smell by 錢毅

smell!

Name: I Chien Goldsmiths, University of London Module: DS71072B Independent Project Module Leader: Mike Waller Student Number:33437035 Course: MA Design and Innovation

introduction

re-framing

theoretical framing

second ideation 02

project framing

second evaluating 04

context mapping

prospect and conclusion 05

ideation

reference 07

introduction By the invention of the internet and the risen of the new media, the speed and scope of the information dissemination become faster and more massive in the 21st century. In this kind of fast food society, People are more emphasizing the high efficiency and mass production. According to Velvet Chainsaw Consulting(2012), the researchers Dr. L.D. Rosenblum, Dr. Harold Stolovitch and Dr Erica Keeps establish the percentage of people using their 5 senses to receive the information everyday. The data shows that people receive the information over 80% by using the sight, only less 20% by using the other senses. The reason is that the visual is easier and more direct to propagate. As a result, the most effective sense, visual, has dominated the other senses to become the most significant sense in the society. 83% sight

11% 3.5% 1.5%

where is the olfactory? Nowadays, many industries, such as film, fashion and even design, see the visual work as the majority method to catch the eyes of consumers and approach the buyer market, thus they slight the other senses in their products and projects. People are looking the picture on the screen, speaking through the microphone, listening the music from speakers and touching the screen and buttons to interact with phone, but where is smelling? Why do we not use the smell? Is it because the smell is not important?

However, the research (Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, 2012) shows that the more senses are engaged in the experience, the more information can be remembered and understood, especially the olfactory. According to Fifth Sense(2015), the olfactory is not only syndicated with the taste, but also highly influenced our emotions and memories. Alan Moore(2016) also claims â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When we are making anything we should never forget that as human beings we endlessly engage with our world through our senses.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Thus, as a communication designer and innovation student, I am always interesting in improving the experiences of communication. While I have done the visual works for a few years, I feel something missing in the process of communication between clients and myself. A lot of questions come at this point; Do people fully deliver our messages or ideas to the audience? Is the visual not enough to do it? Why is the olfactory minority recently? How can people use smell to interact with others and the environment? How can people use smell to tell stories and communicate? And what methods can improve the awareness of the smell?

In this document, I will examine the process by following the theoretical modules to understand and explore the context of the smell, it is including a series of researches, practices and prototypes to engage the audience. Furthermore, how I use these methods to contribute and reflect on the project.

theoretical framing Design thinking is a significant module to contribute the whole project during the innovative process, It helps me explore the project topic and narrow down the context area progressively, just like a navigator leads me to the correct direction.

The design thinking theory (IDEO, 2016) is the method that bases on people to approach the innovation. It provides the 4 looping steps, inspiration, insight, ideation and implementation, or 5 steps, empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test in Stanford design thinking(2010).

01 project framing

02 context mapping

Project framing is doing the research around the topic to understand the context briefly and provide the field of the topic for developing in the future. In this step, it is including any kinds of research, such as literature research, scientific research and recent practice review, and also identifying the problems or issues. Overall, it is learning the basic knowledge of topic, which is like building a ship for sailing.

Before sailing, sailors have to illustrate the navigations chart and arrange the sailing plan. Context mapping is the step that analyzing the research and contributing the relationship between issues and the topic. The map should support the project to be explored and demonstrate the directions for generating the ideas.

The theory encourages the designers to engage with people, directly test their prototypes and self evaluation until approaching the innovative goal.

In this project, I use the same idea from the design thinking module. However, I separate it to the 5 different steps, they are project framing, context mapping, ideation, evaluating and re-framing.

ideation

04 evaluation

05 reframing

Ideation is the method for generating ideas by through a series of activities, for example, body storming and interviewing, these activities help the designers to understand the actual circumstance of the field and receive the suggestions from the experts. This step is important to the designers, that place themselves into the center of issues or problems from the papers, in order to generate the ideas to engage with the audience.

Evaluation is transferring the ideas to the prototypes or practical activities in order to engage with the audience and receive the feedbacks. During the innovative process, this step is particularly important, it is the method to communicate the audience, show the proposal and obtain the feedbacks for improving or shifting the project. Evaluating is the core of the innovative project, it drives the project to evolve and become better.

In this step, that the designers reflect on the project which is according to the feedbacks they received from the evaluating stage. By analyzing and organizing the feedbacks, the new problems or issues might be found. As a result, designers demand for studying the new research, generating the new ideas and initiating the design thinking loop again.

project framing

context mapping

ideation

evaluation

reframing

project framing According to R. Wodsworth(1983), people use more the sense of visual to perceive the environment around, rather than other senses. The percentage of the smell is only 3.5%, which is much lesser than the visual and half of the hearing only. Furthermore, the data was built in 13 years ago, that was before the smart phone has been invented. Recently, the visual dominates our life even more, because of relying on technology devices. In addition, the questions is coming out: why do not we use smell in daily life? What is the smell exactly?

87% 7% 3.5% 1.5% 1%

what is the smell? The lesser importance of smell is related to the evolution of human being. When human evolved from apes, which is walking on all fours,

the distance between the nose and the ground has been increased and the eyes moved to a higher position. Therefore, the eyesight has become more and more important than the sense of smell. People started to use eyes to observer the environment.

The olfactory extremely plays a lot of important roles in our sensory system. It provides an early-warning system to allow people discover dangers around themselves and distinguish the freshness of food to avoid being poisoned. Thus, for influencing the brain to make reactions faster, stronger and more efficient, the signal of smell does not need to pass through the thalamus before it arrives to the brain. This is why the smell is the closet sensor to the brain, and also it is why the odors are so liable to trigger the memories and emotions. On the other hand, the olfactory is syndicated with the taste. There are only 5 different tastes that human tongues can separate, which are: sourness, sweetness, bitterness,

saltiness and umami. It is over 75% flavors that actually comes from the olfactory system. The scent of food passes from the mouth into the nostril to let smell sensors to perceive the flavors. Hence, people could not taste any flavor when they are holding the breath. There are around 12 million receptor cells in the human nose and they can detect approximately 1000 different odors, that is why the smell is so difficult to describe, it can be imagined as a language which has around 1000 various alphabet. On the other hand, the way of scents transferring is totally different from the visual, it delivers with the molecules through air and liquid. As the result, people could not see the thing behind the wall, but it might be smelled.

anosmia What would the world become if we could not smell everything? This idea is coming up with a bunch of

doubts for seeking opportunities and possibilities out of the frame. If the smell is only 3.5% of life, what would happen when people lost it? What will life be? What will the relationship of people with society, environments and others change?

4x According to the research of PLOS One, people who is suffering from anosmia, the chance of death in next 5 years is 4 times higher than normal people. The fifth senses organization also provides the survey of anosmia patients. The result shows that patients are not only suffered from physical disability, but also facing a bunch of psych and social problems, such as depression, exposing in the dangerous environments, and lack of resources and social benefits. Moreover, anosmia is short of awareness from society. These people need a healthy system of assistance.

context mapping As a communication designer, the graphics is much easier than words for me to understand and contribute the directions of the project. I analyze the research and practices, that I have done, to illustrate the different kinds of contextual maps, from simple to complex, even more I try to use different materials, such as coffee and alcohol, to present my topic, the olfactory. For me,contextual maps are a living map, it should be updated and renewed in the different design stages during the whole design and research process.

ideation Experimental practice is a method to encourage designers to engage the topic area for gaining the experiences and the feedbacks. It is the method to discover the possibilities and understand the problems by applying their own bodies.

the smell maps The smelling map is an experimental practice of my project. Since my project is about the smelling, I am thinking how do we use this sensor to engage the environments and how can we describe and translate the information that we receiving from the nose. Hence, I design this practice with different aspects and materials as methods to explore the topic area.

what would it like, if I have applied olfactory as the main element to draw a map. I record the smelling data around the campus and try to make a smelling map and describe the routine from the design department to other buildings. As the results, I figure out that smell can actually blurred the physical boundaries, for example, I can smell the odor of coffee from inside the building by standing outside. However, I also discovered some problems, such as some smells are hard to describe and categorize by using language.

the smelling map 1: goldsmiths campus The main idea of this practice is simple and straight, bringing a pen and a notebook and discovering the campus by my nose. As a visual animal, people usually measure and describe the environments by the shapes, colors and sizes, for instance, maps, which are a good example. Thus, I am wondering

the smelling map 2: underground Unlike the last practice, I consider stay in the same position to record the smell of the changing environment during the specific time. The Underground is a perfect place to simulate the environment changing at time because of the passenger flow. The purpose of the practice is to illustrate the relationship between time and the smell. After the practice, I discover that the olfactory sensor is easy to feel tired, which means it is hard to smell the same odor for a long time. Furthermore, sometimes is quiet difficult to find out the source of the smell and distinguish it. Consequently, it is difficult to use the smell to demonstrate time changing.

FOOD / COFFEE CIGARETTE TRAFIC FUMES PERFUME / COLOGNE WOOD BOOK / NEWS PAPERS FRUIT TRASH

GRASS / TREES DIRT / SAND WOOD COFFEE FOOD PAINT CIGARETTE BOOK TRAFIC FUMES TOILET

cultural probes: iceland After finished the experimental smell maps, I attend to explore deeper in the relationship between smell and environment. As a result, I design the cultural probes for a 10-people group in Iceland, this project aims to discover the narrative of the tourists, attempt to understand the role that smell plays during a trip, and explore the unexpected context. (a). map

Please try to use the bottle to collect the most memorable smell during the trip.

(a).

Please mark the location and time that you collect the smell, and simply describe the environment.

(b).

Please draw the image of your collection, it can be an object, a situation, or even a emotional moment. Feel free to use any kind of materials creatively.

(c).

It is opposite to normal cultural probes, the camera is changed to a small bottle, in order to ask the users to collect the smell which is the most memorable during the 5 days trip. In the meantime, they should draw and write why they choose this smell. Before running the project, I expect all users will choose some natural materials in the famous attractions, such as sand and hot spring water. However, it does not happen, around half of the users choose something which can be discovered everywhere in the world, for example, the coffee in the national park cafe, the reason why the user choose this common thing is because of the blizzard, they have been trapped in the cafe for 5 hours.

Please write down the story behind your collection with specific details to tell us why you choose it.

(b). drawing

(c). story

After this project, I figure out that the smell memories during the trip were not like the visual memories (camera) usually focus on attractions, they more rely on the situation, and especially during tasting something. Furthermore, the smell is hard to collect, the container should be designed.

horse rein (leather)

hot spring water

coffee

(sulphur)

black sand (mineral / ocean)

hot spring water (sulphur)

instant noodle (spicy chicken)

perfume

horse crap (sh*t)

smelling storyboard The smelling storyboard is an activity with my roommates. The idea of the activity is trying to use odors to provide a story, therefore I ask my roommates to use any materials that they can obtain and place it on the cards in the order to represent a series of actions, which is just likes a normal storyboard. Furthermore, other participants have to guess the story and share their opinions. The reason that I apply a series of odors is in order to eliminate the different implications of odors. Because the olfactory is related to personal experience and emotions, people may have different explanations with the same odor. Thus, by using a series of odors with logics and narratives, I consider that can people reach a consensus of the smelling explanations. As a result, the participants illustrate the three different storyboards, which are cleaning after the party, preparing to go out, and going back home and having a tea. The participants claim that they can vaguely understand the actions or stories by some particular odors, however they cannot comprehend

every details in the story, for example, in the action of cleaning, people recognize the smell of wine and dishwashing liquid, and also consider about the order of them, they have the image the situation which is doing cleaning or washing after the dinner or party. After this activity, the method of using smelling to communicate and narrate a story is actually interesting and novel, it is totally different with hearing and seeing. Consequently, the method applies me to consider how can people use the olfactory to communicate or interact for creating different experiences.

cleaning after the party.

prepare to go out.

(wine / soap)

(toothpath / perfume)

just get back home and have a tea. (tea / makeup remover)

interview For understanding and exploring the topic further, I interview several experts from distinct areas, for instance, the tea ceremony artist, the branding designer and the industrial designer from technology company. The purpose of the interviews is not only limited on the sense of smelling, but also focuses on how they develop their projects and what suggestions or advices can provide to me.

the tea ceremony artist I discuss my project, the olfactory, with my friend, Daniel, who is the master of Chadao (the tea ceremony). He explains the relationship between the eastern tea and the smell, that the essential of making tea is making the perfect smell. Furthermore, he illustrates the different materials of teapots and tea cups, such as pottery, ceramics, plastic, glass and stone, how these materials influence the smell of tea and what kinds of tea are they suitable. Moreover, he offers me an opportunity to cooperate for one of his workshop.

the branding designer Josh is a branding designer, recently cooperate with some fashion brand for designing the decorations of the stores. He notices that lately more and more fashion brands are trying to focus on the sensory marketing, they are developing the specific perfume products and starting concern the smell design in their stores, although they are still minority. His team are recently researching with the perfumers on the layer of the smell, how to create different layers in the smell. In addition, he also considers that it is difficult to present the original odors of the things, however, by through design, it can be simulated and represented by other similar odors or elements.

Daniel Chou

the industrial designer My interviewee, Jusuek Lee(2017), the lead designer and manager at Samsung design Europe, recently is doing the project of the sensory technology device, he indicates that the whole process of the project is based on the design thinking theory. However, the sensory design projects take longer time at the implementation step. It is not only repeating to test the prototypes for user experience and cooperating with other teams, such as UX and UI, but also has to find the balance between the aspects of people, technology and business. He further mentions that in the global companies, like Samsung, it is much more difficult to have the compromise with the business aspect than making the ideation, because it includes too many components, such as profits, markets and operating strategies. Yet the purpose of the project, that is to create the fresh sensory experience to the audience, has never changed.

Josh Peng

experiment The smell of tea ceremony is a prototyping project which cooperates with the tea artist, Daniel, and also is my first experience of conducting the workshop. The workshop provides the theatre experience, that reduces the visual distractions by performing in the dark room, and only lights a few candles near the artist. In addition, we place the used tea leaves in the small plates to decorate the room and try to enhance the odor of tea. After the artist finishes the performance, every participants can receive a cup of tea and share their opinions of the sensory experience in the workshop.

However, the experience of the smell is not designed very well, the most participants consider that reducing the visual distraction makes them more focusing on the performance, instead of improving the smell. Moreover, they only smell the tea leaves in the first ten minutes, before they obtain the smelling exhaust. Overall, the smelling topic is inconspicuous and it need to be revised.

reframing After the unsuccessful prototyping, I attempt to re-frame my project into two directions, which are sensory marketing and providing the other experimental workshop of the smell. Therefore, I review some researches of the sensory marketing, and how do other designers use senses to improve their projects. Moreover, I practice the method of making perfume to understand how to collect and keep the odors for generating new ideas.

the sensory marketing According to the brand designer, Yasushi Kusume(2015), the multi-sensory design and marketing has existed over a decade. He argues that some of these sensory marketings have lost their functional and essential meaning. Furthermore, they cannot fully improve the experience of the users, sometimes it makes worse. For example, the vacuum cleaner industry uses the levels of unnecessary noise to represent the power they have, the louder is more powerful. However, there are still some positive cases that are worth to learn. For instance, the closing-door sound of Mercedes cars. In Mercedes, they

have the particular department to design the sounds of the car doors closing. Consequently, these sounds not only shows the brand value, but also reveals the identity of the owners. According to Harvard Business Review(2015), although the sensory marketing has existed almost two decades, the market researchers are just noticing how powerful is it. The sensory marketing opens up the communication between costumers and consumers, it is not just like the past, that costumers unilaterally receive the information from the consumers. The costumer feedback starts to play a significant role in the market. Similarly, the relationship between the audience and designers are also having some alterations. The working process of designers slightly becomes transparent, the opportunities of communicating with the audience and the market are also increasing. As a result, we have to start to study or research other design languages, such as smell language and tasting language. Therefore, as a communication designer, it is a new challenge and also a great opportunity.

experience and senses

However, the senses should not be the weakness, but the strength in the design(Alan Moore, 2016). Lee also claims that the graphs are not everything. It does not mean that we have to reach 10 score at every senses in our design. As Alejandro(2014) discusses that we do not make it more, but better. The audience is still the most significant element to lead the design. At least, the 5 senses graph is still a favorable practice to consider and execute.

For designers, the best way to understand the narratives is to participate in the context and engage with their audience. Jinsop Lee(2013), an industrial designer, invents the unique design method to help him to define the issue and explore the context, he believes the experience of senses is related to the design is success or not. He names this method as the 5 senses graph. The idea is simple to mark the score from 1 to 10 at every senses after using products or participating activities. For example, he compares the Nintendo Wii and previous game consoles, movie and book. This method helps designers clearly understand the data of user experience and discover the issues.

Wii v.s. previous game console

Book v.s. Movie 10

1 sight touch smell sound taste

sight touch smell sound taste

second ideation perfume making Before designing the smelling workshops, I attempt to understand how do perfumers collect and keep the perfume for generating the new ideas. Thus, I do the practice for making perfume by following the instruction on the website(WikiHow, 2017). The principle of making the perfume is using the carrier oil to keep the odor, then merging the oil with alcohol, which evaporates faster and helps odor diffuse. In addition, the dark container can prevent the odor disappeared and keep it longer.

01 mix oil with materials or essentials

However, I figure that the odor will become weaker than before be made into perfume. Furthermore, the whole process takes 1 to 4 weeks for waiting the odor merging with the carrier oil, even though some odors still could not be collected.

02 remain 1-4 weeks

03 add alcohol and water

04 remain 2 days

05 filter out materials and oil

06 done

second evaluating The ideas of the second prototyping workshops is showing the proposal of the smelling map and the smell of Iceland practice, that encourages people to use smelling to explore the environment, communicate with each other and promote the awareness of it. In addition, I design some entertaining elements inside the activities to make it more interesting and more attractive. The workshop provides three main activities: warm up,the smelling map and matching game.

SMELL SMELL SMELL

smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell smell

warm-up

č &#x17E;

SMELL

smell map

gaming-time

Warm-up The first activity attempts to get participants into the situation, wake up their nose and practice to describe the odor. Therefore, I provide the 10 bottles with different odors and ask participants to describe the odor and write down what images does them make.

The smelling map This activity is similar to my smelling map practice, the purpose of it is to explore the environment with nose. Participants are asked to the park for smelling the every corners and record the odor they smell on the papers. After 30 minutes exploration, they will take their notes to discuss the results and make a smell map together.

RED LION SQUARE

Matching Game In the last activity, participants have to separate as two teams for the competition, they have to match 12 pairs of 24 bottles in turn. The bottles fill with 12 kinds of drinks, such as juice and alcohol, the defeated team have to drink all the bottles which are matched by wining team. The purpose of this activity encourages participants to use smelling for memorizing and communicating with their team mates.

the second workshop After the first workshop, most participants thinks the workshop is highly interesting, because they have never had this kind of experience before. The activities actually trigger their memories and imagination. However, there are still some details need to be revised, such as smelling exhaust and some drinks can be easily recognized by colors in the third activity, even fill in the dark bottles. Therefore, in the second workshop, I make some changes, for instance, the body of the bottle is coved, I provide the coffee bean to release the smelling exhaust, and the smelling map is changed to the other activity, that the participants have to guess the odor, which depends on the description from others. As a result, most participants enjoy the whole process of the workshop, it provides them the method, that has existed for a long time but never used it, to explore the world. Furthermore, they discover that it is difficult to describe the smelling and have ignored it for such long time, these activities actually improve their awareness of the olfactory.

prospect and conclusion thinking theory, this project still has a lot of areas can be explored and developed. Overall, there are still a lot of opportunities and possibilities in the field of the smelling, that are waiting for people to discover. 519

495 419

52 25

419 395

175 26

51 12

110

36 40

After the smelling workshops, I am attempting to create the other prototype for transferring the matching game into a real product or a service, which can provide in the specific places, such as restaurants and pubs, to receive more feedbacks. I am still considering how can people improve the experience by employing the smelling. According to the design

395

419

In conclusion, by through all the research and practice, I understand that the olfactory is a huge topic, it covers a lot of areas, such as communication, technology, business and experience, the smelling is literally existing around the daily life. However, people are still lacking of the awareness of the smelling, even have no idea how important is it. As the director of 12.29 SCENT, Dawn Goldworm(2016) claims â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I can control your emotions and influence your behavior, without showing you anything, without touching you, and without saying a single word to you.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The olfactory has a powerful ability to influent the emotion and the action of people. Therefore, people have to understand more about the olfactory.

25 50 495 519

134,5

reference Hurt, J. (2012) ’Your Senses Are Your Raw Information Learning Portals’. Velvet Chainsaw Consulting. http://velvetchainsaw.com/2012/05/23/your-senses-your-raw-information-learning-portals/ Moore, A. (2016) ’The world is sensual and textured’, Do/Design Why beauty is key to everything. Works in Progess. pp.42-43 Kusume, Y (2015) ’Design For All Five Senses: Do your designs touch every sense possible?’ CO.DESIGN. https://www.fastcodesign.com/3050854/designing-for-all-five-senses Montejo, A.S. (2014)’Food, the brain & sensory illusions’ TEDxTalks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9bwn8ahRi0 Lee, J (2013)’The 5-senses showdown: How to grade your experiences’ TED Talks. http://blog.ted.com/the-5-senses-showdown-how-to-grade-your-experienc es/

IDEO (2016) ‘Design thinking workshop’ slides. Harvard Business Review(2015) ‘The Science of Sensory Marketing’. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-science-of-sensory-marketing Sundar, A and Noseworthy, T.J. (2016)’When Sensory Marketing Works and When it Backfires’ Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/05/ when-sensory-marketing-works-and-when-itbackfires?re ferral=03758 &cm_vc=rr_item_page.top_right Fifth Sense, website. http://www.fifthsense.org.uk/