Sensory Design

- from the book of the same name by Joy Malnar & Frank Vodvarka

Sensory Cues

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Our sense of smell is not highly valued, nor is odor given any acknowledgement as a design parameter.
Smell is an 'old' sense in evolutionary terms, with few connnections to the left neocortex (our language centres) but many connections to older brain structures which regulate emotion and motivation, including the limbic system, the brain stem and the pituary gland (which through smell, influences bodily function via hormone production).
So, we may not immediately rationalise and explain what we are smelling, but we do have an immediate reaction to a smell and a tendancy to act on it - that is, smelling something generally leads to emotionally coloured and sometimes instinctive actions.

Some notes on our sense of smell:

• Odor sensitivity varies over the course of the day
• Our sense of smell rapidly fatigues (ie. with constant exposure)
• Generally diminishes with age
• Response to odour are not totally objective - they vary individually
• It has a strong ability to invoke an awareness of place - smells remembered after a day tend to be still remembered after a month or a year
• Smell is the sense most strongy associated with memories of a particular time, smells can act as memory aids

Odour can provide otherwise neutral spaces with specific character.