Ikuko Tanaka | Employee Interviews

From the web industry to a new challenge.

In the age of AI,

I want to face what making things really means.

Product Designer

Ikuko Tanaka

After working as a web director at a major e-commerce company, running her own company for 14 years, and serving as a production manager at a web advertising agency, she joined ABCD in June 2026. She now works mainly on the screen design of our product, DealBase.

Generative AI shook what it means to make things,so I am asking the question again

I believe the challenge here will be a turning point that changes my career significantly. Every ABCD member I met before joining spoke about the company's future in their own words, and seeing that convinced me this is a place where you can take on challenges as a professional, regardless of age.

For many years I stood on the front line of making things in website production and digital advertising. With the rise of generative AI, however, I felt there was a limit to the value that conventional production alone could deliver, and I began looking for my next stage. It was not anxiety about AI taking my job. I wanted a place where I could face head-on the question of what I should be making in an age that has AI.

I jumped in here because I could believe that everyone at ABCD is serious about creating a product that becomes the operational backbone of companies, at a world-class level of quality.

An open culture with no deference,and screen design without compromise

I currently work as a designer on the development team, handling screen design and UI/UX design. Because every single screen shapes both operational efficiency and the user experience, the work demands not only visual beauty but design that takes in the entire flow of the work.

All internal communication is visible in Slack channels, so information asymmetry rarely arises, and even on matters already decided you can speak up frankly if there is room to improve. Being able to hold substantive discussions with no walls between roles or seniority, and to face quality without compromise as a professional maker, is what gives me a real sense of progress every day.

In an organization where autonomy and collaboration coexist,I keep absorbing technology at the leading edge

I am based in Kyoto and work in a flexible, results-oriented way that combines remote work with about one week in the office each month. In my work I also take the initiative on building AI-assisted design flows and cutting the hours a task takes, and I can feel that I am returning the progress of technology back into the product.

The company is full of open-minded members who share what they know logically, even in areas they have never worked in, and the drive that comes from everyone acting autonomously rather than waiting for instructions is hard to find anywhere else.

For anyone who wants to keep thinking for themselves about what it means to make something, and who can see technological change as a weapon rather than a threat, I think ABCD is the best environment there is.