Roy Husada

I’m here to build and maintain the system. I keep things going and I see myself as the one who is responsible for providing the tools, environment, and conditions for the team their best work.

What is your background?

I worked at 2 different multimedia/web design companies before starting RS in Vancouver. My career began right at the beginning of the dotcom boom (1997). The web design was just starting to become a thing, and everyone was trying to figure it out. Many people tell me I look younger than I am. I guess that’s a good thing since I’m pretty much a big kid!

I studied traditional graphic design and illustration when I was in school. We did everything manually without any digital. All our typographical layouts were done in Letraset which we would just pick up at our local art store. When I graduated from school, I was deeply interested in designing using the software. Back then I used Pagemaker and CorelDraw!

I moved to Japan at the end of 2015. It was a very uncertain time in my life as I have a family with 2 kids, no job and I didn’t know many people in Japan. It was a very scary time since things were already tough in Vancouver and we were moving to a completely new environment.

The first year I was in Japan, I focused on a few things:

Learn to read, write and speak Japanese – Since my wife is Japanese, I did have some experience with it, but I never had to write or read it regularly. On top of that, I’ve never had to speak it for work. Although I’m not that good at it so far, I feel like what I have learned opened up many new opportunities and a world that I would not have discovered otherwise.

Build my network – I went to many events and reached out to many people in the design and tech community. It is a wonderfully friendly and inclusive group of people which allowed me to stay close to what was going on in the industry. I found out quickly that many people tend to be connected to each other through Facebook and I’m always finding out that there are always common friends.

Public speaking – I spoke at a number of public events to get over my fear of speaking in front of people. I even did one in Japanese which I practiced for a week to get ready for! Some of the events included PechaKucha, UX Jam, and UX Tokyo Talks. Through this, I was able to know more about the state of the industry and many people I met through these wonderful friends that have shaped my experience living here.

Work only with Japanese clients – I had a few clients that I worked with during the first year, which were only domestic Japanese companies. They didn’t speak or communicate in English, and even the ones who could a little eventually communicated in full Japanese because I was always replying back in Japanese. This did a few things for me: I learned about domestic business style and communication. It also helped me understand how budgets around design and UX was decided. And also, I could learn about the level of education clients have around design and UX. It was very painful, but I feel like I could learn faster because of it.

After that, I decided to incorporate Rival Schools in Japan!

What is your work style?

What does your typical day look like?

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