Vacan
Three and a half years in Tokyo as senior designer at Vacan, redesigning the AI-powered web app that delivers live crowd tracking across public spaces.
Turning live sensor data into a map people trust.
Vacan uses AI and IoT sensors to measure how busy a place is in real time. Over three and a half years in Tokyo I designed that status for restaurants, hotels, offices, car parks, restrooms and evacuation centres, each with its own idea of what "full" means. Vacan Maps is the public-facing product that turns the sensor stream into something anyone can read at a glance before they leave the house.
The evacuation-centre work is the part I am proudest of. In a country that plans seriously for earthquakes and typhoons, knowing whether a shelter still has room is not a convenience feature.
I led the redesign of the core map product: the visual system, the research behind it, the wireframes and prototypes, and the motion that makes live data feel alive. I also ran regular workshops with the team to shape new features, and designed the responsive landing pages that promoted each service.
Density is hard to read on a map.
Crowd levels change constantly and vary by place type. The old interface made it hard to answer the only question users actually have: is it busy right now, and should I go? The redesign had to make status instantly legible, scale across thousands of locations, and stay calm rather than alarming.
A status system, plus motion that reads as "live".
I built a clear density system (colour, iconography and labels that map to real occupancy), then designed motion in Lottie and After Effects so updates feel continuous rather than jumpy. Research grounded the thresholds so the states matched how people actually judge "busy".
Recognised by two international design juries.
The redesigned Vacan Maps went on to win the Good Design Award (2021) and the iF Design Award (2023), two of the most respected marks in the field.
The density system outlasted the redesign itself. It became the shared language across every Vacan service, holding up whether the space was a restaurant, a car park or an evacuation centre — the same states, read the same way, by people in very different situations.
