The Power of Multisensory Design

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Welcome to Once Upon a Project, the podcast that uncovers the boldest and most thought provoking stories and design. I'm your host, AJ Paron, design futurist for Sandow Design Group. Bringing you insights from your favorite design brands, interior Design Magazine, metropolis Design, milk, and Think Lab.

In today's episode, we explore how design speaks to more than just what we see. It touches on all of our senses. I'm joined by Russell Jones, creative director, multisensory expert, and author of the Book Sense, which examines how tapping into sound scent. Texture, taste, and movement can profoundly shape how we experience the world.

Whether you're designing a store, a home, or a hospital, this conversation will change the way you think about how people feel in the spaces we create. Let's get into it.

Multisensory design, that term has been used over and over again. And people hear it, but they don't really understand what that means and how to actually make that work. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that being a subject of incredible interest and importance to me is sensory design within the built environment, whether that's hospitality, retail, our home.

Entertainment, anything, um, um, in public space is incredibly sad. So this would be exactly that. Um, I'm gonna talk about our project we did for John Lewis and Partners, which is. A big kind of, uh, heritage High Street Department store in the uk. I'm not sure how well known they are in the States. I would probably equate it to a Bloomingdale's exactly right.

Nationwide, you know, a hundred or so or more years old, but also very much falling prey to the sort of modern times of what you do with bricks and mortar and how do we bring people back to the high street and what is the purpose? Of a bricks and mortar store. So we were approached to create the one or sort of talk about, was a kind of test store.

Uh, they, it was proposed as store of the future. And the problem given to us exactly was what is the role of bricks and mortar. And the answer to that, which I'm sure everyone is kind of skirting around, really is about experience. It's why would you go somewhere to, um, to shop rather than just do it online.

And what are the benefits that you get from going to an actual store? I. And obviously it's then to, to, to touch and interact with products, to experience the brand, the environment. How do we deliver a more immersive sensory experience, a sensor, really stimulating experience where you can engage with products, engage with people we know.

From research, for instance, if we're looking to attract younger audiences, we know that there's loads of studies that sh saying how Gen Z crave sensory stimulation, um, that they crave real world experiences, which is a really good sort of, uh, shift or direction. But also there's a toss up between that.

How do we create something that's already stimulating and engaging with also the idea of how do we create somewhere from a neurodiverse population? That worry about, uh, sensory overload and have sensory sensitivities, and is there a sensorial sweet spot where we can create experience but not alienate?

And was there a target market that they wanted you to focus on? I know you're talking about neurodiversity, but like, we had to go to the Mall of America last night, which is like my worst nightmare. And on a Monday night, it was a lot of teenagers, maybe some tourists. Maybe some Neurodiverse people that they're looking for an outing.

Yeah. But I was like, if it wasn't for the 16 year olds, I think the mall would be shut. Yeah. Uh, 'cause it's a social experience for them. Right. But did they want. Everyone to come in to John Lewis. Yeah, there is a target market, but you know what it's like with these things? The sort of dream client and then the actual client are sort of very, very different.

You can see these mood boards of young, diverse, multicultural people and then you go there and it is a bunch of old age pensioners sort of shuffling around, so it has to appeal to everyone. There is definitely. Again, understanding the brand. It's a very old, very Heritage store's. A High Street brand, so they do need to attract a younger audience.

Um, they're doing it with their product ranges, which are really interesting. The design is really good. They're doing teaming up with them different designers to, to create home wears or fashion wears that, that, that, that engage with the younger market. Um, but essentially you will still get just the people who.

Do go to the store and you can, again, we can't alienate them, but we want to attract a younger market and we want to refresh and revive the brand as well with this. So it's, it's very much, as much as a branding exercise about refreshment and revival as it is of appeared into the under. But yeah, you gotta have an eye on this.

Listen. As all good designers do, what were the biggest hurdles that you really had to get over when you were trying to figure out the right solutions? I guess the challenge immediately is to sort of look at the department store through fresh eyes, which I. We weren't a hundred percent, you know, but that there was a strategy piece going on anyway about that, about how do they can sort of like go from these departments, how can they cluster, um, the products and the experiences in a more immediate emotional sort of human way, which was kind of cool.

So we had these kind of different areas that they'd sort strategically kind of wanted to cluster all their products under. Our first stage is what I call a sensory prescription. If we want to deliver a certain, um. Feeling and emotion, but also what behaviors do we want to promote? What perceptions do we want to sort of highlight?

What's the sort of feeling within each area? Then we look at that and we look at the multisensory neuroscience that shows us what are these sensory cues to trigger those emotions. And then we set this sensory prescription, which is essentially a design brief for kind of, um, multidisciplinary design brief that shows what colors, textures, aromas.

Lighting temperatures, sounds, music, every sensory element, every element of the sensory atmospherics that we could possibly control. What would they be in order to deliver that feeling? So if you think from house to home, in the room sets, we want to convey warmth. We want to convey family connection. It is a very kind of human warm thing.

So what are the sensory elements that would do that? Whereas if in the, uh, John Lewis and Partners brand area, we want them to be welcoming, we want to promote, um, interaction with people, we want to encourage interaction. So we have all these kind of emotional map and then we look at how we can deliver.

Yeah, those feelings you, you're talking about these emotional maps, right? Yeah. So is that the sensory prescription or what is the sensory prescription? Yeah, so the emotional map is to kind of see what we want, how we want better to feel. That's also the behaviors we want them to, to elicit. That's also, you know, we look at what the products are and what qualities of those we want to bring out.

That's the sort of goal that we want the sensory prescription to deliver. We wanna set the guidelines for, for what everything is going to be in order to deliver the exact outcomes we want. And that's kind of how we approach sensory design. What we are trying to do is create congruent sensory environments where every sense works with each other, which is cross modal association or cross modal effect, where one sense is directly reflected.

In the other, so there's a synergy is, is what I'm hearing from you. There's a synergy of like the stimuli when you match them in relationship that is maybe, I don't know. Harmonious. Yeah, congruent. Harmonious. Exactly. Yeah. Versus when you're working with neurodiversity, many times the breakdowns come in an environment where.

The sensory stimuli is fighting each other. Exactly. So like there's a sound that doesn't make sense, should be in the space, or a movement that is unexpected and is not. It's supposed to be in a space that can be triggering for those individuals because of how they do sensory integration, and, and a lot of times it's just the color's brighter or the sound is heavier or the visual is stronger, and so.

I can see how this project became really complex really fast. Yeah, yeah, it is. But what you're saying is exactly right. So when things are more sensorially congruent, they take less cognitive load to kind of make sense of them. So if everything just works, it's just sort of, we have this kind of processing fluency where everything just kind of makes sense and we're not questioning them, and so our cognitive load is less and we can just, then we can more effortless lead just kind of.

Cruise around the space versus like feeling nails on a chalkboard. Yeah. But not understanding why you're feeling like that. Exactly. Because you've got this sensory and congruence, and this is almost the danger where people would maybe approach a multisensory design as in, we have a space, we're gonna add some, we've got some music, we've got a smell.

If they're sensorially incongruent, it will not have any beneficial effect or actually have a very negative effect and can be really jarring.

Are there things that you did in this project that you knew would just work? Everything we do is based on existing research or we, we run new research to validate or, or, or to discover new things. So we all, everything is evidence. Based before it goes in. And then once it's in, we measure. And that's the really important thing and measure.

And then we can adjust through focus groups, through people measuring how people are feeling. Like tell, walk us through that. We can do loads of different types of, we don't do loads of, we, we don't do focus groups because we are not, we are looking for this kind of bottom up response where it's, um. We, we want to measure the effects and not ask people what they think about things.

We have this thing called a we call capsule, which is basically like a sort of photo booth where we can sit people in and we have set machines, surround sound cut control, all lighting. We can project visuals of the store onto the front of it so you feel like you're there. And then we can measure, uh, we can do, um.

Sort of profile of mood stakes. We do sort of loads of different styles of, of measurement implicit associations where people just are, are faster to associate certain words with certain environments. Um, we could do EEG measurement and things like this. Oh, wow. So when it, I mean, when it first instance with the smells, I mean, we know this so much research on, on EEG responses to say that some smells are physiologically stimulating and physiologically calming.

I mean, obviously. Personal experience will always come into things like that. And sure, and, and cultural variation always comes into it. That's, that's kind of apparent in everything. But no, we will always measure, we, we base everything on insight, like I said. Or if there is any insight, we, we, we will run some ourselves to kind of get to the bottom of, well, what well goes with this texture?

What color goes with that smell? Um, but then we will validate this kind of crossmodal congruence for one in our capsule. And we will also try to measure, um, against our sort of key attributes that the emotional map. What do we, how do we want people to feel? Is this calming? Is it stimulating? Is it exciting?

Are we conveying, um, whatever it might be, sort of craft or. Uh, authenticity. If, if it might be sort of round wooden furniture or whatever, you know, whatever the product is. Um, so we, yeah, we'll research and then when you run it in store, uh, you could do exit polls. You could do things like the blob trees where you ask people how they feel.

You seen the blog people, and they're all kind of, some are jumping off a tree, some are sitting happily, and you ask people to sort of re say, we percent. If you're not, they're quite, they're quite good. The blonde tree. Yeah, we have like smiley faces and like Yeah. The old toilet smiling face things. Yes.

Yes. I mean, they're a bit basic, but you could use that. Uh, we're trying to go a bit deeper. Yeah. But the point being, yeah, we kind of, so we know certain things already. Uh, and we know through our research of Mount Size Reef sort of do this, we know that, um, people associate certain colors to certain smells.

Um. That we certain associate certain sounds to certain shapes. There were these crossmodal associations that are just human and intrinsic that we all, that we all have. Um, they're the basis for, for this sort of first level of design. But yeah, then you've got to test and validate. So walk us through a part of like, maybe either a section of the project or a part of the store that you felt.

Really worked well. What did you do to design that space? To create this experience for people? I mean, the, so the, the branded areas were really great. So, like I said, we had to make it, create this kinda welcoming environment, familiar, fresh, and instill feelings of trust. Um. We want people to encourage to sort of talk to staff and interact with them, and I just, I guess the thing for me is there's all these little discoveries that we, we make and then it is the application of them.

So. For instance, we had to create a brand scent. So we ended up with a smell that was mostly the smell of cucumber with a little bit of freshly cut grass in it. Now, for instance, it's been shown that clean smells or smells that we associate with clean cleanliness, increased feelings of interpersonal trust without the people.

If you go into a room that smells clean and there's someone in there, you'll trust them more, um, than if it didn't smell or if it had a kind of different. Smell that wasn't s cleanliness. So cl uh, cucumber smells very clean. It also smells green. Um, if you ask people what color it is, but that's also the freshly cut grass.

So the brand color is green. Um, if you smell, um, uh, is it sphe tonal? I'm trying to think. That might be wrong. Ro and molecule in GL grass when it gets cut. Um, I might have myth quoted then. Um, but a smells green. And so does cucumbers. So it sort of works with that. We know, um, flowers, so there are plants everywhere.

So through um, there's this area of study called evolutionary aesthetics, which is really interesting. It shows how plants, the presence of plants water, I. Animals and um, sort of coverage sort of, so I can't exactly what they call it. But basically feeding undercover has this evolutionary feeling, like I was saying about this feeling of gives you this, um, state of approach, motivation.

Motivation. So you feel, uh, sort of safe and confident enough to explore. It's like completely evolutionarily. So if you can hear that, it's kinda like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs at a certain. Level, right? Yeah. Yes. Um, so we, there's lots of plants everywhere. Also, it's been shown in retail space as well.

For, for instance, plants lower anxiety. We know this. They have an incredibly calming effect on us. Um, you're much more likely to approach. A store that has plants and spend time in than you are to one that doesn't. Uh, and um, we know that, um, flowers encourage, um, interpersonal interaction between strangers as well.

You're more likely to talk to stranger if there's smell of flowers in the presence of plants and flowers. Is that just because people have watched way too many rom-coms? Or they meet over the flower shop. There was this study that they did in Vegas years ago where they put two groups of people in two separate rooms who were supposedly waiting for some kind of conference.

And in one room there were loads of flowers on the table and the other there weren't. And the people in the flower room just were just started talking and interacting really quickly. And in the other room, after 20 minutes, everyone was still sitting there in silence waiting for this thing to kick off.

And there's been notice studies like this. Maybe that's why. I like flowers 'cause I like to talk. Yeah. That's why other people remove all flowers, whatever. You turn off into the roof. No. So there's, yeah, there's all these effects. So we kinda layer all these things up. There is, um, we are, we get on with people and interact.

I. Uh, more cohesively in the presence of soft textures. There was a really good study, but I think it's by Williams and Bar who, um, got two groups of people and they had to complete a jigsaw, and one group had the jigsaw pieces with a nice soft texture on the back, and the other group had a kinda sandpapery texture on the back of their pieces.

The sandpaper group argued didn't get on with each other. It created a prickly situation. The smooth textured people created, uh, completed the jigsaw really quickly and all got on and chatted and worked cohesively as a group. So, for instance, when you're in a design area, we've got all the sort of different material, uh, swatches and color swatches and things, and on the back of zoom is a nice soft material.

So when you are handed that you are holding it and it just feels nice and soft in your hand and you're talking to the staff member and you just feel more. I encourage to sort of get on with 'em and talk and work cohesively with them. Also, when you cut things down, they make just nice soft sounds rather than kind of clanking noises, which doesn't draw attention to you.

So it's about, for me, I love these little details, um, that come together to create this hole. So these kind of elements. Like the plants, like the scent. There's then a soundscape of birdsong in these branded areas that is congruent, cohesive, in harmony with the smell and the visuals. There's round fluid, organic lines.

We've used lots of, um, uh, wallpapers and things in areas that had sort of natural motifs. And so this all comes together as a kind of holistic. Uh, experience, and it's all designed to make people feel calm, welcomed, uh, and enhance these feelings of positive feelings of trust, of, um, cohesion of of, of, you know, getting on.

And so that kind of, as we move around the store, the, the thing that really worked with it is you go from that into, say the fashion department. Uh, and there's a different sensory prescription there. And it's a really nice transition. You can almost, we call it kind of sensory wave finding where you should know where you are without really having to look.

And again, that's really helpful as long as it's all kind of low level with more neurodivergent people or anyone. 'cause you just kind of feel where you are as well, rather than having to rely on loads and loads of signage. 'cause we don't wanna visually overload 'cause that's kind of there. Anyway. I love that Russell, because I've been talking about threat for years.

When. You know, as designers and we're thinking about way fighting it, it always is about signage, and I'm like, no. You have to understand there are people that are in here that can't read. There are people that are in here that English is not their first language or they're blind. Like how do they know where they are?

If they're blind and it is the, uh, landmarks both physically and sensorially, that will help people understand where they are in place and. Um, many times it that's just like totally forgotten and completely ignored, and it's like, we'll throw up a sign here and it'll be fine. So, yeah, exactly. I love that you, you look at it at all those different dimensions.

Yeah. And you should, you feel, 'cause it's the, it's the flooring changes. So, you know, underfoot that's changed and the sound it makes when you walk then changes and the sound of the environment has changed and there's a different smell and it's just, yeah, you should just sense where you are. Uh, and be able to navigate a place.

Sensorially, I'm assuming your research has shown that that transition is really important to get that smooth from one space to another, because especially in neurodiversity. Where we tend to have problems is a transition from one space to another, where it is very different. For instance, they're leaving a classroom with dim lights and now walking to a bright, bright hallway with people bustling by and the noise changes and it's really intense.

That transition can be really difficult, and that child or that person might not walk into the hallway because it's so intense. Yeah. So I'm assuming at a different level. Yeah, absolutely. You're trying to design for that as well, if that a smooth transition from one sensorial experience to another. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And then they've got to be harmonious. They've got to flow you. Exactly right. And it's got to be a smooth transition and it's got to be a harmonious, it's got to still kind of make sense, even if you're entering a different area and it can't feel like you're completely in a different world and it can't be jarring.

Exactly right. So talk. A little bit for our listeners about, 'cause I love this research that you do where you might be working with a beverage manufacturer or somebody that's, um, a food product and depending on what sensory attributes it has or your stimulating the person that food or that beverage can actually taste different.

Yeah. Can you, can you explain that a little bit? To our listeners, I mean, we. We'll sort of acknowledge I think that food eating is a multis experience and we'd sort of acknowledge how important, you know, the presentation of the food is and, you know, all these different elements that are kind of intrinsic to the food itself.

What we don't realize, I don't think, is how important all the atmospheric, uh, influences are. And sound is a huge reference on taste. Um, you know, we can't taste as well when there's loud noise, but also, uh, high tinkling bells make things taste sweeter, low rasping trombones make things taste more bitter.

We don develop years and years ago, um, this dish over here in the uk, the Chef Heston Bloom. So, um, I created the sound for this dish he'd created called Sounds of the Sea, where you listen. Uh, to an eye cook, playing waves crashing while he eat sashimi and the waves crashing. Makes the sashimi taste fresher and more enjoyable and more fishy and, and better.

So we are incredibly influenced. Um, but in taste by every sense, so the weight of the cutlery that you're eating with, then one study showed that you'll rate food is 11% more delicious. If you have heavy cutlery rather than light color, canteen style cutlery, you'll also pay more for the food. It'll taste better.

You say the food's more artistic, which was, uh, um, all of these things have the, the, the shape and texture of a glass that you're drinking from. If it's angular, say you were drinking a. Gin and tonic that would work with a really angular glass. Whereas if you had a sweeter cocktail, should have a rounder more fluid shape 'cause that would dial up those kind of elements.

You can completely change it. A lot of this is about, oh, and the classic is if you listen to, um, if you listen to Blondie and drink white wine, the wine will taste around 50% more zingy and fresh. Oh, I'm gonna try that tonight. Yeah, heart of glass sounds amazing. And, uh, and, and a, a nice crisp bru, vel in there or something, and it will taste, it'll taste better.

So the, again, sensorial congruence, if you think of blondie's, it, it's fast, it's upbeat, it's singing, it's zesty. It's got sort of high pitched to the high hats and guitars in it. And those flavors that were in the white wine that were gonna dial up are kind of sensorily. Similar. They are bright, they're fresh, they're zesty.

Uh, and we have this kind of, again, this is about this processing fluency. If we've just listening to Blondie, it's putting these ideas of brightness and freshness at the top of our mind when we taste something. It's just like those elements have just been sort of turned up in our, in our mind that we just go straight to them.

So we have these kind of implicit links between our senses and if we combine them, you can sort, you, you'll heighten taste in this way, but we don't realize how much these elements are playing. You know, we all know that if you eat the Go British thing, but if we eat fish and chips by the sea, it tastes better.

Um, but it's because it's a congruent sensory atmosphere. It, it makes sense with the food you are eating, right? If you're eating a hamburger, buy the seed. It's not gonna taste as good. Um. Because everything around us. It is triggering these sensorial associations and sensory memories where we've built up this kind of image in our mind and that they work with the taste.

And that's all kind of comes together. It tastes better. But yeah, we do this research where we sit people, 'cause we do loads of, um. Works of FMCG. And if it is about taste, it might be the shape and texture of the packaging, the material of the packaging, the graphics on, on the front, and how if we change that, if we make them more bold and saturated, then it will prime people to expect a richer flavor and taste.

And when they have, it does taste, uh, richer and more fuller of flavor. Whereas if it was really washed out and pale, you expect it's gonna. Be like light in its taste and it will end up, um, tasting that way as well. So you really can judge a book by its cover. If you don't like the packaging on your potato chips peg, it's gonna taste different, priming you for an expectation.

And those expectations, um, become a perceptual constant in as much as we've been primed to this point that no matter what inflammation we now get. We are going with what we already kind of expected it sort of to taste like or what, what we've been primed for. The classic example is this was a study they did, it was at, in, um, Bordeaux when they got wine experts and they dyed white wine red and gave them to 'em to taste and they sip the white wine, uh, at the dyed white wine.

And they described it as a red wine. They said it tasted of red fruits and cherries and plums and you know, richo. And these are proper wine experts. It's actually, it was also shown that this worked more on wine experts. They saw red wine. They expected red wine, so they just described it and tasted it as red wine.

And even though it was just a white wine, they used all the language that they would use. So yeah, this priming effect is incredibly important. And if we're talking about the space, then how are we gonna draw people into a space? We've got to prime these expectations that this is gonna be safe, welcoming, that this is gonna be a good place for me.

That it's, you know, draw people in, encourage this approach, motivation.

I suppose it's a, a little bit like when you're reading and you must read something, you think it's somebody's name that you know, 'cause it's similar and you're like, oh my gosh, why is my friend in this book? And you're like, you have to read it three times to, it's not your friend's name. It's slightly spelled a different way, but your brain kind of just fills into the things that you're familiar with or the things that you're.

Have a positive experience with is, is it sort of like that? Yeah, I guess it very, but that is the value. Well, I guess it is, isn't it? Because we do, I mean, we naturally create patterns with the familiar world that, with the sort of world that we've created in our mind, our worldview, don't we? And so, and if we learn something new or something new comes, we've now got to adjust our sort of expectations where in the future, that means that now, um, or if you get something in your head like you're saying, then it's there and it's a kind of difficult thing to escape.

So potentially it, yeah, it's a similar thing, but we, we have expectations through the learn the way we've sort of learned through our interaction with the world, our environment, our expectations, and these kind of, but we don't know really how much is just completely ingrained and how much is learned through our ecological environment.

And a very interesting study. About this is, so here's a conundrum for you. Uh, first thing that comes into your mind, answer me colors, um, which is heavier. Red or yellow? Red. Yeah. Everyone says red is heavier. Now, they did this study in various languages and everyone says red, so it's not necessarily just the English thing, but they did it with early blind people.

People have been blind since birth and still, I think it was 76%. Said Red was heavier than yellow, having never seen red. But is it the frequency that they're feeling? Oh, that's a really, I mean, that I wouldn't have no idea of. Can you still sense the color even though you are sort of visually not picking it up?

There are some studies that show that. Yeah. If you put someone in a red room that was bathed in red light, would they still experience the sort of That's right. I'm sure you would, because through your skin. Let's try it. Let's try it. Yeah. Um, but well, they're selected. There's two theories for this, these crossroad or links.

If, if it's learned through language, then red. Is associated. We talk about it with very heavy emotions, passion, laugh, anger, danger, you know, stigmas, all these things. And so someone who's both has heard us talk about red or red things in this way, so they would've learned. Red is heavy through that kind of emotional association.

So it proves that it's learn through language and our interaction with the world. But at the same time, if it is just completely evolutionary, inbuilt us. Then that also proves that, because if you've never seen red before, but you still think it's heavy, then maybe it's just completely, so it kind of proves both possible theories.

The point is we don't really know if this is, comes through, you know, we, we build up these, you know, through memory and emotion, a lot of things. Obviously we do, but a lot of this is just completely, um. Inbuilt Intrinsic to, to the human state. That's interesting. 'cause see I said red was heavier because I was thinking about pigment and like having taken a color class.

You take white and then you have to turn it into yellow or you'd have to turn in red. It takes a lot more color to turn it. A lot more pigment to turn it to red. So I think red is heavier than yellow where it's easier to get to a yellow 'cause you just have to add a little bit. But that's how my brain works, which is scary.

Um, so let's talk a little bit about something that you didn't think worked really well in this project, that you're like, Hmm, I wish I could have done this differently. Or, Ooh, I thought I was gonna do this. And it actually didn't turn out that way. There was something that we could have done more of.

Which was interactivity. We wanted to introduce more playfulness, especially in the kids' department, especially in areas where you can just have a bit more fun. The thing with interactivity is really, really, it's very powerful for creating perceptions of how sort of vivid an environment is and, and um, just engaging.

So yeah, I think interactivity was something that we wanted to do more of that we didn't really get to. And if there is a regret. So again, it comes back to the measurement. There were, there was measurement. We have seen an uplift in things like dwell time and the NPS, the net promoter scores, the emotional attachment to the brand.

But we didn't get to sort of research and iterate as much as we would love to. And, and we always try and bake this in onto into projects. You don't always get the opportunity. Um. Because you do want to constantly optimize and refine. Context is key with all of this. And we can say that we know that this is a calming aroma and a calming sound and it's gonna have that effect, but we don't know until it's there.

And we always want to validate what we're doing because then we'll learn more. And we always want to, we always want to further our knowledge. So although it got a huge buy-in from the board and everyone loved it and it kind of delivered the metrics that they were after, I. We didn't get to do as much iteration and as much, um, measurement as we would've liked to.

It's, that's the same story with every design project in the built environment. We always wanna do more for the post occupancy and do about, you know, a really good post occupancy evaluation, a study and research and, and there's never money in the budget for that. So, yeah, it's, it's kind of, okay, so what worked really well that you're really proud of.

Of that project? Well, like I said, the brand spaces really worked 'cause they came together and they, we can see a hundred percent of that people spend more time and talk to staff more. So that really worked. There was something I loved in the um, sort of lighting and mirror area where we just had a light gentle tinkling, like imagine us sort of chandelier tinkling in the wind.

Yeah, and you could literally stand there and turn it on or off. And when you turned it on, everything just looked like it was shining and was brighter. And if you just going for cross mode satiation with the sound and then what you are seeing, it just made everything just sparkle just by adding this gentle tinkling in the background.

I loved it. 'cause it's so simple. Yeah, I do like a really nice, simple solution to things. Um. So that, yeah, things like that are just always pleasurable. Um, you know, the room sets where we had this sort of nice sed woody smell and just the sound of that gentle hubbub. And again, you can turn it, you can, the difference is profound between having such simple things on or off of the feeling of warmth and activity and being able to sort of project your family life into this.

This sort of in a mockup room set of, of the sitting room. The difference is so profound with such simple, simple additions. Do you think that there's a sensory sweet spot? Like something that works for the majority of of all people. So I'm glad you said that 'cause that is an ongoing mission. When we're talking about neurodiverse population and sensory sensitivity, is there a sensorial sweet spot where we can deliver experience but also be inclusive?

I've yet to find it again, like all of the research shows, especially on the sort of beneficial effects of things like aroma, that when it's barely noticeable is when you, they actually have the most positive effect. I do believe we can create inclusive environments that also are immersive and sensorily engaging.

If you had to give one piece of advice to designers of the built environment that want to, to integrate cross modal sensory experiences, what would you be your best piece of advice for these designers? If it may be an easy thing for me to say, but think multi sensorily and think cross disciplinary Nino, think.

About the space you're creating and how that's gonna sound. Think about what smells work and think texturally, think how texture and shape and form and pattern interact and all of these things interact. I, um, you know, I'm really, really believe that this is a sort of next step in design thinking where we should all think multis sensor really, I think, and especially in that built environment when you've got kind cross disciplinary teams working.

They need some kind of sensorial, you know, um, true north. That sort of strategy to tie up altogether, but also say the other way around, you know, if you're working cross remotely or across in different disciplines, you've got to think about how each things interact if you're creating a space that people, humans are gonna exist in.

Um, so I do just think you've gotta think beyond your silo and think. Um, about the human sensory experience and how every element will be and work with these different disciplines throughout design. Um, so that you are always thinking about this sort of the interaction of sensors and how run space will feel and sound and smell, and.

Texture. I think that's lovely. We all need to think about those things way more than we do. Yeah. You know, it's, it's easy to get stuck in a Revit plan and thinking about the space in a two or three dimensional, you know, on a computer, but it's, it's hard to really think about how your body is going to react.

Yeah. And how your mind is going to react in that space. That it's a way of thinking. It's to not think in a siloed way, to think beyond your, your, your area and, and, and consider the whole human in how we experience places and then we can create more beneficial spaces and environments for humans to thrive at.

Well, Russell, I think your work is fascinating. I've, I've been following you for a long time. As you know, I'm a big fan, and if any of the listeners have been intrigued. Russell has only given us a small sample of fascinating stories that I have never heard of anywhere else in our discipline, and it will really teach you a, a different way to start thinking about your project.

So Russell, what's the, the book title, the Power of Your Senses, by Russell Jones, um, which is Subtitled, why Coffee Tastes Better in a Red Mug. Another life-changing science or something like that. I can't, the power of your senses. There was an an earlier edition called Sense, which was the heart back, but the power of your Senses I'm pretty sure is the state side.

Wow. I've got both. I've got the English version and the American version.

That's a wrap on today's episode of Once Upon A Project. Huge thanks to Russell Jones for helping us rethink the power of multi-sensory design and for reminding us that great design isn't just seen it's felt. To learn more about Russell's work, be sure to check out his book Sense. As always, thank you to our amazing production team, Rob Schulte and Rachel Santor for bringing these stories to life.

If you enjoyed this episode, head to surround podcast.com for more conversations that challenge the status quo and spark your design imagination. Until next time, keep designing with all five senses and we'll see you on the next. Once upon a project.