The first Experience Design mission in history
Eleven days inside the China nobody visits. Zhang Yimou's shows. The corporate campuses that reinvented culture. The museum where you learn through the body. The brands that became territory. The world looks to Silicon Valley for inspiration in creativity, people and culture. It is looking the wrong way.
I want to know more →Why this mission exists
Corporate missions to China visit Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, industrial hubs. This is the first to go to the human, sensory, emotional side of what China is producing. To shows, immersive museums, experiential retail, brand activations, immersive learning installations. This window is still open because no one has stepped into it.
Over the past five years, the creative edge of retail, hospitality and immersive entertainment has migrated. Brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Bottega Veneta choose Shanghai before New York for their most radical installations. When you design experience looking only at Europe or the US, you are looking at a five-year-old mirror.
Other missions do façade visits, lectures and networking. Here you toboggan down the Great Wall. You sit in the audience of Zhang Yimou’s show and feel scents synchronized with every scene. You cross three climate biomes in a zero-energy greenhouse. You walk through the Louis Vuitton ship and Gentle Monster, where the store became an installation. It is the principle every HR and L&D team chases: adults retain what they live, not what they hear. Each stop is followed by an authored debrief to extract the method and bring it back into your company.
It coincides with the CIIE (China International Import Expo) in Shanghai and the golden autumn in Beijing. Mild weather in every city. Low tourist crowds, high professional traffic. In February everything closes. In July-August, unbearable heat. November is the only window that combines climate, calendar and density of events.
What you will live, in route order
Day 1 · Beijing · Mutianyu
A two-thousand-year-old wall became a ride. Ancient heritage repositioned as kinetic experience. The perfect example of the shift from "Made in China" to "Designed in China".
Day 2 · Beijing · CBD
LEED Platinum pyramid building with the largest private Dalí collection outside Barcelona, sculptures suspended in the atrium, radical sustainable architecture. Where the mall becomes a museum.
Day 2 · Beijing · Chaoyang
A former Mao-era weapons factory turned creative district. A direct model for any company rethinking a decommissioned physical plant as a cultural asset.
For HR & L&D · Beijing · smart logistics
The largest smart logistics center of one of China’s e-commerce giants. Sorting robots, ring conveyors and a flow that runs from intake to dispatch almost without human hands. From storage to green delivery, it is a portrait of how the supply chain became technology. One of the mission’s two corporate visits.
Day 4 · Shanghai · experiential retail
Two references of retail turned installation. The Louis Vuitton ship ("The Louis", HKRI Taikoo Hui) with the Visionary Journeys exhibition, and Gentle Monster Haus Nowhere, 3,350 m², four floors, robotic humanoids, Nudake pâtisserie and Tamburins fragrance. Shanghai is the global brand laboratory before New York.
Design + sustainability · Expo Cultural Park
Opened in 2024 by Delugan Meissl: 41,000 m² of curved glass pavilions 35m high, housing Desert, Cloud Forest and Misty Canyon. A regenerated former steel factory, 100% passive ventilation. How to teach ESG by making the body feel three climates, not with a spreadsheet.
For HR & L&D · Shanghai · Pudong
Two Pudong landmarks in one day. Shanghai Tower, the world’s second-tallest building, twists upward with a double glass façade that breathes and saves energy, architecture as a sustainability manifesto. And the Science & Technology Museum, reopened in 2026: the "Incredible Me" zone unpacks how the brain and body learn, and the Materials Cube teaches properties through touch, not text. A living manual for learning journeys that enter through experience.
For HR & L&D · situated learning
"Design in the City" model: a local designer leads the group through a district (the Bund’s Art Deco, Suzhou Creek, Jing’an’s alleys) decoding how space was designed to shape behavior. Pure peripatetic learning, exactly "seeing with new eyes" and "first person perspective" applied to the street.
Day 6 · Hangzhou · West Lake
An open-air spectacle directed by the filmmaker behind the Beijing Olympics. Neck devices release scent synchronized with each scene. A masterclass in how emotion fixes memory, what every learning program should chase and almost none achieves.
Day 9 · Shenzhen · Longgang
The World’s First Robot 6S Store at Galaxy World CoCo Park. Daily humanoid performances at 11am, 3pm, 5pm and 7pm. A live Jianbing Guozi robot at the entrance. A real preview of what is coming to the West in 2-3 years, except here it is already everyday life.
For HR & L&D · Shenzhen · scale and culture
Born in Shenzhen in 1995 making batteries, BYD became the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker, ahead of Tesla. The showroom and campus show how a company grows by verticalizing everything, from the battery cell to the finished car, and how a culture of obsessive engineering becomes competitive advantage. A living study of scale, speed and Chinese industrial ambition.
Authored curation · who leads
The difference between a mission and a package is who holds the microphone at debrief time. Rodrigo and Rafael lead every stop, every nightly conversation and every practical application session.
Host · Founder, Nuts
Founder and CEO of Nuts, a Corporate Experience Design agency for 17 years. He ran the route himself on a pilot trip and designed every stop tied to an experience design concept.
Clients include Renner, JBS, Itaú Social, TIM, Catupiry, Seara, Estée Lauder. Trained in theater, former Instituto DNA Brasil at Ricardo Semler’s invitation.
Co-host · Content Director, Nuts
Content Director at Nuts, awarded as one of the country’s leading young references in experience design. Responsible for content curation and the mission’s nightly debriefs.
He ties every visit to the framework of the 5 Nuts Tools (Poetic Design, Maker Spaces, First Person Perspective, Seeing with New Eyes, Sparking Curious Minds).
The method applied to the mission itself
Most missions begin at the airport and end at arrivals. Ours does not. We design the three movements of every experience that lasts: what comes before, what is lived, and what remains. The China Mission does not just teach experience design. It is one.
01 · Before
Weeks before departure, a live meeting prepares the gaze (not the luggage). You receive a personal question to carry through the whole trip and a curation dossier revealing why each stop was chosen. The mission begins long before the flight.
02 · During
Eleven days crossed with an authored lens. Each visit is followed by a small-group nightly debrief where you don’t talk about what you saw: you build the application for your company, while it is still hot. You live and produce, not just observe.
03 · After
The mission does not end at arrivals. Reunions at 30 and 90 days turn what you lived into decision and real project. The question you carried from the start closes: was the decision that was missing finally made?
Preliminary program
Guided mornings and afternoons with authored curation. Nights with small-group debriefs. Not a tourist itinerary, not a corporate benchmark. It is method immersion.
Itinerary in progress. This program is a preliminary version and remains under curation. Dates, visit order and specific activities may be adjusted, and certain experiences are subject to availability and access confirmation on the mission dates. The final version is shared with confirmed participants.
Who it is for
For those who design experience as a strategic asset, regardless of the title on the badge.
Honesty first: if the mission is not for you, better to know now.
Window bonus
From November 5-10, the CIIE (China International Import Expo) takes place at the NECC. We reserve one official mission day for a guided visit. Those who want to extend business contacts have dedicated free time outside the program.
Express your interest
Fill in the details below. Over the coming weeks you will receive the detailed program, the investment and the priority enrollment window. No sales agenda. No pitch. Just a real conversation.
We will be in touch in a few days with more details about the mission.