Kenji opened forty-one pull requests in ten weeks. My engineers stopped treating design as a file that arrives and started treating it as a colleague who reviews their CSS.
Aiko Watanabe
VP Engineering, analytics platform
//01How I work with your team
Kenji Tanaka
Independent product designer — I ship the thing, not the deck
▸Product design▸Design systems▸Embedded▸Ships code
I design software for teams that already have engineers and do not want another agency. That usually means I am embedded for eight to twelve weeks, in your repository, shipping behind your flags — not producing a file to hand over. I came out of a design-systems team and it shows: I would rather spend the first week reading your code and naming things correctly than making twelve homepage directions. Most of my work is the unglamorous middle of a product — settings, permissions, onboarding, the empty states nobody budgets for and every user meets first. I take one client at a time. I write CSS and TypeScript well enough to open the pull request myself, which removes the handover entirely and is the reason people re-book.
tel+81 80 4422 1907
locationTokyo, Japan
emaildemo4@oreel.me
portrait.jpgOK
38
Products shipped, not mocked
1
Client at a time
81%
Clients who booked again
0
Handover documents written
//03Shipped
//02From the engineers, mostly
Writing and talks
Increment · Mar 2026
The designers who joined the repo
“Tanaka's argument is that the handover document is a symptom, and that removing it removes the disease.”
Figma Config · May 2026
Config Tokyo — Your design system is a documentation problem
Design Details · Nov 2025
One client at a time
Smashing Magazine · Aug 2025
"I spent the first week reading their code"
“The first week is not discovery. It is learning your vocabulary so I stop inventing a second one.”
A List Apart · Feb 2026
211 accessibility violations to zero, and what it taught us
Templates and kits
Design Tokens Starter — React + Tailwind
$79
The token layer I install on week one: semantic naming, light and dark, a contrast test that fails the build, and the Figma variables that stay in sync. TypeScript, MIT-licensed, no lock-in.
Empty States Kit — 46 screens
$59
The screens nobody budgets for and every user meets first: no data, no permission, no results, error, offline, loading. Figma file plus the React components, both accessible and both actually used in shipped products.
Portfolio review — recorded
$150
Send your portfolio and one case study. I return a recorded 40-minute review saying which project to delete, which to lead with, and the sentence your case study is missing. Five slots a month.
//04Contact
Tell me what you are building and when it has to be live
host
Kenji Tanaka
Kenji Tanakaduration30 minutes
formatVideo, or Tokyo if you are here
Find a slot
Slot: select a time above · Video, or Tokyo if you are here · Asia/Tokyo (JST)