5 Sense Space

A crucial aspect of designing space, for me, is the experience people will have using that space.  All too often, this is neglected as part of the design process.  We design for functions, where we should be designing for experience.

One way of thinking more about creating a holistic experience is what I call 5 Sense Space.  Before we talk more about what that looks like, let’s consider what we’re designing in.

I use the word space to encompass a number of different ideas about the physical environment, but it is all too easy to see it as just a series of dimensions, height, width and breadth, a space waiting to be filled with activity.  What I’m really talking about here is designing an environment.  In the natural world, an environment is a complete ecosystem of factors that act together.  So, too, do we need to think about an ecosystem of factors when designing space.

Another aspect of space is the idea of place, where people come together to experience something, whether it is the Royal Albert Hall or simply a dining room in a house.  As John Worthington often says, “architects design spaces, people make them places”.

We can, however, end up designing very functional spaces.  An eating hall outside a McDonalds in an airport is designed purely as an environment for people to quickly consume food.  You do not want to linger, you will probably not go back for more.  It is easy for the restaurant to manage, and once the customer has bought the food, their experience of eating it is seen as secondary.  This is how we end up designing many of our spaces: for activities centred around the work of the organisation, not around the experience of the customer, user, or learner.

There is another way.  Yo! Sushi has been successful for turning this experience on its head.  By rewriting the script for how a fast food dining experience should take place, the customer is uniquely integrated with the space.  Though the food is arguably faster than McDonalds, the customer is invited to continue buying food in small, expensive chunks in a vibrant and pleasing atmosphere.

So designing purely for function can create bland experiences.  Function is important, but by considering experience as the lens we put in the way of function, we can view very different possibilities.

One way of supporting that experience is to consider the design of 5 Sense Space.  The five senses – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, were proposed by Aristotle, and although some of them – such as touch – are arguably supersets of other senses that include things like temperature sense, motion sense and electromagnetic senses, they are the five key aspects of sense that we intuitively understand best.  Our senses are simply data input conduits to the brain.  They act to help our brain interpret what it going on in any given moment, and also provide shortcuts to the deeper parts of our brain, from memory to the most reptilian response mechanisms of fight or flight.  By creating environments that tap into these senses, we create deeper, more effective experiences.

The Sense of Vision within Space

The first sense, visual, is perhaps the one we are most used to designing around.  When architects like Norman Foster or Ken Shuttleworth design iconic buildings, they are inspiring the mind through the eyes.  You can rarely reach up and touch buildings like the Gerkin, nor can you hear it, smell it or taste it, but you can certain see it.

That part of the experience can be fleeting, however, since the majority of the activities we participate in when working, learning, shopping, resting or otherwise tend to take place within environments, not looking at them.  That is not to say the internals should not also inspire the mind.  In fact, I would rather the internals scenery inspire than the externals architecture, since it is a better return on investment in the experience stakes.

One of my favourite visual environments is the “Mind” within Mindlab, a public sector creativity space in Copenhagen designed by Bosch & Fjord.  The Mind is an egg-like space you can walk inside and write on the walls in an uninterrupted flow of group brainstorming.  The environment is designed such that you are itching to get inside and start creating.  There are other, cheaper ways you could do this, but this is one of the most powerful I have ever been to.

The Sense of Hearing within Space

The second sense is that of hearing.  Audio is a very powerful tool that evokes a wide range of effects.  When touring an innovative serviced office space a few years ago, I was amused when the guide informed us that one meeting room in particular was incredibly popular, though she could not tell us why.  For me, it was obvious.  There was a small fish tank, and you could hear a faint trickle of water going into the tank.   It was enough to completely change the ambience of the room and make it a very relaxed space, in contrast to the other, very visually similar meeting rooms.

The BOX at LSE, by DEGW, made good use of this principle.  Another creativity space, BOX had installed a generative birdsong algorithm playing lightly in the background.  This never repeated itself in order to make sure the brain did not pick up it was not real song.  The impact, anecdotally, was that workshop participants relaxed quicker and were more open with each other.

Julian Treasure, an expert on the strategic use of sound, says in a talk at TED that this is because we have been programmed over a long period of time that when birds are singing, things are safe.  It is when they stop singing that there is a problem.

Treasure says that sounds can impact us on four levels: physiologically (a fire bell causes a reaction to run), psychologically (impacting our emotional states), cognitively (impacting our understanding), and behaviourally.

This last one is particularly interesting.  The Economist notes that an experiment by BAA at Glasgow Airport saw revenues increase 10% when a relaxing melange of birdsong and music was played in the background.

The Sense of Smell within Space

The sense of smell is the next great frontier.  It is well known amongst those trying to sell a house that the smell of freshly ground coffee or baked bread can create a winning touch as a prospective buyer enters the door, just as the odour of pets can put people off.  Likewise, the scent of incense when entering a massage parlour or Thai restaurant can be a powerful part of the experience.

These principles have been extended by people like NCP, who recently reported that commonly associated bad smells of car parks like urine and vomit were driving away a third of potential custom.  Instead, the planned to pump in pleasant smells like flowers, mint, cut grass, bread and fruit.

This again taps into deeper parts of the mind, as we tend to associate bad smells with things that will harm us, heath wise.  Good smells, in contrast, can evoke memories and emotions of contentment, peace, and relaxation.

If that was not enough, recent research indicates a smell as simple as fresh lemon – deemed to be a very clean smell – could positively impact behaviour.  An experiment by psychologist Chen-Bo Zhong and management scientist Liljenquist found that this smell could increase feelings of trust and increased charitable behaviour in test subjects.

We can control scent within space to a surprising level of precision.  The Scents of Space project by Haque, described here, was able to create a number of zones with different scents to change the experience as participants walked through a space.  These are configurable “on the fly”, and have the ability to create scent boundaries in the space.

The Sense of Taste within Space

Very connected to smell is taste, and this is probably the element most find difficult to conceptualise within space.   This is because we tend to think about design as the fixed, immutable elements we design once and leave behind.  Yet that is not the case with either sound nor smell, as we have seen – these things are more transient.

Taste, very simply, is an effect of integrating food or drink into an experience.  We return to coffee as a great example.  Monmouth Coffee Company in London is renowned for having amazing coffee.  When you enter the shop, you choose the bean you want ground from a wide range.  Coffee beans have an almost better smell than they do taste!  This is the beginning of the taste experience.  By the time the coffee is served the taste is even better because the experience has been more complete.  Yet it is also, frankly, great tasting coffee.

The science of taste is well studied and exploited.  Some of the foods that are most “more-ish” and bad for you, such as Pringles, work so well because they exploit the senses on the tongue in exactly the right combination of fat, sugar, salt and MSGs to make you want another.

Yet taste can be wonderfully positive too.  When you have a massage, you are often given cold water or green tea at the end to add to your sense of well-being.   These are aspects we can still bring to other environments.

The Sense of Touch within Space

The final sense is touch.  Touch can involve a range of different aspects, from texture to haptics to temperature.

Texture is used a lot within sensory rooms for autistic and special needs learners.  Creating a range of different surfaces enables exploration and focus by increasing stimulation of this sense beyond the norm.  It is usually done alongside other senses though, particularly through lighting and visual effects, combined with music, like in this Snoezelen Room by Flaghouse in the US.

Haptics is the manipulation of our senses through other forces.  At a simple level, this is easiest to understand through things like the Wii controller, which allows not only a different type of input experience, but also feeds back with vibrations.

This is only a small step towards a greater potential, however.  Scientists have also found ways of conning our sense of touch via the Meissner’s corpuscle to make it think it is experiencing different textures to those already there.  You may run your thumb along a surface and feel holes, bumps or materials that are not really there, potentially opening up future ways of generating dynamic Braille, as well as augmenting our physical experiences with virtual worlds.

Finally, and perhaps most pragmatically, there is the issue of temperature.  Temperature within space has a huge impact on activity.  Too hot: unproductive.  Too cold: unproductive.  Although there is a happy medium, slight variances within that can produce different effects within an experience.

My favourite example of this was a decision making room in a Scandinavian serviced office.  This space was standing room only, empty of visual input, quiet, and importantly, colder than body temperature.  You do not want to spend too long in such a space: the idea is that it means you stick to the point and quickly work towards a decision.

5 Sense Space

So, how does all this come together?  In an experience.  We can define the types of experiences we want to take place, and how they should feel.  Then, we can create the appropriate stimuli to support those experiences.

A great example, to me, is Starbucks.  It aims to create a comfortable environment, bringing to mind a cold winter’s day outside and a roaring fire inside, minus the roaring fire.

Visually, a Starbucks store is designed in warm, muted colours, with nice art, green plants, good lighting and furniture that does not look too cheap.  They usually have Jazz playing the background, and the acoustics are managed to have an atmospheric buzz without being too overwhelming.  The smell, appropriately enough, is that of coffee, though it is not overpowering.  The taste?  Coffee and cake.  The temperature is warm and inviting (in Winter), enough to make you stay longer, buy another drink, and relax.

There could be very different experiences you are looking to create.  Concentration.  Creativity.  Even downright un-comfortableness in a few instances (Haque talk about creating a feeling that a place is haunted as an experiment through humidity, temperature and electromagnetic and sonic frequencies.)

It all comes down to how you want the brain to react.  Most exciting of all , when creating spaces that allow experiences to take place, is that all these aspects are increasingly more flexible.  Like a play moving between acts, the scenes can be set and changed at speed with different lighting, scents, sounds and temperatures.

And that is what a 5 Sense Space is all about.