Currently, challenges in the global healthcare market are diversifying by region. In Japan, with its advancing super-aging society, “prevention/pre-symptomatic care” and “frailty prevention” (addressing age-related decline) have become urgent national priorities. Meanwhile, in rapidly developing Southeast Asian countries, shifts in lifestyle due to urbanization have made combating lifestyle-related diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, a critical issue.

Against this backdrop, many companies are entering the digital healthcare sector. However, the biggest hurdle remains “sustaining behavioral change.” No matter how superior the medical evidence or the latest device may be, social implementation cannot be achieved unless the UI/UX (user experience) is designed so that consumers feel a natural desire to “keep using it” in their daily lives.

On January 27, 2026, Nikkei X Trend hosted a webinar titled “The Power of Design & Research to Unlock Consumer Insights.” Moderated by Tetsuo Katsumata, Publisher of Nikkei Cross Trend, the session featured Takahiro Taguchi of Suntory Wellness and Ryo Yokohori of NTT DATA. Alongside them, Takehiro Suenari, COO of Fourdigit, discussed the front lines of how design research solves the difficult challenge of behavioral change.

Katsumata: Behavioral change is a major wall in the healthcare field. Could you redefine the role of design and research from Fourdigit’s perspective?

Suenari: We focus on “Service Design,” which isn’t just about polishing aesthetics but designing the entire experience and business mechanism based on consumer understanding. While general marketing research asks if someone “will buy or not,” design research begins by digging into the context of life—how a person spends their day and what they value on weekends.

Katsumata: What specifically becomes visible when you understand that context?

Suenari: A definitive “gap” between a consumer’s unconscious actions and their self-perception. Our project in Malaysia—a country with one of the highest obesity rates in Asia—perfectly illustrated this. Surveys showed many respondents believed they were “health-conscious and getting enough exercise.” But when we observed their actual lives, the reality was entirely different from a Japanese perspective.

Katsumata: How so?

Suenari: First, the definition of “exercise” differed. For many, walking the short distance from their car to their home was considered significant exercise. Regarding diet, someone might claim to be healthy by choosing a fruit-based drink, yet they would carry around a giant cup filled with sugar-heavy syrup all day. During Ramadan, some would compensate for daytime fasting by overeating at night, leading to weight gain. To them, this was “normal,” and they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing.

Katsumata: I see. Since they believe they are already succeeding, hitting them with “logical” health advice wouldn’t resonate.

Suenari: Exactly. Unilateral logic like “walk more because it’s healthy” feels like a rejection of their current efforts. So, we shifted the entry point from “dieting” to “an extension of play.” We focused on the time spent with family and friends—which Malaysians value most—and translated health messages into the context of a “game everyone can play together.”

Katsumata: How did their mindset change by shifting the entry point?

Suenari: The motivation changed from “I have to lose weight” to “I want to do this because it’s fun.” As a result, they moved their bodies to level up in the game, unconsciously increasing their physical activity. We saw similar results in dementia prevention research in Japan. By changing the entry point from “dementia” (a word that creates a barrier) to “skin diagnosis” (a topic of high interest), communication finally became possible. If health is the ultimate goal, it doesn’t matter which side of the mountain you start climbing from. Redesigning the entry point isn’t just a rephrasing; it’s a reconfiguration of consumer motivation and the business mechanism itself.

Katsumata: I hear you are also using Generative AI to derive these deep insights.

Suenari: Yes. We have accumulated research equivalent to 40 trips around the globe. Using this data, we’ve built proprietary AI Personas. By inputting specific mindsets or target profiles, we can generate a matching AI to converse with. This allows us to conduct internal Q&A sessions before the actual field research, refining our hypotheses to the limit.

Katsumata: Is the concept of housing one million digital citizens in a virtual city an extension of that?

Suenari: Precisely. We input national land data into a game engine and populate it with one million AI personas with emotions and preferences. Traditional simulations predict “quantity” through statistics. We want to predict behavior accompanied by emotion—asking, “At this moment in their daily routine, would they stop at the mall? Would this product move their heart?”

While research may seem time-consuming in the short term, increasing the resolution of your hypothesis drastically lowers the failure rate of social implementation. Ultimately, it is the shortest shortcut for a business in the long run. By visualizing design research as a science, we aim to elevate the precision of decision-making.

Katsumata: Taguchi-san, Suntory’s “Life Interview” initiative is very unique. It seems deeply ingrained in your culture that all employees participate.

Taguchi: Yes, all employees conduct “Life Interviews” to hear deeply about an customer’s life journey and values, rather than just doing a needs survey. Having met over 2,000 people, we find “true purposes” that are often buried at the bottom of quantitative rankings.

Katsumata: What kind of truths are buried?

Taguchi: For example, in a quantitative survey, “knee pain” might rank 18th. Usually, you’d overlook it. But in an N=1 interview, you might find a poignant wish: “I want to fix my knee so I can go to a concert with my daughter.” This leads to the next need: “I want to see my favorite performer clearly, so I also care about my eye health.”

Suenari: So the knee pain is just the entry point, and the experience of enjoying a concert with her daughter is the true goal.

Taguchi: Exactly. Only when you understand that can you provide multifaceted proposals that align with the consumer’s life purpose. In our health app “Comado,” online fitness has become a community like a school club. For seniors, social connection is often a stronger motivator for consistency than health maintenance itself. This was a major discovery gained by touching real voices on the ground.

Yokohori: From a technology perspective, we aim to capture the reality of consumers through multifaceted data. We have a platform concept integrating four types of data: Lifelog, Life Science, Health Checkups, and Medical. We are currently conducting a PoC with 1,400 of our own employees. Despite the high burden of continuous glucose monitoring and daily meal logging, they are very diligent, providing us with extremely precise data.

Katsumata: That’s a massive scale for such deep measurement.

Yokohori: Additionally, at our “Sleep Tech Lab” in a capsule hotel, we use microphones and infrared cameras to capture objective data like sleep stages and respiratory status. Interestingly, even if someone feels they “slept well,” the data might show sleep apnea or frequent micro-awakenings.

Katsumata: Another gap between subjective self-reporting and objective measurement.

Yokohori: Exactly. Consumer understanding deepens by moving back and forth between the two. Measurement reveals things—like stopped breathing—that wouldn’t come out in an interview. However, companies often struggle with how to combine and use the data they have. It’s vital to create a design that allows for continuous utilization rather than a one-off project.

We have also started using multiple AI personas to “talk” to each other to polish plans. AI shortcuts the process of a human summarizing 30-40 interviews, allowing humans to focus on the “judgment” of the proposal. This dramatically speeds up product development.

Suenari: While AI can generate variations and shortcuts, it’s crucial that humans make the final call. If we skip the judgment phase, we lose the opportunity for human talent development. The design must be: the human sets the question, and the human makes the final judgment.

Katsumata: There were also interesting points about cultural differences in Asia.

Taguchi: When you go abroad, you realize how “Japanese common sense” doesn’t apply. In Taiwan, for instance, the Japanese habit of “taking supplements steadily every day” isn’t common. Some believe that accumulating too much nutrition isn’t good and value changing types or “flushing out” the system.

Suenari: That’s fascinating. The moment you notice a premise different from your own, there’s a “revolutionary pleasure” in the insight.

Taguchi: Precisely. In skincare, during home visits, we saw users applying only one pump of product instead of the recommended two. They said, “Any more would be sticky and uncomfortable!” In local humidity, the Japanese “moist” feel is translated as “unpleasant stickiness.”

Suenari: In Malaysia, it varies between those with Chinese vs. Malay roots. Those with Chinese roots often avoid cold drinks; even beer might be served lukewarm. Everything from air conditioning preferences to awareness of sun exposure is completely different.

Katsumata: Even the scent in the air is different the moment you land at the airport.

Suenari: Yes (laughs). Within Japan, everyone is different, but we tend to fall into the trap of thinking “there is only one right answer,” making it hard to “unlearn.” In Asia, the environment forces you to accept the premise that “things are fundamentally different.”

Katsumata: Going somewhere where your stereotypes don’t work forces a shift in perspective.

Suenari: The APAC region is incredibly diverse and sensitive. That’s why we must discard our own common sense and redesign research from the ground up. This process is the shortcut to creating experiences that actually reach consumers.

Katsumata: As we wrap up, what are your future challenges?

Taguchi: I want to protect the culture of valuing customer voices. As we enter the phase of AI-driven recommendations, the challenge is how to have AI learn the “human connections” and “nuanced reputations” that digital tools often miss, using N=1 voices for service development.

Yokohori: As a tech company, we want to support the global expansion of the food and beverage industry scientifically. We aim to delve deeper into insights—perhaps using brainwaves to visualize how a brain perceives an A/B test for a commercial or to detect if someone is hiding their true feelings during an interview.

Suenari: This discussion reaffirms the role of design. No matter how advanced the data or AI, true social implementation only happens when the experience is something consumers can continue naturally and without friction. Our role is to deliver these mechanisms to people—translating complex systems into a comfortable daily life through the power of design.

Katsumata: Navigating between data and human voices to solidify them as an experience—I truly feel the magnitude of the role design research plays in the challenging field of healthcare. Thank you all for today.