Silver Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design · 2025
Kaorium Fragrance Experience Device
by Toshiharu Kurisu - Scentmatic
- A' Design Award 2025 Silver Winner in Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Scentmatic Inc.
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 33,293
- Verification code 8F9111190D · Verify this award
About Kaorium Fragrance Experience Device
This interactive signage system offering a new way to experience and enjoy fragrances through the fusion of scent and language. Utilizing the AI powered technology Kaorium, which visualizes the characteristics of fragrances, users can delve into their personal perceptions of scents and explore descriptive words that resonate with their impressions. This allows them to discover fragrances that perfectly align with their individual sensibilities.
Toshiharu Kurisu's Kaorium Fragrance Experience Device represents a compelling intersection of interaction design, sensory translation technology, and the emerging field of olfactory user experience, positioning itself within contemporary movements that seek to render invisible phenomena—scent, emotion, memory—into navigable visual and tactile interfaces, the device appears to function as a sophisticated bridge between the ineffable qualities of fragrance and the human desire to articulate, categorize, and select from among sensory options, employing a vocabulary of luminous chromatic gradients and carefully scaled typographic descriptors that transform the abstract into the apprehensible, the formal achievement lies in the harmonious integration of physical and digital elements where hand-crafted glass vials with organic cork stoppers coexist with the sleek precision of the touchscreen surface, creating a material dialogue between artisanal tradition and technological innovation that honors both the ancient craft of perfumery and contemporary expectations for interactive engagement, the chromatic strategy proves particularly sophisticated in its deployment of warm spectral gradients—transitioning from deep magenta through coral and amber to bright yellow—as visual metaphors for the emotional and sensory dimensions of fragrance, these colors functioning not merely decoratively but semantically, encoding warmth, intensity, and character through hue while the neutral gray of active selection zones provides cognitive rest and clear interaction feedback, the typographic landscape scattered across the obsidian field creates a poetic cartography of scent attributes, inviting users to navigate by adjective rather than ingredient, by feeling rather than formula, this approach democratizes fragrance selection by privileging subjective experience over specialized knowledge, the work invites contemplation of how design might continue to translate between sensory modalities, making the invisible visible and the ineffable articulable through thoughtful interface architecture.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This interactive signage uses AI to put scents into words and visualize the characteristics of each scent, offering new ways to encounter and enjoy scents.
To allow users to focus on the images evoked by the scent and words, visual elements are kept to a minimum, with text floating up on the tabletop for a simple UI.
Finally, the desired scent is presented in a scene like a "babbling brook of fresh greenery," encouraging emotional engagement. - Dimensions & Packaging
- External dimensions W1083.5 × D718 × H850 mm
Weight 80kg
Using RFID, this new sensory experience combines scent and words, and the physical and digital, creating easy-to-understand and friendly interactions. - Tags
- Kaorium, AI, fragrance, signage, device
- Production Technology
- Everyone perceives scents differently.
Kaorium puts these diverse perceptions into words and presents them, but it wants to respect "how the user themselves felt" and not unilaterally limit its interpretation.
With cognitive diversity gaining attention in the context of education and business, Kaorium believes it can contribute to fostering a culture of respect and mutual acceptance of differences in how people perceive scents. - Design Challenge
- When the prototype was actually completed, it became clear that it would be difficult to elevate the scent into a valuable experience simply by describing it in words.
Rather than assigning a fragrance professional, they took a more consumer-oriented approach, pursuing what consumers "want" and collaborated with the sake, sports, and education sectors to improve social and experiential value. - Project Duration
- The project started in Japan in November 2019. The extrasensory experience of scent that Kaorium brings can be applied to various fields such as education, food and drink, art and entertainment, and shopping. Currently, we are developing tools for sensory education, food and drink experiences, and purchasing experiences for brick-and-mortar retail stores. We are researching further possibilities for use.
- Operation Flow
- Using natural language processing, Kaorium can replace scents with simpler expressions that beginners can understand, such as "soft," "soapy," and "clean."
Existing methods to support product selection include "diagnostic content," which suggests products that suit users by answering questions in a questionnaire, but KAORIUM provides an experience that allows users to actually smell different scents and delve deeper into how they feel, creating a more satisfying experience. - Research
- In order to verify the value of KAORIUM from a neuroscience perspective, joint research was conducted with the University of Tokyo.
In a demonstration experiment at a fragrance shop, the entrance rate increased by 139% and the purchase rate increased by 287% compared to before the introduction.
The use of KAORIUM overseas is also increasing, including an exhibition at the London Design Festival 2023 and its introduction at The Fragrance Shop, the largest in the UK. - Inspiration
- This project began with the vision of "enriching people's sensibilities and senses through fragrance."
Fragrances enrich our lives, but scents are vague and difficult to grasp, and each person perceives them differently.
For many people, it is difficult to choose a scent that suits them from the vast selection available, so we thought that "words" would be the key to creating an experience that allows many people, including beginners, to enjoy scents. - Image Credits
- Image #1: SCENTMATIC.Inc, Kaorium, 2025.
Image #2: SCENTMATIC.Inc, Kaorium, 2025.
Image #3: SCENTMATIC.Inc, Kaorium, 2025.
Image #4: SCENTMATIC.Inc, Kaorium, 2025.
Image #5: SCENTMATIC.Inc, Kaorium, 2025. - Patents
- Trademark (2023) 2022-082558 SCENTMATIC.Inc
Colors of Kaorium Fragrance Experience Device
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AI-Powered Scent Discovery Solutions for Retail
We transform how customers discover fragrances through AI technology that translates scent impressions into words. Our interactive systems have proven to increase store entrance rates by 139% and purchase rates by 287%, creating engaging sensory experiences that drive sales and customer…
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