EXPO 2025 Osaka: Why Your Digital Strategy Can’t Afford to Fail Anymore

The Grand Vision vs. The Glitchy Reality: A Digital Wake-Up Call from EXPO 2025 Osaka

EXPO 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, boldly declared its theme: “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” This wasn’t just about physical pavilions; it was a promise of a technologically advanced, seamless digital experience, heavily backed by industry giants like NTT Group. The vision was clear: a “living” design system for consistent branding, AI-driven recommendations, AR navigation, and a Web3-enabled Digital Wallet for cashless payments and rewards. The official “EXPO 2025 Visitors” app was meant to be the digital heart, offering maps, pavilion info, and reservation access. Complementing this were the “Virtual EXPO” for metaverse experiences, the “EXPO2025 Digital Wallet” for transactions and rewards, and the NTT-sponsored “EXPO2025 Personal Agent” for AI-guided tours.

Sounds impressive, right? The reality, however, painted a different picture. My study dives deep into the actual performance of these digital tools, particularly the “EXPO 2025 Visitors” app, to uncover critical lessons for anyone planning a large-scale global event. Because in today’s world, your digital strategy isn’t just an add-on; it’s the backbone of your entire visitor experience.

The Digital Labyrinth: Where UI, UX, and Design Went Astray

What Was Promised: A Seamless, Innovative Digital Frontier

The EXPO 2025 Design System articulated a truly ambitious vision: a “consistent brand experience transcending the boundaries between analogue and digital, real and virtual”. It championed “experimentalness and innovation,” aiming for a “future design co-created by people and technology”. The “EXPO 2025 Visitors” app was designed as the central hub, promising interactive maps, comprehensive information, and direct links to ticketing and the Virtual EXPO. The “EXPO2025 Personal Agent” app even boasted AI-based personalized plans and AR navigation. And the “EXPO2025 Digital Wallet” aimed to integrate cashless payments with a unique blockchain-powered rewards program.

photo credit: https://group.ntt/en/expo2025/pa/

What Users Experienced: A “Buggy Crashy Mess”

Despite the grand promises, the official “EXPO 2025 Visitors” app was met with overwhelming negativity, reflected in a dismal 1.5 out of 5 stars from 25 ratings on the App Store. User reviews were brutal: “buggy crashy mess,” “slow, glitchy, froze multiple times,” and “terrible and confusing UI/UX”. One user even resorted to using “two devices in parallel” – one for the app, and another for its “instruction manual”. Yes, an app with an instruction manual.

Fundamental app functions were riddled with friction. Users reported “vestigial routes leading to dead ends,” an inability to directly view tickets or access the reservation system within the app, and a frustrating “constant cycle of trying to log in with 2 factor authentication via email every time” for basic actions like checking the map. Many features simply “opened the Expo’s website in a browser,” leading users to deem the app “mostly useless” and feeling “years behind” the promised future technology.

The decision to deploy multiple, distinct applications—”Visitors,” “Virtual EXPO,” “Digital Wallet,” and “Personal Agent”—without clear, seamless integration created a fragmented and confusing digital environment. Users were forced to download and juggle several apps, each with its own set of issues. Ironically, the “EXPO2025 Personal Agent” app, while offering advanced features, was perceived as “Way better than the official expo app,” highlighting a significant disparity in quality. Furthermore, common FAQ issues included problems linking Expo ID and Digital Wallet ID across services, a clear sign of backend integration failures.

While a May 2025 update (version 2.0.3) attempted minor usability improvements like adding facility names to the map, these fixes barely scratched the surface of the fundamental performance, stability, and login issues.

The Expo’s theme, “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, was meant to be embodied by its digital infrastructure, with NTT showcasing cutting-edge technologies like IOWN, AI, and AR. Yet, the primary digital gateway, the official Visitors app, was widely described as a “buggy crashy mess” with “terrible and confusing UI/UX” and felt “years behind”. Core functionalities like login and ticket viewing were broken or highly problematic. This profound contradiction between aspiration and execution created a jarring experience, risking the entire Expo’s credibility. If the basic digital entry point to the “future society” is frustrating and outdated, it undermines the organizers’ ability to deliver on their ambitious theme. This suggests a potential organizational focus on isolated technological demonstrations over the critical importance of integrated, stable, and user-centric digital platforms.

The strategic misstep of developing and deploying multiple, seemingly unintegrated applications, rather than a single, comprehensive “super-app” or a tightly integrated suite, resulted in a fragmented and confusing digital environment. Users explicitly stated the official Visitors app was “mostly useless” and often “just opened the Expo’s website in a browser”. Conversely, the Personal Agent app was seen as “Way better than the official expo app”. This fragmentation significantly increased the cognitive load for visitors, leading to inconsistent experiences and diluting the overall digital brand perception. This points to a lack of a unified digital product strategy, possibly due to organizational silos.

Table 1: EXPO 2025 App Ecosystem: Vision vs. Reality

Intended Feature/Design Principle	User Reported Experience/Issue
Consistent brand experience transcending analogue/digital	Buggy, crashy, confusing UI/UX
Seamless digital navigation & info access	Vestigial routes, dead ends, external links for core features
Showcase of future tech & innovation	App felt “years behind”
Integrated services via Expo ID & Digital Wallet	Constant 2FA, login/linkage issues, “instruction manual needed”

The Reservation System: A Critical Bottleneck That Choked the Experience

Designed for Complexity, Delivering Frustration

Access to 40 popular pavilions at EXPO 2025 was locked behind a lottery-based reservation system. Slots were released in multiple stages, creating an inherent barrier and demanding persistent user engagement. The reservation journey itself was a convoluted mess: visitors had to purchase an admission ticket and select a visit date before they could even apply for lottery rewards or reserve specific pavilion slots via the Digital Wallet.

Crucially, the “EXPO 2025 Visitors” app didn’t handle these reservations natively. Instead, it “linked to the tickets,” redirecting users to an “external site where you wait in line for access”. Users reported “long wait times just trying to access our Expo tickets in the booking system (up to 35 minutes)” on these external sites.

Adding insult to injury, users faced a “constant cycle of trying to log in with 2 factor authentication via email every time” just to check basic information or access their reservations. The FAQ further confirmed widespread issues with Expo ID login and data integration, as well as problems linking the Digital Wallet ID to the Expo ID, which was necessary for earning rewards and participating in lotteries.

The On-Site Impact: Disappointment and Chaos

Despite diligent efforts to apply at every lottery stage, many users secured very few bookings across multiple days, leading to significant disappointment and a feeling of “regret planning a trip to this event”. This directly undermined the perceived value of the Expo. The combination of restrictive one-hour entry time slots for the site itself and the extensive waits to access the booking system meant visitors lost valuable on-site time. For a full-price day ticket, losing two hours felt “needlessly restrictive”.

While the reservation system was ostensibly designed to manage crowds, its failures likely contributed to the overall “mess” reported at the Expo. User reviews mentioned “3+ hours to simply get in the gates” and “multi hour line to get into a food pavilion”. The inability for users to easily check real-time pavilion availability or waiting times directly within the app, as indicated by questions in the FAQ, further compounded on-site chaos and frustration.

While a lottery system for high-demand attractions might be a necessary capacity management tool, its implementation was severely flawed. The core reservation system for popular pavilions was lottery-based, requiring users to apply in stages and often yielding few successful bookings. Accessing tickets and reservations involved long waits and redirects to external websites, coupled with persistent 2FA logins. The Digital Wallet, while offering rewards, was also tied into this complex system. This convoluted process directly led to feelings of “regret planning a trip,” “frustration,” and “wasting time,” contributing to the overall perception of the Expo as “a mess”. This highlights a fundamental failure in anticipating user behavior and system load for critical, high-stakes interactions. The reservation system, instead of enhancing access and managing crowds efficiently, actively deterred engagement and created widespread negative sentiment, directly impacting the perceived value of the event.

The Expo heavily promoted its “digital” theme and relied extensively on its applications for information, navigation, and reservations. However, basic physical resources, such as free paper maps, were conspicuously absent, with visitors even queuing to purchase them. Simultaneously, the digital tools themselves suffered from fundamental usability issues. This created significant friction for visitors who either preferred physical maps or found the digital tools unreliable. It exacerbated feelings of being “restricted” and that the experience was “expensive” relative to its value. This aggressive push for a “digital-first” experience seemingly overlooked the importance of providing robust, reliable digital tools and accessible physical alternatives. A truly “future society” experience should be inclusive and resilient. Relying solely on a buggy digital platform without adequate physical backups or robust offline capabilities alienates a segment of visitors and creates a single point of failure for the entire visitor experience.

Table 2: Key Reservation System Friction Points & Impact

Friction Point	User Impact
Lottery-based access for 40 pavilions	Limited bookings, widespread disappointment
External site redirects for reservations/tickets	Long wait times (up to 35 mins), wasted time pre-entry
Constant 2FA login for basic checks	High user friction, inability to quickly access info
Restrictive one-hour entry time slots	Lost valuable on-site time, feeling “needlessly restrictive”
Difficulty linking Expo ID / Digital Wallet ID	Inability to fully participate in rewards, fragmented experience

Lessons Learned: What Every Future Mega-Event Must Understand

The EXPO 2025 Osaka’s digital missteps offer invaluable lessons. Here’s what every organizer of a large-scale event needs to internalize:

Foundation First, Flash Second: While showcasing advanced technologies like IOWN, AI, and AR is commendable, a robust, stable, and intuitive user interface for essential tasks is non-negotiable. Flashy features cannot compensate for a broken foundation. Users prioritize reliability over novelty.
The Power of One (App): The fragmented application experience, with multiple distinct apps and persistent ID linkage issues, led to significant user confusion. Future events must strive for a single, comprehensive “super-app” or a highly integrated suite of modular applications under a unified digital identity. This simplifies the user journey and ensures seamless data flow.
Test, Test, and Test Again: The stark contrast between the aspirational “living” design system and the dismal 1.5-star app rating screams for extensive beta testing with real users. Incorporate diverse demographics and accessibility needs to identify and rectify critical usability, performance, and accessibility issues before public launch.
Reservation Systems Must Be Seamless, Not a Barrier: While capacity management is necessary, EXPO 2025’s complex, opaque, and externally linked reservation system, burdened by excessive authentication, was a major bottleneck. The process for securing and managing access must be integrated directly into the primary app, with clear communication, minimal friction, and real-time updates.
Digital-Enhanced, Not Digital-Exclusive: Over-reliance on a buggy digital platform without readily available and accessible physical alternatives (like free paper maps, which were notably absent or sold at a cost) alienates users and creates single points of failure. Adopt a balanced “digital-enhanced” approach where technology genuinely augments traditional services, ensuring accessibility and resilience for all visitors.
Pre-Event Experience is Paramount: The digital experience a visitor has before even arriving at the event (e.g., ticket purchase, reservation attempts, app setup, ID linking) directly and profoundly impacts their sentiment and satisfaction during the event. Seamless, low-friction pre-event digital journeys are critical for setting a positive tone and building anticipation, rather than frustration.

Strategic Imperatives: Building the Digital Future of Mega-Events

To truly succeed where EXPO 2025 Osaka stumbled, future mega-event organizers must adopt these strategic imperatives for their digital platforms:

Embrace a Unified “Super-App” Strategy: Consolidate all core functionalities—maps, information, ticketing, reservations, digital wallet, AI recommendations, and virtual experiences—into one robust application. If separate apps are unavoidable, ensure deep, seamless backend integration and a consistent, unified UI/UX. This drastically reduces user confusion and streamlines the entire journey.
Prioritize Core Functionality and Performance: Invest heavily in the stability, speed, and intuitive navigation of your primary event application. Flawless execution of fundamental features like login, ticket viewing, and real-time map usage under peak load is non-negotiable. Advanced features are only as good as the foundation they’re built upon.
Revolutionize the Reservation & Ticketing Flow: Integrate the entire reservation process natively within the primary app, eliminating external redirects. Implement intelligent single sign-on (SSO) and robust session management to minimize repetitive authentication. Provide clear, real-time updates on availability and reservation status directly within the app. This saves valuable visitor time and enhances perceived fairness.
Design for Inclusivity and Resilience: Offer robust offline capabilities for essential app features (maps, basic info, schedules) to ensure usability in areas with poor connectivity. Crucially, provide clear, accessible physical alternatives (e.g., free, well-distributed paper maps; multilingual information booths). A successful mega-event caters to diverse user needs and provides crucial redundancy.
Implement Continuous Feedback Loops and Iteration: Establish easily accessible channels for collecting user feedback (in-app surveys, support hotlines, social media monitoring). Commit to rapid, iterative improvements and updates based on this feedback throughout the event’s duration. An agile approach demonstrates responsiveness and ensures the app continuously evolves.
Leverage AI & Advanced Tech Thoughtfully: Integrate AI for personalized recommendations and efficient itinerary planning only when built upon a stable, reliable, and user-friendly foundation. AR for navigation should genuinely enhance the experience and be demonstrably intuitive and accurate. Advanced technologies should augment and enhance an already solid user experience, not serve as a distraction or compensate for fundamental flaws.

The Bottom Line: Redefining Digital Engagement for Global Experiences

The digital efforts for EXPO 2025 Osaka, particularly its “Visitors” app and reservation system, faced significant challenges. The stark disconnect between an ambitious technological vision and a frustrating, fragmented, and unstable user experience demonstrably undermined the overall visitor journey and satisfaction.

In an increasingly digital and interconnected world, the success of mega-events hinges not just on impressive physical infrastructure and captivating exhibits, but equally on a seamless, intuitive, and highly reliable digital ecosystem. Applications are no longer merely supplementary tools; they are integral to every stage of the visitor’s journey.

The experiences and lessons learned from EXPO 2025 Osaka underscore the critical importance of prioritizing foundational user experience, adopting unified platform strategies, and committing to rigorous, user-centric design and testing. Future global events must learn from these challenges to truly deliver on the promise of an integrated, enjoyable, and technologically advanced experience for every visitor, ensuring that digital innovation genuinely enhances, rather than detracts from, the human experience.