Multisensory Experiences
Our life experiences are multisensory in their nature. Some are pleasant, some are disturbing, some are needed or wanted. Here on Emotions Market we focus on the needed and wanted bit - we list various multisensory experiences designed by our experience creators, and interested buyers can find contact details of the seller on the listing page. We purposefully limit our involvement and money flaws to ensure we facilitate growth, yet we don't want to charge VAT on hugs and deal with complaints.
Heilig (1992) ranked the order in which he believed our attention to be captured by the various senses. According to Heilig’s rankings: vision, 70%; audition, 20%; olfaction, 5%; touch, 4%; and taste, 1%. Multisensory experiences are defined as “…impressions formed by specific events, whose sensory elements have been carefully crafted by someone.” (Velasco and Obrist, 2020). Multisensory experiences are designed to enable recipient to enjoy an experience for the therapy, learning, stimulation, relaxation and fun. Multisensory experiences truly focus on the multisensory nature of the perception of the experience. The process of “multisensory integration” or sensory processing "is ubiquitous, automatic, and effortless despite the complexity involved in coordinating the action of senses that have very different operational dynamics" (Wang et al, 2020).
Three laws of multisensory experiences
Velasco and Obrist (2020) identified three laws of multisensory experiences
I. Multisensory experiences should be used for good and must not harm others.
II. Receivers of a multisensory experience must be treated fairly.
III. The someone and the sensory elements must be known
Here, at Emotions Market we ask that in sensory or multisensory experiences published on our website - sensory experience receiver - recipient - buyer - should always be the focus.
Design of Multisensory experiences
Very important part of multisensory experiences is design. I blindfold walk in the wood may sound simple - yet it isn't. The creator of experience needs to plan, check, assess, imagine, adjust and fully design your experience, including preparation for eventualities - all done to evoke specific impressions in a given recipient. Hence, in multisensory experiences, design is a key part.
Experience creators design multisensory experiences based on the research into the concepts of on sensation and perception, and surrounding multisensory perception. Velasco and Obrist (2021) suggest that "when crafting an impression, through a given set of sensory elements, the someone who designs capitalizes on existing research and concepts from multisensory perception1. These include, though are not limited to, spatiotemporal congruence (e.g., Chen and Vroomen, 2013), semantic congruence (e.g., Doehrmann and Naumer, 2008), crossmodal correspondences (e.g., Spence, 2011; Parise, 2016), sensory dominance (Fenko et al., 2010), and sensory overload (Malhotra, 1984; see also Velasco and Spence, 2019, for a description of these concepts). In other words, the way in which sensory elements are integrated to a given event is inspired or based on research on sensation and perception, and more particularly, on research suggesting that the multisensory nature of information changes also cognitive processes such as like attention (e.g., Talsma et al., 2010) and memory (e.g., Shams and Seitz, 2008)".
P2P multisensory experiences on Emotions Market
Multisensory experiences can be offered on P2P basis - this allows for ultimate customisation of the experience, making experience making more appealing to creators - with every session being different.
Learn more about tactile experiences on Emotions.Market. We offer an experiences that can help boost mental health. However, this should not replace any medical support or advice you have been given.
Examples of multisensory experiences
The handling of an old book, constitutes a genuinely multisensory experience, one that connects as much on an emotional/nostalgic as on a rational level (Borland, 2018).
Gastrophysics - combination of gastronomy and psychophysics – gastronomy, the study of higher-end food practices and experiences, and psychophysics, the systematic study of human perception.
Museums and art galleries often use multisensory approach to creating experiences for visitors - smell and music, for example, are being brough in, to ensure better perception of the experience.
VR (virtual reality) is a great example of how an experience can be made multisensory. VR is being used in multisensory product experience engineering and design more and more.
Hotels are increasingly adopting nature effect/biophilic design in total design to help deliver on guest/customer well-being through the "analysis of hierarchy of the guest's senses and explanation of how multisensory interactions affect sensory marketing in the design of hotel experiences for guest" (Spence, 2022). Sensehacking is also a term used in multisensory experiences.
Sensory marketing is utilising senses to prompt significant, positive and, in-turn, profitable response from the target audience. Sensory marketing provides a more special and memorable experience to its target market.
Multisensory experiences can also be called multisensorial - applicable to the integration of information from different sensory modalities. Terms of multisensory enhancement, multisensory product experience and mulsemedia are also related.
Explore our multisensory blog posts, covering topics such as: