrica). I worked closely with my counterpart, the creative director of the non-digital division to create strong synergies across channels in all the creative work we produced. Chemistry was recently acquired by Publicis Groupe.
- Creative Director
- 1996 - 2000
- Designer Senior Designer Creative Director
TPDi (formerly Fusion Interactive) Fusion (later rebranded TPDi) was one of the pioneering web agencies of the mid–late 90s. I was promoted through the art department to Creative Director in ’98. TPDi had a strong technical focus and we built complex content managed and CRM based websites for Microsoft, ITV, Sony Business Europe (BE) as well as retail sites for Granada Home Entertainment and rich content FMCG sites for Scottish Courage / Beck’s Bier and others. For Sony BE, I was effectively creative director of their whole B2B digital presence for a period from 1997 to 2002 (the account travelled with me through multiple agencies and beyond and I steered them successfully through two complete visual identity refreshes). Prior to this I was an intern, and later, designer at Intermedia, one of London’s first digital agencies (1995-6).
- Designer Senior Designer Creative Director
- Higher education
- BA (Hons) Fine Art
Goldsmiths College, University of London
- BA (Hons) Fine Art
Expertise.
- UX > Product Design
- Exemplary User Experience knowledge from user requirements gathering and analysis through to design and production of Information Architecture and User Interface
- Concept to execution skills in many media including web, mobile, print, video and music
- Award-winning art direction and copywriting skills.
- Delivery
- Front end stack – HTML, CSS, Javascript / JQuery, many libraries in common use
- Figma, Sketch, Axure, OmniGraffle, Mockingbird for producing prototypes, demos, IA
- Exceptional Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator
- JIRA, Miro, Trello, Unfuddle, Office, Teams, slack for workflow management
- Front end implementation on CMS frameworks such as Umbracco, Drupal, Wordpress
- Photography / retouching; hand illustration & cartooning; film-making / editing – Final Cut Pro; music composition, performance, recording and production – Logic Pro, Ableton Live.
- Human
- Articulate and astute, able to organise, influence and lead teams of technical and creative people
- Experienced speaker at higher education institutions and professional events
- Good spoken Japanese, basic written and read
- Fast learner and (mostly) patient trainer.