The recent publication of “Embodied: The Psychology of Physical Sensation.”, written by Christopher Eccleston, has sparked a lot of conversation in the science-y press about human senses in addition to our basic five – vision, hearing, touch, smelling and taste – and the flurry of research underway to learn more about these “new” senses as soon as possible.
So, designing to support desired sensory experiences is likely to become more complex soon. For example, if a sense for judging the passage of time is identified, and it has been discussed, designers will want to learn how it functions so they can change perceptions of the duration in waits in the waiting rooms of doctors and other professionals.
One of the “new” senses that’s most often discussed is proprioception, or knowing where our bodies are in space. Uwe Proske and Simon Gandevia wrote about it in the September issue of The Scientist (“Proprioception: The Sense Within”). As they describe, “the ability to sense our bodies is critical for telling us where we are in our surroundings as well as for the execution of normal movements. Sometimes referred to as the ‘sixth sense,’ proprioception includes the sense of position and movement of our limbs, the senses of muscle force and effort, and the sense of balance. These senses, triggered by our everyday activities, allow us to carry out our tasks successfully, without thinking…
“Our “sixth sense” not only enables us to control the movements we make, but provides us with our sense of self, the awareness of our body and its movements as we navigate through our surroundings. As we unravel the neural mechanisms that underlie proprioception, we are learning more about how the brain processes sensory information. And that will ultimately lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.”
An assortment of biological mishaps, from strokes to gastroenteritis to others can impair the functioning of our proprioceptive system, so designing to support it is a good idea, and more viable as proprioception is further researched and how to do so is more clearly understood.
Our vestibular system detects gravity, and how it functions will become particularly important as humans more actively plan for lives in outer space. Some people seem to have a much better ability to find their way through space and where the magnetic poles are; learning more about how their “wayfinding” systems work will help us develop better maps and guidance systems.
In the September issue of The Scientist, Sandeep Ravindran (“What Sensory Receptors Do Outside of Sense Organs”) discusses smell sensors located outside the nose, in places such as our lungs and skin. Ravindran reports that Hanns Hatt of Ruhr-University Bochum “found that an artificial sandalwood scent called sandalore activates an olfactory receptor in skin. Activating this receptor stimulated skin cells to migrate and proliferate more rapidly, leading to faster regeneration and wound healing.” This sort of study signals that “healing design” could become even healthier.
Soon, very soon, we may know enough about senses beyond the basic five to optimize human wellbeing in ways that are currently difficult to anticipate – another reason why its important for designers to monitor the insights that scientists are gathering from pioneering studies.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.