Interview with Haruo Oba In this issue’s profile, Touchpoint publisher Prof. Birgit Mager speaks with Haruo Oba, the General Manager of the Sony Corporation Creative Center B2B Design Department. He started introducing service design to Sony in 2010. Haruo Oba is the General Manager of the Sony Corporation Creative Center B2B Design Department. Born in 1962, he joined Sony in 1986 after graduating from Chiba University. Haruo Oba designed consumer audio products until 1990, then he joined the Advanced Design group in late 1990 and designed computers and interfaces with the Sony Computer Science Laboratory. In 2009 he became the leader of the B2B design unit for broadcast, motion picture, medical, life science and finance divisions. Haruo Oba has received numerous awards including the Good Design Gold Award for VAIO and interaction design, as well as the Red Dot Award.
Birgit Mager: Oba-San, what is your professional background and what are you doing at Sony?
Haruo Oba: I joined Sony in 1986 as a product designer. The first three years I worked for the Audio Product Design, then I had the chance to go to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, USA to study design for one year. When I came back to Sony, I was in charge of the VAIO computers and, at the same time, I belonged to the CSL, the Sony Computer Science Laboratory where we carried out many projects in collaboration with scientists. Today I am in charge of the B2B business. How did you encounter service design?
Through you (laughter …). Actually we have been very interested in SD for a long time, but we could not understand what exactly it is and how it works. I looked at webpages and books, talked to friends, but still we could not really understand it. Then I saw your lecture at Akihabara, 76 Touchpoint 7-2
Tokyo. It was 2010. So I joined and listened to your presentation and it was so impressive. Then I decided to join the SDN Service Design Conference in Berlin. So we started to understand service design and the process of it. And I started to use it for the B2B category. Why do you think service design is important for Sony?
Around 2000, most of my work was related to interaction design, but interaction design has already become an integral part of the design process around 2010, so I tried to find something new. I found service design and, at the same time, the world was changing from product to service, and service design is very useful for the B2B category. The B2B Category at Sony: what type of services do you create?
In the beginning – in 2010 – it was more product-related services, for example security cameras. We made blueprints
