Reasons to work at Cocone（Aya Morooka, Item Designer)

Before joining Cocone, I worked for an American gaming company.
After three years of working there, I was at a loss whether to continue working in America as a designer.Working in design in America was very meaningful because I could learn different values and designs from Japan, but my desire to work in design became stronger.

This is because it was not until I lived in the U.S. that I began to objectively see what Japan had to offer, and I realized the excellence and high level of Japanese design, and I began to think that I wanted to compete and produce results as a designer in Japan. And it was in Japan that I met Cocone. When I joined Cocone, there were only about 100 people in the company and it had a very homey atmosphere.

What surprised me was that they had a very large number of designers within the company. And I remember being very surprised at the skill level of the designers at Cocone.

I was hired as a UI designer, but the first new project I joined had only a few designers, so I was responsible for character design and a wide range of other tasks in addition to UI.
Since then, I have had many opportunities to participate in new start-up projects and have been involved in a wide range of tasks. Looking back, I have participated in as many as eight projects.

Among these, I was particularly impressed with Cats Atelier,for which I designed the character from scratch. In the process of creating Cats Atelier I was able to take advantage of the know-how I had accumulated at Cocone. Although I created the character “Cats Atelier” myself, I feel that it is because I was at Cocone that I was able to create the character and the worldview of Cats Atelier. Without the sensibility I developed at Cocone, Cats Atelier would not have been born.

The project I am currently working on is ” Livly Island “. I was able to participate in Lively from the beginning and mainly designed and engineered the island. The days leading up to the release in July 2021 were stormy and time passed quickly. And today, the site is still a battlefield, but we have a team of people who respect and inspire each other.

I am currently the leader of the Design Team that creates items there. Specifically, my job is to consult with the director, planners, and design members to determine what kind of items and Livly to deliver to our customers, adjust the production schedule, and ensure that the designs reach our customers safely. Right now I have my hands full with leadership duties, but my dream is to enrich the world of Lively so that more and more customers can enjoy it and make it a service that will be loved for 10, 20, or even more years to come.

*”Cats Atelier won the Google Play Best of 2018 cute & Casual category and the App Ape Award 2018 “Game of the year 2018” Award for Excellence.

I currently belong to the Design Team of the Livly Island team. There, we create Island items for sale, Homunculus costumes, Mahara Shop banners, and study the main characters of Lively Livly Island,the Livlys. The Design team currently has about 10 members. Led by Chief Creative Officer (CCO) Tsuchiya, one of the creators of Lively, the team is struggling daily to discuss and interact with customers on what designs will resonate with them.

Our members have a variety of sensibilities, including those who like cute things, those who like unusual things, and those who are good at insect and forest motifs.

We have many opportunities to learn from each other’s sensitivities and ways of thinking, and we believe that this diversity is one of Livly’s strengths. We have members from Korea, China, Ukraine, and Romania, as well as Japanese nationals, and I am proud to say that we are an environment where we can take advantage of our diversity and challenge ourselves not only in Japan but also in the world.

There are both long-time employees and newcomers to Cocone, but there is an atmosphere in which we can talk freely regardless of our company history. This is not limited to designers. Engineers, planners, and others actively exchange opinions and communicate regardless of industry or company history.

Cocone has a calling to “Empowering everyone to invent themselves in our boundless world” and there is a soil where opinions and ideas based on “sensibility” are respected.Furthermore, designers need not only to judge based on sensitivity, but also to understand the KPIs that businesses put forward, to have a business and service perspective, and to have a mindset beyond just drawing pictures

Looking back at myself, there were times when I got caught up in the immediate goal and neglected the customer’s point of view, but when that happened, the team would discuss how it would be good for the customer and whether it was really an idea with the customer in mind, and I was able to get them to point this out to me. I was able to get them to point this out to me.

Thanks to the team, I am always able to judge things with multiple eyes, which I find very reliable. Work is a team game, not an individual game, and each team member’s strengths are utilized, and if there is something they are not good at, the other members naturally cover for them. I value such strength as a team.

The at-home atmosphere that I felt when I joined the company continues to exist in today’s Cocone.
Cocone is a mysterious company with a good balance of warmth, gentleness, and professional rigor.