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About
Sola Journal is a small online publication by Sola Studio. Through UX Field Notes and selected writing, it documents the way I look at products, interfaces, and everyday life — and translates what I notice into something more visible.
It is not a service page. It is the thinking underneath.
The sun mark comes from Yoko (陽子) — a child of the sun. From sora (空) — sky and open space. And from sol, the Spanish root of Sola — light, carried quietly in the name.
Most UX friction doesn't announce itself. It sits quietly in a flow, a label, a moment of hesitation — felt before it's named.
What I try to do here is move through that sequence: notice the friction, hold it long enough to understand its shape, and then find words or structure for it.
Not to judge. Not to fix everything. But to make the invisible a little more visible — and a little easier to think with.
That process is what I call a UX lens. And this journal is where it lives most openly.
Everyday scenes examined through a UX lens. A vending machine, a café queue, a cancellation flow — each one unpacked through story, friction points, and possible improvements.
The goal isn't to criticise. It's to show how small design decisions accumulate into the feeling of an experience.
Selected writing published on Medium — longer essays on accessibility, cross-cultural UX, and the quieter layers of how digital products are built and used.
I write because observation without expression disappears.
The moments that catch my attention — a confusing sign, a form that makes me anxious, a queue that quietly teaches people not to choose — those moments carry something worth examining.
Writing is how I turn noticing into structure, and structure into something that can be shared or used.
Sola Journal is where that process happens in public.
I'm Sola — the name I use here and in personal-facing work. In business contexts, I also work under my full name, Yoko Shiina.
The name Sola carries a few layers: it comes from sora (空) — sky, openness, space — and from Yoko (陽子), my given name, which can be read as a child of the sun. It also shares its root with sol, the Spanish word for sun — light carried quietly in the name. The sun mark in the Sola Journal logo comes from all of that.
My background sits across frontend engineering, UX, and accessibility. But the thread that runs through all of it is the same: paying attention to where structure, language, and lived experience meet — and where they quietly fail each other.
That perspective shapes both this journal and the work I do through Sola Studio.
If Sola Studio shows how I work, Sola Journal shows how I look.
The studio is where that perspective becomes structured support — for products, teams, and services. The journal is where the same lens stays looser: more exploratory, more reflective, and sometimes more personal.
You don't need to read the journal to work with me.
But if you want to understand the thinking underneath the work, this is where more of it lives.