How multi-sensory design can help you create memorable experiences

Published in

UX Collective

6 min readJul 28, 2019

Multi-Sensory Design is becoming so much relevant in this age of digital interactions. But the most memorable experiences we have are always multi-sensorial. In this article, I will talk about the importance of multi-sensory design giving some great examples, talking about the design process and some activities that you can do to be more aware of your senses.

Food is a complete multi-sensory experience.

We often have great memories related to food, be it our grandma’s cooking or that delicious treats we tasted while traveling or the lovely smell of a freshly baked pizza that takes us down the memory lane. This is all because of the fact that food is a complete multi-sensory experience which involves all your five senses: vision, touch, sound, smell and taste.

Try to remember your last such experience with a product, service or environment. It can be difficult to think of one. In this age of digital interactions, designers are forgetting to use senses to their advantage in creating memorable interactions with products and services. Designing for all the senses is important to enrich design experiences and avoiding design incongruities¹.

Some examples of multi-sensorial experiences from daily life

Back in 2018, I was visiting the Milan Design Week and I remember visiting the Moooi (a luxury lighting and furniture brand) exhibition and I noticed it was very calm inside. As soon I went out of the space, I noticed a sudden change. I instantly knew it was the smell that was dispersed inside (probably with high quality perfumes) that made it a wonderful sensorial experience. So just by adding the sense of smell, they changed how people experienced their space.

Moooi Exhibition, Milan Design Week 2018.

Another amazing example of multi-sensorial design exploration was done by Sony called Hidden Senses at the Milan Design Week, 2018. They had some wonderful prototypes created which the people could interact with and explore their senses to find hidden meanings of how things functioned.

How can we create ideal interactions in a world where technology increasingly merges with our daily lives? (Copyright: Sony, 2018)

A social campaign done by Volkswagen in 2009 in Sweden converted normal stairs at an underground station into a piano stairs installation. They wanted to encourage people to take stairs rather than an escalator. And it again made use of the sense of sound to create such a great engagement. All the people started using stairs as they were so happy interacting with piano sounds.

**Fun Theory: A campaign done by Volkswagen in Sweden.** (Copyright: Volkswagen, 2009)

Recently, the Vienna Lines (city public transport system) started trialling perfumed carriages as many commuters complained about unpleasant smells. Now as they enter the crowded carriage, they are met not with a musty mix of human odors, but with the subtle aroma of citrus fruit². The day-to-day commute is always stressful but with adding the sense of a good smell, they tried to remove the problem of smelly trains and the perfume relaxes people making the commute less stressful. Another great use of multi-sensory design!

Wiener Linien or Vienna Lines. (Photo by Samuel-Elias on Unsplash)

In the spring of 2018 during my design masters at Politecnico di Milano, I participated in a course: Design for Multi-sensory Experiences. The goal of the course was to become aware of the role of the senses, to become sensitive to sensorial experiences and to develop skills to design for the senses.

The Multi-sensory Design Process³

I would like to briefly describe the process which are basically some steps we should do when designing anything:

Why: what is the desired effect of your design?
How: what is the desired experience?
Sampling: what objects/materials elicit that experience?
Analysis: what are the sensory properties of the samples?
Integration: what is the sensory experience going to be?
Design: translating the findings in a coherent design!

By using these steps as a guide, designers can have a deeper understanding of the sensorial experience their designs could have.

Activities for understanding the meaning of the senses⁴

I would like to share some activities that anyone can do to get more aware of their senses:

Activity 1:
Find a sensory congruent and a sensory incongruent object. Try to experience their texture, color, shape, weight and material. What did you observe? For example: A beach hat has a natural texture, with light colors, round shape and lightweight material.

Activity 2:
Try to explore the world of care (could be any type of care) and look for interesting multi-sensory objects. Analyze the objects on: intended effect, intended experience and their designed sensory properties. For example: a pillow is an object of care which allows you to be comfortable while supporting you.

Activity 3:
This activity is about tactual perception. The touch can be: Active or Passive. When we hold an object it is called Active Touch (we experience tactual properties of the object) and when the object touches you it is called Passive touch (skin and bodily sensations that you feel). I suggest to find an object which you like or some object you like to fidget with. Try to understand the meaning of Active and Passive touch with that object.

Activity 4:
Now you will need to find your Soul Mate! (just kidding). What personality traits characterize you and how are they expressed in your behavior? Find objects with that same behavior and same personality traits. What are the tactual properties of the object that are related to your personality? For example: I chose my bluetooth speaker!

This was a brief introduction to the process of multi-sensory design and some activities that you can do to be more aware of your senses while designing or experiencing things.

Another very interesting example of multi-sensory design is this idea by a Dutch artist and creative Jasper Udink ten Cate. Creative Chef Records is ought to be a collection of ceramic plates in a record-sleeve on which you can find an artists name, a song you can play with a scan code and a favorite recipe of the artist⁵. This is a clever way of involving the different senses by combining the idea of art, music, food and objects.

To finish this article I would like to point out this very interesting TED talk by Jinsop Lee. He talks about the importance of multi-sensory design and gives various daily life examples.

The 5 Senses Graph (copyright: Jinsop Lee)

He explains the examples through a graph called the 5 Senses Graph. By involving even just one more sense in our designs we could dramatically change the overall experience of our products, services and experience.