An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter
Recorded: May 29, 2026, 1:01 p.m.
| Original | Summarized |
An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter - Core77 Company Directory ID Jobs Awards Blog Guides Discussion About Sign In / Join Now Core77 Company Directory ID Jobs Awards Blog Guides Discussion e Sign In / Join Now e An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter By Rain Noe in Japanese overdesign is alternately hilarious and inspiring. ID students should be forced to study it. Because Japanese overdesign is about seeking out even the slightest inconvenience experienced while using an everyday object, then designing a solution for it.Pilot's Kire-Na highlighter is a great example. Apparently the UX issue with existing highlighters, Pilot's designers found, is that users cannot consistently modulate pressure. This leads to blotchy, inconsistent highlighting or bleed-through, both of which have been deemed intolerable. They thus added two protrusions on either side of the chisel nib which act as pressure guides: Here's the development story, according to Japanese stationary retailer Bungu:Lines never go straight. The ink smudges. It bleeds through the page. The tip gets dirty. Everyone just accepted that's how highlighters work. Pilot didn't.Six years of development. The project got shut down and restarted from scratch. They came back with a new soft nylon tip with plastic guides that control angle and pressure for you. Straight lines no matter how you hold it. A new ink that dries in one second. No smudging, no bleeding, no dirty tip. They called it KIRE-NA, meaning "clean" in Japanese. Over ten million shipped in year one. Six years? And ten million units? The Japanese market is fascinating.
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Japanese overdesign is presented as a paradigm involving the pursuit of solutions for even minor inconveniences encountered while using everyday objects, which encourages designers to focus on solving specific experiential gaps. The development story of Pilot's Kire-Na highlighter exemplifies this approach by addressing recognized user experience issues in existing products. The fundamental problem identified by the designers was the inability of users to consistently modulate pressure while highlighting, which resulted in undesirable outcomes such as blotchy highlighting or ink bleed-through, issues that the designers deemed intolerable. To resolve this, Pilot's designers undertook a six-year development process for the Kire-Na highlighter. This process included a significant setback where the project was halted and subsequently restarted from scratch. Following this iteration, the design evolved into a solution that incorporated two protrusions on either side of the chisel nib, serving as pressure guides to regulate the angle and pressure applied by the user. The ultimate innovation involved developing a new soft nylon tip integrated with plastic guides that effectively control both the angle and pressure, ensuring that lines remain straight irrespective of the user's grip. Furthermore, the project integrated a new ink formulation designed to dry in a single second, thereby eliminating smudging, bleeding, and the issue of a dirty tip. This innovative product was named KIRE-NA, which translates to "clean" in Japanese. The success of this product was substantial, with over ten million units shipped within the first year, highlighting the fascination of the Japanese market in this context. |