Over the course of a 3 day workshop exercise during the 2014 Startup the Party conference Naoko "Funky" Yamanaka, Hiro Maeda, Lauren Nguyen, and I were tasked with investigating the culture around the famous Love Hotels of Japan, pay per hour hotels generally used for sexual congress.
In an accelerated sprint the team interviewed customers and toured the hotels and their neighborhoods.
Ultimately we identified common problems customers encounter in areas of discretion and ease and delved into potential solutions for the industry to adopt. However, recognizing that technology can have surprisingly widespread and deep cultural impact and due to the sometimes amoral usage of the hotels potentially being enhanced we felt it necessary to frame the proposal as the most obvious solution as well as the solution that should not be made.
We presented both the product and the counterpoint at a PechaKucha night at Superdeluxe in Tokyo, Japan.