Engaging with sense of smell through textile interactions

Abstract

This research paper discusses dimension of smell for designing spatial interactions through textiles. The focus in these design examples is combining the sense of touch to actuate the smells. Sense of touch is explored in terms of different tactile sensations that include pressing, rubbing and movement of the body. Through these tactile interactions smells embedded in the textile objects are released. The temporal textile expressions of smells open up for further investigations for designing spaces, as these design examples bring forward the olfactory expressions and proposes frameworks for future research in potential human-computer interactions through our everyday objects and surroundings. The proposal of textile interactions that engage sense of smell and create slow interactions with objects and situations from our daily lives opens up the opportunity to encourage more social interactions within the physical world. These interactions will include computational things, however, in a discreet manner, helping build deep bonds between human to human and human to environment.