Jun Kurihara is an industrial designer / physical user experience designer, with over 15 years of experience in the medical and emerging technology field. His experience includes product development, product strategy, and intertwining design thinking to create competitive products.

Currently, he is at Google w the Nest team.

Experience:

Prior to Google, he was at Verb Surgical, a Google and Johnson & Johnson joint venture. As the lead designer, he oversaw the industrial design/physical interaction of the surgical system and was involved in R&D projects developing future components for surgical robotics. Prior to Verb, he was at Illumina, the market leader in DNA sequencers. He was brought on to simplify the complex workflow for current and future products for ID, UI, and UX.  

Before Illumina, he was at Panasonic Silicon Valley Laboratory (PSVL).  This experimental group worked on emerging technologies (i.e. eye tracking, projection, gesture recognition technologies) and created new user experience paradigms. PSVL was in collaboration with Toyota, Emirates Airlines, Panasonic's audio & video division and mobile division.  Some works were shown at CES, Siggraph, and Apex expo (avionics).

Prior to Panasonic, Jun had his own consultancy.  Clients ranged from industrial design firms (Lunar design, HTC, Astro studios, Bridge design and more) to fortune 500 companies.  Projects ranged from designing high volume consumer electronics to low volume life science/medical products.  

Education:

He attended UC Santa Barbara, graduated with a biology degree. He worked at Johnson & Johnson (Lifescan R&D - glucose diabetic meters) and Arcturus engineering (DNA microarray sequencing).

After his experience in the biotech, he was accepted to Art Center College of Design and graduated with honors in industrial design. During his years at Art Center, he was selected to participate in the first pilot exchange program with INSEAD business school (Fountainbleu, France).  He also interned at Lunar Design, One & co (HTC) and BMW Designworks.  

Background:

Born in Tokyo, Japan, he speaks fluent Japanese and currently lives in the Bay Area, California.