Sensory Mashup

For better or for worse (mainly for better), most of us have multiple senses working at the same time, all bringing information from the world around us into our brains.  All of that material gets combined in our heads, encouraging us to think and behave in particular ways.

Each of us has a dominant sense, one that’s just a little more sensitive than any of the others, one that’s the more powerful driver of our brain’s response to the world around us, one that has a particularly strong effect on our mood, our mental and physical wellbeing, our cognitive performance.

For most of us our dominant sense is vision.  The attention to what we see is also driven by the ways we most commonly communicate about design, via images, still or moving, sometimes with an accompanying verbal commentary, sometimes not.  Even though what we see in a space is generally the hottest topic of discussion, the information that we pull in through our other sensory channels can’t be ignored, by our brains when it’s trying to figure out what to do or to think and, more generally, by whomever is involved in designing somewhere or something.

We have different objectives, mood-wise, when we’re developing different sorts of spaces, something we talk about lots in Space Doctors.  Making it more likely that people will be in the desired mood is a driving objective, directing our design decision-making.  If we think of our individual sensory experiences as ingredients for a tasty, nutritious stew, and our desired outcome as that stew, we could say that we sometimes pull in ingredients based on one recipe and at other times from another.

Everything goes best when our sensory experiences in any sort of place are consistent—that’s what our brains prefer, what leads to the most positive assessments, and when they’re not we get stressed and stress distracts us from whatever it is that we’ve planned, our goals for a particular time in a particular place.

There are three different parameters to consider when you’re planning for consistency.

• Energy level. It’s key that whatever sensory experiences you can control in a space are more relaxing or more energizing, a mix confuses and stresses us.
• Pleasantness (you could also think of this as how positive or negative the atmosphere generated is). Sometimes we want to include design elements in a space that set us on edge, ones that draw our attention or cause us to act in certain ways for safety reasons, for safety reasons for example.  Designing for energy level and pleasantness are discussed in this article, for example.
• The third think to consider is the silent signals we get from particular experiences, the nonverbal signals that they send us. For example, we link a spicy smell heavy on cloves and cinnamon to the end of the year holidays, just like we do to certain pieces of music.  Use that music in stores with fresh floral scents in the Spring and something seems amiss in our world, and that makes us tense.

It’s also true that info we get from one sensory channel can make us curious about what’s up with another and spur us to action, and we don’t have to consciously perceive something for it to affect us.  When we see something that seems intriguing, we may wonder what it feels like, for example, and that uncertainty leads to tactile exploration. Also, info from one sensory channel can on rare occasions, drown out that gained through others.  When we’re doing something that’s difficult visually, our hearing may become less acute, for example.

There are lots of examples of how our sensory experiences combine in our heads, sometimes in ways that are surprising, sometimes in ways that are not, for starters:

• When we are in a place that features warm colours we feel warmer than we do when cooler colours predominate, for instance. Also, people viewed in those warmer coloured areas themselves seem “warmer” than when viewed in neutral or cooler coloured one.
• Angular shapes/lines have been tied to bitter tastes and curving ones to sweeter ones—the same chocolate mix poured into different moulds will be perceived as tasting different. And perhaps even more interesting and important: more angular products/spaces are perceived to be more functional and curvier ones are more comfortable/pleasant.
• Things that are darker colours are perceived to be heavier than those that are lighter, so they need to be closer to the ground than light-coloured ones so that arrangements seem stable.
• Design and food taste/eating links is discussed in depth here.

When we’re shopping, we’re likely to use sensory information for particular purposes.  What something looks like has a big effect on how functional we think something is and what we smell when we’re making selections has a big effect on us emotionally (and sometimes overall responses, related, for instance, to cleanliness).  When we touch something, when we reach out and feel a sweater, etc., because we’re interested in learning if it’s “itchy,” we get an ownership type feeling for it, we “feel” that it’s ours, whether it actually is or it isn’t.

In general, info that reaches us first has a big effect on whatever comes next, how we interpret what’s around us, which giv
es vision another advantage, from an experience determining-perspe

ctive.  But other experiences can’t be ignored – we don’t really know if a chair is comfortable until we sit down in it or if the combination of floor and wall materials in an entryway will lead to a stress inducing reverberation that we need to counter with wall hangings or carpeting until we enter that space.

Here at the Space Doctors we talk a lot about biophilic design and its mental and physical benefits (here for example) and biophilic design is inherently multi-sensory—it works best (stress-, comfort-, and cognitive performance-wise) when we (conceptually at least) a meadow on a lovely Spring day from our early days as a species, completed with, for example, natural and circadian lighting, water features indoors (say a fish tank or a fountain) or outside and visible through a window, moderate amounts of stuff going on visually (no clutter!), natural surface materials, indoor plants, art and photographs showing nature scenes, places where people feel secure and have a view of the world around themselves, natural soundtracks, and positive scents, as a start.  Research with places that have been biophilically designed makes it very clear that adding one biophilic design element to another to another results in much more positive impact on wellbeing and professional performance than what each of the three biophilic experiences (in this example) contribute individually; there is synergy, positive effects because elements interact, not just exist on their own.