The Similarities of Sensory Design and User Experience

I recently attended the Interaction 11 conference in Boulder, CO. Along with some great presentations (check out http://www.ixda.org/resources and http://vimeo.com/user1128734/videos to see them), I was fortunate to be able to attend an activity with some of my fellow attendees: “Sensory Design: Fragrance.” During this event, the group went to a custom perfume shop to learn how perfumes are made. Not only was this fun, it was interesting learn about the process used in another profession that is similar in some ways to user experience.

Dawn Spencer, the perfume designer whose store we visited, explained that there are three components, or notes, to perfumes. Perfume designers strive to combine these elements in varying ways to create different scent experiences:

• Top note - The top note is what is first smelled in a perfume. It adds a sensory element that shapes the initial impression of a perfume.
• Middle note - The middle note is a more lasting smell that contains the essence of a perfume. This is also known as the heart note, since it is considered to be the heart of a scent.
• Base note - The base note is the consistent and solid base of a perfume. It is seen to provide the foundation from which the rest of a perfume is built.

When these three notes are used to create a perfume, the combined scent will change over time. Because perfumes interact with each person’s unique chemistry to form a smell, a scent can also shift depending on the person who wears it.

Everyone has different reactions to perfumes based on their chemical makeup and previous experience. A scent that smells appealing to one person can be repulsive to another.

User experience practitioners also orchestrate top, middle and base notes to create usable and appealing experiences.

• Top note – The subjective impression of an application. Visual design primarily falls in this area and other appealing elements, such as animation and product packaging, can be part of this note.
• Middle note – The working space of a program. This includes the interaction design of functions that support users’ tasks. For example, the middle notes of a financial reporting tool might be the design of screens that support searching for financial information and creating reports from that data.
• Base note – The interaction framework of a design. This includes the highlevel screen structure for an application. For example, a framework for one website may dictate that navigation be at the top of the page whereas a framework for another website may have navigation on the left side.

Just like with perfume, users will approach an application with their own knowledge, experience and preferences. For example, people will have different levels of technical expertise and visual design preferences. User groups may also want to use an application for differing reasons. One may want to use a financial application for reporting purposes only, whereas another may have to use the data entry features of the program as part of her job.

User experience practitioners must consider how all of these three notes work together to create a memorable and useful application. How does your application fulfill these three notes? Does your application have a good sensory design?