Hands On Search
Yahoo! Japan
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
Hakuhodo Kettle Inc
Creative Team
Creative Directors Kazuaki Hashida Kyosuke Taniguchi 3D Printing Director Takayuki Kitai Designers Yuichi Takatani Kenjiro Nakayama Design Engineer You Tanaka Developers Kenji Mori Yuka Hatae Assistant Developer Kiki Hasegawa
Production Team
Agency Producer Ken Okada Producers Yusuke Tominaga Kenichi Seki Keitaro Kamijo Assistant Producer Kojiro Matsumoto Movie Director Hiroshi Kondo Movie Producer Toshiyuki Takei Production Manager Takahide Uchibori Event Producer Hiroaki Sakai
Other Credits
Planners Shota Hatanaka Chiharu Shimizu Yusuke Tominaga Technical Director Saqoosha System Engineer Takanobu Izukawa Sound Designer Masashi Ohashi PR Directors Takashi Uno Saeko Kawano
Date
September 2013
Background
The brand mission of Yahoo! Japan was to create the future of the internet. The challenge was to demonstrate that this was precisely what the company was doing and to spread news of how they were doing it.
Idea
The idea was the invention of "Hands On Search" through a new combination of the search engine and a 3D printer. Items could be searched verbally and then printed out as a miniature model.
This new way of using search was offered first to those people who have most need of a sense of touch, the visually impaired.
3D data was gathered from individuals and corporations who wanted to be involved in the project so that as wide a selection as possible of searchable items was made available to the blind children.
Results
The idea of tangible search spread rapidly across the world, generating over $10m of exposure for Yahoo!
Loyalty to Yahoo! Japan went up to 92%.
Furthermore, "Hands On Search" was turned into open source software and this was available to be downloaded and used across the world.
Our Thoughts
3D printing is upon us and will soon
be a big part of our lives. Yahoo! Japan has combined it ingeniously with verbal search to improve the lives of visually impaired children ...and then, lovely people that they are, they went and made it open source. The mind boggles with thoughts of what one could do with it, but then you’d only get what you want in miniature! If they wanted to communicate that they were actively creating the future of the internet while creating some goodvertising along the way, I suspect they have succeeded.