Tokyo Sensory Safari: Experience Innovation & Human Factors Immersion

Abstract: The intention: Bring people to Japan to learn about human senses and cognition. This was just before the world locked down for the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan: Conduct a Sensory Safari that coincides with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. An opportunity for people to experience Tokyo at peak form and Japan at the top of its hosting spirit. An immersive way to expose participants to all human senses and methods for making offerings that are more understandable and fully human compatible. This curated experience is inspired by Proctor & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley and his visit to Japan decades earlier. After this visit he invests heavily in design and human factors seeking Japan-unique innovation in product packaging and placement. Uniqueness found only in Japan that persists to this day. Three years later, the country reopens for business and tourist travel and the renewed Tokyo 2023 Sensory Safari is again set in motion. Behind the safari is the Content Evolution SenseMapping practice team, with pioneering members of the now 30-year-young ThinkPad notebook computer, including the first IBM designer collaborating with the legendary industrial designer Richard Sapper, and the first named brand steward for IBM ThinkPad (today Lenovo). SenseMapping is a process and perspective to create coherence at the intersection of an organization (how it behaves and what it makes) with its value chain, customers, and stakeholders, and the intersection of human sensory perception and sense-making in the head, heart, and gut. The outcome: This paper documents the design of this immersive action learning experience, the framework for both observing and documenting product and service experiences while in Tokyo and sending participants home with a draft plan for action.

Keywords: SenseMapping, action learning, design, experience, presence, senses, sensory intelligence, Sensepoints, organization design, Experience Vision

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003315

Cite this paper:

​