We recently connected with Debora Aoki and have shared our conversation below.

Debora, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

As I reflect on the different pivots / changes I”ve made in my career, I’d say the biggest was when I started incorporating my drawing / comics skills into my work as a content designer / user experience designer at various tech companies.

I grew up reading manga and wanting to draw comics, but most of my career in tech was based on writing. When I started using drawing and visual storytelling skills in my user experience design work at eBay, my career transformed. Time after time, I saw what a big difference it could make toward creating more human/customer-centered products, services and experiences.

I now regularly draw storyboards or create visuals for tech companies that want to explain some complex, often abstract concepts, like AI, VR and AR experiences, large language models and machine learning and more. It’s a blend of my visual storytelling skills and my tech industry experience that’s very satisfying for me.

I now also teach a class on “Simple Sketching for User Experiences” for (mostly) tech companies to help people learn how to draw (online or in person on whiteboards) and how to create simple sketches for clarity, communication and consensus in meetings or workshops.

Debora, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Through drawing and visual storytelling, I help make ideas visible and more accessible.

I grew up reading / drawing comics, including a lot of manga from Japan. Originally, my dream was to be a manga artist myself — but over time, my goals changed.

My college degree is in art, but to pay for college, I started my own craft / jewelry / illustration business in high school. This gave me a crash course in entrepreneurship, marketing and small business principles.

My interest in art then took me in a direction where I worked at art galleries, and wrote press releases and created newsletters and marketing materials for them. This (plus my writing for the high school and college newspapers) sent me toward journalism. I wrote reviews and feature articles for indie and mainstream newspapers and magazines in Honolulu before I moved to NYC and eventually, Seattle, where I got a job at Microsoft, working on the MSN.com homepage.

Then the next several years of my career was all about being a writer in the tech industry – mostly writing for apps, websites, newsletters, white papers, etc. As far as most of my colleagues knew, that’s all I did.
It’s during this time that I learned alot about the web and mobile app development and things like design thinking and innovation processes.

I started using drawing in my day-to-day work at eBay — whiteboard diagrams, storyboards, concept art, user research reports, and it transformed my career.

From there, I went on to other full-time jobs (PayPal, Citrix, Adobe) and freelance projects (Sony, Apple, Juniper Networks, Google) that leveraged a mix of my knowledge (and curiosity) about web/mobile/network technologies with my drawing skills.

I also regularly teach classes about how I do simple sketching for user experience design to various tech companies through my colleagues at Tangible UX, and use my drawing for innovation workshops/design sprints or team alignment workshops.

MEANWHILE — having a regular job in the tech industry let me pursue another passion on the side: my lifelong interest in manga (Japanese comics). I’ve been writing about manga for various websites/publications for over 15 years now. I have interviewed manga creators, editors and professionals in Japan and N. America, travel regularly to comics events in US, Japan and Europe, and have just developed a reputation for being a “manga expert.”

With the most recent wave of layoffs in the tech industry, I’ve been spending more time with my manga-related projects (consulting with some publishers and media companies), and in some cases, offering advice about their app / website content and engagement models.

Things are always changing, and it seems like every few years, I’m pivoting, evolving and seeing what’s the next interesting use of my mix of art, technology and business/marketing skills.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

When I create drawings for product development, user research or communicating abstract, complex ideas, I feel like I”m helping bring the humanity into rooms that are usually dominated by technology or business concerns. It’s very rewarding to see those ‘ah-ha’ moments when people figure out that we’re not building things just to make something that’s technologically interesting or just to make money — ultimately, we’re trying to make something that will make things better for PEOPLE.

The other thing that drives me is seeing connections and possibilities across cultures and industries. I’m currently doing a lot of thinking about how people in the comics/entertainment industries in Japan, S. Korea, France and N. America could learn a lot from each other, and from other industries that are dealing with the need to innovate / change. For example, the S. Korean comics industry is almost entirely digital now. The Japanese comics industry is the equivalent of the movie and TV industry in N. America, in terms of money generated and creative influence. France is coming to terms with the fact that manga outsells BD – franco-belgian comics. I get a kick out of being a cultural/business anthropologist in this space.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Well, I guess my manga work has been my “side-hustle” for years — and only recently, it’s been turning into the main way I spend my time / what I’m working on nowadays.

How that happened… Well, it’s mostly through word of mouth. One thing I’ve made a point of doing is just getting out there. I attend a lot of comics and anime conventions, and go to Japan at least twice a year. As a result, I’ve got to meet and talk to a lot of people in the manga publishing business. I also regularly present panels on manga and webtoons at comic and anime conventions, and just… well, I guess i’m out there enough that people know who I am, and that I’m the “manga person” to talk to when they want to know more about the subject. If I don’t know, I usually know who they should talk to instead.

Almost all of the consulting work I’m doing that’s related to manga happened through referrals from friends, friends of friends, and sometimes cold calls from people who looked me up. I don’t have my shingle put out to say that I’m doing this — it’s just something I’m doing, and it’s evolving as we speak.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mangasplaining.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debaoki/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debaoki.UXsketch/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debaoki/
• Twitter: (See below)
• Other: My Twitter is USUALLY @debaoki, but i’ve been having problems accessing it, so for now I have @DebAoki_2. I’m also on BlueSky at @debaoki. I’m currently redesigning my debaoki.com website too.

Image Credits
my headshot is by Pat Mazzera. The other photos I took, so credit to Deb Aoki.