RadliffDesign
© RadliffDesign

Print Solutions for People

— ROLE

UX/UI Principal,

Advisory Engineer


— DATE

2013 – 2014

With an early career in print and graphic design, Ricoh saw an opportunity for me to step in and work on their flagship, continuous feed printing product. I managed a Japanese design team, while coordinating and collaborating with our U.S. engineering team to bring our concepts to life. The main focus of our team was to create the control software for Ricoh’s premium multi-stage, roll-fed printer.

Kurofune

“Kurofune” was the code name for Ricoh’s innovative, continuous feed printers – the Ricoh Pro VC series. One the most critical parts of the project was creating a print controller that would allow quick-touch controls for the press person. What’s more, the interface had to provide clear and concise feedback or information to each user, on each machine, as the technology worked in the background to optimize each job via early stage artificial intelligence.

Touch Control

As the design leader for one of their flagship commercial printing products, I pushed the Japanese team to look beyond current technology. The designs above represent artifacts that I used to drive and inspire the team as they focused on simplicity, user research and in-context behavioral studies, received from our product analysts. I performed several interviews with customers to understand the critical aspects of running the machine, and what mattered most in their workflow – represented as primary touch controls.