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Senses:
My multimedia artifact is going to have to communicate with people in a way that encourages them to communicate with each other. There are several stages in a successful communication as far as I, and my artifact are concerned. -Firstly i have to get the users attention -Secondly they have to remain attentive whilst i deliver my message -Thirdly the message should have an impact We interact with world using our five senses. These are the only ways to get information from the outside (environment) to the inside (brain), so they're the only ways i can communicate my message. I'm going back to basics in order to establish which sense(s) to target with this multimedia artifact. I am going to list the benefits and drawbacks of each of the sense, in terms of what i am trying to achieve; the impromptu communication between strangers.
Sight:
Back to the top Sight is a very useful sense for communicating with. A well designed sign can communicate an idea as fast as it takes a person to observer and evaluate it. Billboards and posters, the main advertisements we see when out around public areas rely solely on communicating their messages through visual means. The sense of sight is a very strong one, used throughout our day to day lives. Most of the communicating we encounter throughout our live is going to be visual and audible, or a mixture of the two as the impact of sight is strengthened by the presence of audio. The benefits of communicating through visual means are clear, and will almost certainly be used in my final artifact, but i would like to engage other senses. The more senses i can feasibly include in the artifact the more likely the user is to take notice of it.
Smell:
Back to the top It is easy to communicate the idea of a specific object quickly using smell, provided the object has a distinctive aroma, and the person has smelt and associated a memory with it previously. Smell is a very strong memory trigger, and is often overlooked when compared to the other senses. The French novelist, Marcel Proust describes what happened to him on one particular occasion where a long passed memory was triggered after drinking a spoonful of tea in which he had soaked a piece of madeleine, a type of cake: An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses...with no suggestion of its origin... Suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was of a little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings...my Aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea....Immediately the old gray house on the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set...and the entire town, with its people and houses, gardens, church, and surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being from my cup of tea."1 However, whilst smell is excellent at recalling memories which have long since passed into the depths of our brain, it would be difficult to communicate a standard message using this sense. This is because each persons memories for any given smell are certain likely to vary. Smell only works because odour molecules which are small enough to vaporise, reach the nose and then dissolve in the mucus therein. Once there, they stimulate certain olfactory receptor neurones. These neurones work together to create a bar code of sorts2, which can be interpreted by the brain, each bar code representing a different smell. Because particles have to dissolve in the air, most smells are going to have a relatively small range of impact, a few tens of metres at best unless the smell is very strong, or repeated at regular intervals. This would be rather impractical if i were trying to spread a message to a lot of people in a large area on a windy day. When the olfactory receptor neurones are stimulated, they transmit impulses to your brain. This pathway is directly connected to your limbic system, the part of your brain that deals with emotions. That's why your reactions to smell are rarely neutral - you usually either like or dislike a smell. 3 Yet another reason why it would be difficult to convey a consistent message to different people. While one stranger enjoys a smell, the other may dislike it. Perhaps if a smell which both strangers would appreciate were generated then it would be beneficial to a potential interaction between them. So to conclude, whilst smell is a very powerful memory trigger, the results achieved by a specific smell can differ greatly between individuals. Also, while it's proximity restraints mean it would be easy for strangers in the same physical space area to share smells, the simple nature of a smell means it would be hard to give these people a suggestive message that they should talk to each other. Smell would be good for getting peoples attention, especially strong smells with a clear origin. But once the attention has been acquired an alternative sense would need to be used to convey the message. 1 Maya Pines, n.d. The Mystery of Smell: The Vivid World of Odors Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.hhmi.org/senses/d110.html 2Tim Jacob, 2005 Olfaction, a tutorial on the sense of smell Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/teaching/ sensory/olfact1.html#Odour%20code 3 Nervous system Smell, n.d Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/ factfiles/smell/smell.shtml William J. Cromie, 1999 Researchers Sniff Out Secrets of Smell" Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/04.08/smell.html
Sound:
Back to the top Like sight and touch, sound is a sense which we are aware is almost always in use. Unless measures are taken to stop it, or an individual has lost the sense, people are always hearing. There should be a distinction made here between hearing and listening. We are always hearing, but listening implies processing of what we hear. The University of Minnesota Duluth has an excellent description in one of their online student handbooks: Hearing is simply the act of perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearing-impaired, hearing simply happens. Listening, however, is something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences. 1 I have thought of my own example to illustrate the difference between hearing and listening. A man walks through a crowded bar looking for his friends and hears the ambient noise of the bar. Suddenly he hears his name called out but can't quite determine the location. He proceeds to listen for his name again, and upon hearing it is able to get a rough idea of where his friends are. Sound is often used with sight due to the directional nature of both. Whilst our eyes are limited by their direction, our ears is able to determine direction by what they hear. When we hear where a particular sound is coming from we often turn our heads to look at the source if it interests us. A sounds area of influence, much like smell, depends on the atmosphere. A sound in a noisy atmosphere will be lost in the ambient sound. If an artifact i designed were to use audio the sounds it made would have to be unique enough so that it was obvious the artifact was making the sound and encouraging interaction. It might also have to vary the sounds it made depending on urgency and ambient noise levels. It is generally accepted that sound is one of the most important senses for communicating messages and ideas. Language developed as a means to communicate complex ideas, with spoken language (audible) existing long before written language (visible). One of the drawbacks with communicating using words through the medium sound is that ideas have to be relayed in real time. You can only communicate as fast as you can speak, and only speak as fast a person is able to understand and interpret the words being spoken. Music often attempts to communicate a message which is made more memorable by the variations of pitch and repetition of the message. Listening to music has always been a very communal event throughout the world and it still is today. Many people go out with the intention of listening to music and dancing with other people till the early hours of the morning. Any sound over a certain strength turns into a communal event whether we want it to or not, people in the area will hear other peoples sounds (phone conversations) unless they are determined not to (headphones). It is also important to note that loud sounds can actually be painful and cause long lasting damage to listeners. Another point to consider is that with the spoken word there is no one universal language, and any artifact which used speech to transmit information would have to be translated. This should in no means limit the artifact to use non text based communication means, but it should be taken into account. Whilst it is clear that sound is a very important factor for communicating, and is the very sense i am trying to encourage people to use through conversation, I'm still undecided as to its usefulness for my artifact. The world is already a noisy place, with many many other items making use of sound as a means of drawing attention to themselves. I have to decide whether or not I want to create yet another artifact which attempts to grab peoples attention through their ears. 1 Paul Treuer , 2002 Hearing vs. Listening Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.d.umn.edu/student/loon/acad/strat/ss_hearing.html
Taste :
Back to the top A lot of what we think taste is actually what we smell as the vapours from food waft up through the mouth into the nasal cavity. This is why when we have a cold food seems to lose it's taste.1 As they are so closely linked, it makes sense for tastes to have similar drawbacks of smells. Much like smell, people either like or dislike a taste. Once again, only if a taste which was liked by both parties could be found would it be a positive experience for them. An interesting way of starting a conversation could be deliberately chose a taste which cause conflicting feelings and get the people involved to discuss why. This could also be an idea for producing smells. Tastes also have a considerably shortened range compared to smell. In order to taste, the object has to be inside your mouth. I explore the issue of intimacy zones in the next section, touch, but anything which needs to be inside a person to be experienced clearly breaks any and all intimacy zones, and is not appropriate for strangers communicating in public places. Whilst it seems taste is the least appropriate sense to target for this artifact it has been included for sake of completeness. 1 Maya Pines, n.d. The Mystery of Smell: The Vivid World of Odors Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.hhmi.org/senses/d110.html
Touch:
Back to the top Touch is a sense which can be used over almost the entire surface area of the body, and is used all the time without us noticing. The skin is the primary organ which detects touch, but other parts of the body also have the required nerve endings for detection. Babies often use touch to explore objects, placing them in their mouth where there is a high concentration of nerve endings than their fingers. As we grow older we are able to control our motor functions more accurately and perceiving objects through touch and sight suffice for exploration. However, one of the major drawbacks of touch is that it requires proximity with the item being touched. Unless the object is next to the person, touching cannot occur and no message can be conveyed. This immediate proximity requirement means that touch can be exploited in a subtle manner. A subsidiary of touch is feeling, something mobile phones use endlessly. Vibrating mobiles are a discreet way of informing the owner that their device needs attention. The owner can chose to ignore the device or respond to it, either way the fact that the device demands attention through vibration is considerably more subtle than it ringing for all to hear. Touching between two individuals often implies some kind of intimacy between them, therefore making it rather inappropriate for strangers. Touching somebody is something you do not do unless there is a certain level of trust between each other, or you feel it is necessary, often only in extreme circumstances. If this trust does or intimacy does not exist between the two people then the act of touching another person is seen as invasion of their personal space, a hostile action. The social anthropologist Kate fox describes touching as entering the intimate zone: Strangers touching each other is much to broad a leap for this artifact to attempt to induce. However, people are not object to the idea of touching the same object over a given period of time. Interactive displays often use touch as a means of operation, due to its intuitive nature for navigation. There are many information points around town centers which are touched by hundred of people a day. These information points tend to be geared at single people using them as opposed to a pair or larger group. Only one person may be touching the screen at any given time in order for it to work properly. Because of this maybe a touchscreen unit which requires two people to function would encourage conversation between strangers. Perhaps the user would need to enlist the help of a stranger to play a two player game, or even just to get the unit to perform a useful action. To summarise, touch is a sense which is already being adopted by UK society in the form of interactive touchscreen displays. For this reason another kind of touchscreen display would not seem too alien to the general public. The notion of a display which requires two people to operate is an interesting one, although it would make the display useless if nobody else was around. Perhaps the display could detect this and switch into a single user mode. The idea is worth thinking on further, as it utilising the locality of devices which 'secretly' attract users attention through vibration. As for touching between strangers I am ruling this out as a means of communicating my idea because of its highly intrusive nature. 1 Kate Fox, n.d. SIRC Guide to Flirting: What social science can tell you about flirting and how to do it Page 10 Retrieved 6th November 2005 http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.pdf
Mini evaluation:
Back to the top My research on the senses has caused me to consider new avenues my artifact could take, which I otherwise might have overlooked. Whether or not this research will be visible in the final artifact remains to be seen but I am going to be sure to develop some interesting and unusual ideas based on the senses which are often left unexplored by communicators. |
