| Come to Your Senses |
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To create relaxing, healing environments, designers tap into sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
By Catherine Warren Leone
Since the time of Plato, the act of thinking
has been perceived as a logical, conscious and
verbally based process, with emotion derided as a
roadblock to sound thinking. Who hasn't heard the
maxim, "Think with your head, not with your heart"?
But prominent neuroscientists across the globe have
studied images of the brain in action and placed emotion
in the driver's seat, asserting that thinking is
emotion-based, intuitive and fast.
And while emotions form the basis of thoughts, the
five senses - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch - fuel
those emotions, wielding the power to persuade, relax
and heal. It makes sense, therefore, that interior designers
are turning to sensory design, an approach that
focuses on addressing all five senses in a space.
"It's important for interior designers to raise their
perception of sensory data and not just focus exclusively
on the visual aesthetic. By recalling their own
sensory experiences in their designs, interior designers
can create more humane built environments,"
says Joy Malnar, Associate Professor of Architecture at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is
the co-author, along with her husband Frank
Vodvarka, of Sensory Design [University of Minnesota
Press, 2004], which urges those in the design field to
utilize the full spectrum of human senses.
Certainly sensory design has earned its place in
high-end spas and resorts. But today, hospitals, airports,
retail environments and corporate offices alike are
embracing the senses to forge brand identity while creating
inviting environments.
BRANDED SPACES
Emotions have a profound impact on corporate and
organizational branding. In fact, a January 2007 study
led by Stanford University neuroscientist Brian
Knutson found consumer purchases to be primarily
dictated by feelings rather than logic. The researchers
determined the importance of emotion by scanning
subjects' brain activity as they considered a series
of products.
"Emotions affect awareness, consideration, persuasion,
recall and loyalty in the marketplace," says Dan
Hill, author of Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and
Minds [Adams Business & Professional, 2007] and
President of Minneapolis, Minn.-based Sensory Logic,
a consulting firm that specializes in understanding
consumers' emotional responses to products, retail
settings and advertising.
Consequently, branding is of utmost importance to
every business, nonprofit group and organization.
"Nowadays, a corporation, law firm, country, university,
museum, hospital, celebrity and even you in your
career can be considered as a brand," writes Vincent
Grimaldi de Puget, an investment banker specializing
in brands and technology, and a faculty member at EDHEC Business School in France, in his article
"The Fundamentals of Branding" published on
Brandchannel.com.
Environmental branding - what Grimaldi defines as
aligning a three-dimensional space with a brand's positioning
- can work as a major differentiator in establishing
a brand identity. By expressing a brand's
essence in showrooms, work areas, trade exhibits or
any other customer-oriented space, the consumer experiences
the brand. "It is a very powerful marketing
tool," he says. "In a retail space, there is no remote control
to avoid commercial breaks - environmental
branding literally enwraps the consumer and delights
the five senses."
A brand authority for many, Marc Gobé's bestselling
book Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for
Connecting Brands to People [Allworth Press, 2001],
places the consumer - not the product - at the center of
a branding strategy. Gobé, whose clients at branding
and design firm Desgrippes Gobé have included Coca-
Cola, AOL, Godiva, Victoria's Secret and Estée Lauder,
advocates exploring how a brand can sensitively connect
with people on an emotional level.
In the case of Godiva, Gobé suggested changing the
store's design to "emotionalize" its retail brand image.
He took the store from "elegant but slightly intimidating
and austere" to "warm and sensuous" by creating
a design inspired by the Art Nouveau movement of
the late 1800s, known for its curvilinear details and
floral and plant-inspired motifs. The redesign succeeded,
he says, because it communicated Godiva's
"heritage of sophisticated European pleasure in a more warm and sensuous manner that heightens the
irresistible allure of chocolate." Gobé says customers
responded positively to the new design, and Godiva
reported a marked increase in sales worldwide.
Mark Weaver, AIA, Principal and Partner at Hnedak
Bobo Group (HBG) in Memphis, Tenn., cites the
Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World as another
example of a space where sensory design helps create
a distinct brand. "[The space] incorporates sounds of
frogs and crickets and the sight of lit fireflies to produce
an authentic, rustic, natural park effect for its
guests," he says. "And these various sensory elements
combine to create a familiarity for guests."
SIT BACK AND STAY AWHILE
But branding isn't the only area that sensory design can
profoundly impact. Design that speaks to the senses can
evoke comfort and relaxation, causing end-users -
customers or otherwise - to want to spend more time
in the space. National bookstore chain Barnes & Noble
is as much a popular weekend destination as it is a place to buy books. The stores welcome visitors with
the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and soft leather
couches for reading and relaxing.
When HBG designed the new Westin Memphis
Beale Street Hotel, creating a unique, sophisticated
sensory experience was a top priority. "[Westin Hotels
and Resorts] have design standards tailored to this
'human design' as it relates to the way guests experience
their hotels, with the full spectrum of human
senses in mind," Weaver says.
Throughout the space, HBG relied on organic elements
original to Memphis, including indigenous flowers
and plants from the region, and the Mississippi
River. The designers represented those elements in finishes,
fabrics and artwork to elevate the senses. Scent
and sound are especially represented in the space,
specifically in the hotel lobby. A specially designed floral
scent is infused into the lobby, and Westin's signature
music is played throughout public areas.
"When dealing in [the hospitality] industry, you must
understand the basic emotion that produces the 'wow'
feeling. The 'wow' factor can vary based on customer type,
but hospitality design specifically strives to target the five
senses to create an uplifting and soothing environment
for decompression and escapism," Weaver says. "My
goal as a hospitality designer is to create design experiences
that elicit passion, beauty and cultural identity
through innovative design concepts that inspire the
guest, stimulate the senses and engage emotion."
Even the corporate world is taking a cue from the
hospitality arena. "As for corporate design... we have
seen a switch from purely aesthetic architectural forms to those that produce greater quality of work
life for employees," Weaver says. "The average time
employees spend at work in an office building is 40
hours per week, usually more. Our clients care about
their employees and are focused on progressive,
employee-friendly design initiatives."
Sensory design measures in the corporate world
typically include integrating the outside environment
with that of the interior through the use of large windows.
"Just the act of introducing nature elevates the
senses, making for happier, more productive employees,"
he says, adding that vivid textures, lighting and
colors "create active interior spaces full of energy
and movement, conducive to workplace interaction."
THE POWER TO HEAL
But getting end-users to stick around is not the goal of
every design. In hospitals, for instance, one of design's
goals is to help reduce patients' length of stay. So the
role of sensory design is to create "a patient-focused,
family-centered and safe place to be," says Mary Piette,
IIDA, Project Manager and Designer at The Bommarito
Group in Austin, Texas, who, with Sylvie Bucci, IIDA,
Senior Designer at Gensler Houston, presented "Sensory
Experiential Design" during NeoCon 2007.
In their hospital design work, the two have been influenced
by the work of Roger Ulrich, Ph.D., a behavioral scientist and Director of the Center for Health Systems
and Design at Texas A&M University. In one of Ulrich's
best-known studies, he discovered that patients who had
undergone surgery recovered sooner if there was a window
with a view in their rooms than those who did not
have a window. "We believe it's crucial to build and create
wonderfully integrated sensory experiences," Piette says.
Successful branding is, indeed, the seduction of the
senses. Whether through an enticing aroma, an inviting
plush chair or a stress-reducing view outside the window,
the senses make the most positive of all emotional
connections.
| Making Sense |
Sight. Scientists say more than half the brain
is devoted to processing visual images, and
80 percent of learning is based on visual
input. In a market research project for the
Wild Bean Café, owned by BP Gas, Dan Hill
of Sensory Logic videotaped subjects as
they walked through four proposed formats
for the coffee shop. The goal was to analyze
their positive and negative reactions to color,
layout and flow of the space, as well as how
much sensory input could be given without
overwhelming the consumer.
Hill's research showed that a space
should not be crowded since "emotionally,
you want to feel comfortable." This includes
visual clutter, too. For example, if an ad on
the back wall has five or more words, generally
the consumer will only read the first one.
So it's important to make it a key word -
not "the," for instance.
One spatial matter is nonnegotiable:
People don't like to feel trapped or hemmed
in, Hill says. In one Wild Bean Café format
that broke the visual flow with a barrier of
goods, the subjects felt a sense of fear. "Fear
overrides all other senses," Hill says.
Sound. Since airport lounges have a high concentration
of people, Bennett tries to create
tranquil spaces that are refuges from electronics.
Oftentimes she designs separate TV media
rooms and creates designated spaces for cell
phone use. To muffle conversation noise, she
incorporates water features to produce soothing
white noise, a signal with a flat frequency spectrum
that blocks other sounds.
Smell. One of the most powerful senses, smell can trigger
associations and draw upon memories of other smells.
The smell of cedar, for example, can evoke strong reactions,
says Joy Malnar, co-author of Sensory Design. The
smell reminds her University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign architecture students of their youth. "It's about
a fond memory that's attached to going into the closet
and smelling the scent," she says. The same smell, she
adds, is even more important to the culture of native
Northwest Americans known as the Makah, whose
homes were made of cedar.
Houston-based Bennett Design Group designed more
than 40 airport lounges for Continental Airlines, and extra
efforts were taken to keep jet fuel and gas smells from
seeping into the lounge area at a Washington, D.C., historical
restoration. Fuel smells make customers feel unsafe
and unhealthy, says Bennett Design Group owner Belinda
Bennett, IIDA, so the team incorporated special HVAC
equipment to get rid of the unpleasant odor. "It would be
a new idea in the airline industry to make lounges explore
aromatherapy as it's used in healthcare," she says.
Touch. Textiles
are one of the most evaluated decisions in
lounge projects, Bennett says. "Touching a chair is
the most personal experience that a customer will have," she says. "The feel of a textile can create a comfort
zone away from home." Bennett often selects soft, textured fabrics that automatically
make a person want to relax and stay put. When not using fabric on the arms of
chairs in healthcare settings, she prefers the warmth of wood to the coldness
of metal. Soft rubber arms, she adds, are a good option for high-use areas.
People are drawn to natural materials because they possess an innate richness and warm up an environment
through texture, says Mary Piette, IIDA, of The Bommarito Group. Stone, for one, exudes an aura of
strength and coolness. In the gift shop at Overlook Hospital in Summit, N.J., Piette used limestone, granite
and wood-grained materials.
Taste. "Color affects the appetite, in essence, the taste of food," says Bennett who designed Ruth's Chris Steak House in
Mishawaka, Ill., as well as many restaurants in Texas. As a result, she notes, it's important to know what type of food the restaurant
serves. Bennett reserves blue color schemes for use only in seafood settings, while she says pink helps encourage dessert sales. A
general rule of thumb, she adds, is to use colors of food in the design of a space. Lighting can also make food seem more appealing.
"Cool [blue] lamps will not enhance food appearance," she says.
Food - and taste - can also make a space feel more inviting and welcoming, Piette says. "We recommend creating public
waiting rooms that have fresh natural food offerings such as pitchers of fresh water with lemons or cucumber slices and offerings of
fresh fruit," she says. "It's a way to support health and relaxation."
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