I’m Chikako, a user experience designer and teacher currently residing in Melbourne, Australia.

I’m a life-long learner and teacher focused on creating user-friendly and engaging educational products to be made accessible to everyone.

I’m a strong believer and advocate of thoughtful design and human-computer interaction theories to aid in reducing the technological and experience gap in educational platforms.

My dream was to teach Japanese overseas. My dream came true when I completed my master of teaching and started teaching Japanese at Parkdale Secondary College. I did not like maths when I was young, but happened to teach secondary school students maths along with Japanese. Surprisingly, I enjoyed teaching maths as much as teaching Japanese.

Throughout my teaching career, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators faced many challenges in adopting digital technologies for online classroom environments.

E-Learning materials were not applicable to the teachings in class, such as content not being made editable or accessible for teachers to adapt their methodologies to suit the classroom environment. Digital materials also did not encourage students to become engaged but rather shortened their expression to solving mathematical problems.

Education technology in the current climate raised the question on how we can better use design and technology to support both students and teachers. In order to challenge the status quo of antiquated educational platforms - I began my journey with studying Master of Information Technology (specialised in Human-Computer Interaction) at the University of Melbourne.

I strongly believe that my experience as a teacher and consumer of the platforms provided the background to produce thoughtful and meaningful learning alongside the technological advancements in modern web applications.

Learning new things are always challenging but that doesn’t always equate to a lack of enjoyment and engagement. My career as a teacher may be put on pause, but I am exploring and dedicating the next chapter of my life to learning instructional design and human-centered interaction theories, reading research articles, practicing coding to create digital educational technologies that makes the world smarter.