18.11 / 19.11
After finishing everything last week, we will start a new topic this week. This week is all about “smell”, and how you can work with this as an interaction designer. I was really looking forward to this topic. Within the subject of “senses” I mainly came into contact with “vision” during my studies. And there were courses that focus on other senses such as touch, sound but smell has never been discussed. Which I have always found strange. Before I started my design education, I studied psychology, where scent was just as important as any other sense, if not more important.
On Monday the module started with a presentation that served as an introduction for the rest of the week. The presentation was very interesting. In advance, I did not expect gamification to play a major role in this project. But by linking it to games, “smell” got a clear function. And it did not feel like a part that is linked to something as I had expected in advance.
After the presentation, I took the time to read through the articles linked to the project. In general, the articles were interesting. It was inspiring to see how scent can be linked to games to create a unique experience. Such as incorporating of the smell of rubber on the disk of a racing game. To increase the immersion in the game. I personally think that scent can play a major role in immersion this way. I base this on my own experiences. I once developed a VR game for a project in which we consciously dealt with smell to increase immersion. And from my own findings, this indeed appeared to have an influence on the degree of immersion.
I write here very consciously, based on my own experiences and would never want to claim that this really has an impact. And I think that’s my only criticism of the articles. A number of strong claims are made that could have been better substantiated. For example, research is being conducted into whether games stink or not. For this they go to a forum for gamers to distribute a survey. This revealed that 84% of the respondents answered that gamers stink. This is a pretty extreme number so I went to the forum to see how valid this is. And it comes across as a forum for a specific group of gamers that does not match the stereotype gamer. So it seems like a strong claim to say something about gamers as a general target group.
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