Connecting Love With Smell
Team:
Victoria Hannah
Jackson Jiang
Xinran Li
Una Zheng
Duration:
10 Weeks
Family Memory
Smello! employs cutting-edge technology to facilitate culinary sharing between long-distance families and friends. The device enables users to communicate their culinary endeavors through the sense of smell while encasing their experience in a soft, squishy ball.
What did I do?
I interviewed participants; and gathered information and questionnaires as well as I assisted with design methods. Since I have some background in industrial design, 3D cad and rendering are my design. At the end of this project, I made a real physical prototype.
Smello!
Connect love with smells. Smello! is to enhance culinary sharing for long-distance families and friendships and communicate their own culinary ventures through the sense of smell, all while enveloping their heartwarming experience in a squishy, cuddly orb.
Interactive Structure
Users can interact with their squishy Smello! device to enjoy fragrant puffs of their favorite aromas. When not emitting smells, squeezing the device triggers the device to soak up and record scents like a pipet.
Modernized Charging
Smello! rests on a sleek base, which protects the device’s recording nodes when not in use. The base also features a port to charge the device wirelessly.
Status LEDs
When Smello! is ready to emit a smell, the device’s squishy bulb glows a soft pink. This notifys users that their device is ready to squeeze and sniff!
APP
Simply squeeze to record a favorite dish, and your Smello! will automatically send aromatic information to it’s supplementary application. Serving as a vehicle for convenient communication, the app allows users ease of sharing and organizing their beloved aromas. Say goodbye to disengaging, Instagram-grade photos of meals, and welcome Smello! into your life!
Easy In-App Sharing & Saving
The Smello! application automatically stores users’ recordings for sharing from their device; the app also features a library to organize one’s favorite smells conveniently.
Auto-Save for Recordings
After recording, the Smello! application will automatically have your scents saved. Users are then able to rename, sample, and share their smells via URL.
Easy-Access Library
Clicking on a URL from a loved one prompts Smello! saves their scent to your library, where you can organize and access all your favorite aromas.
EMPATHYFamily relationships are at times full of love and support. Under the influence of COVID-19, families in distance have been searching for a new way to connect with families. So how might design enhance those relationships?
Contextual Inquiry
Questionnaire
Our first stage is to gather general information from participants about their family recipes and eating habits. Food is a strong connection with family relationships.
When participants are with families, 60% of participants cook family meals with families at least once a week.
When participants are distant from their families. 53% of participants would use food as a remedy to homesickness at least once a month.
Photo Study
Our second stage is to directly observe the perticipants’ behaviors when they utilize family recipes in daily life. Different cultures have different traditional meals.
Interview
With the general direction we organized from the questionnaire and photo study, we devised a personalized interview to dive deeper into the relationship and the experience among recipes and families. Food emphasizes the bond of the relationship among intergeneration.
"I enjoy cooking for my girls and boys. There is always a dish that they love since young.”
- THE ELDERLY
"I learned [the dish] from my mom, and I teach my son.”
- THE ADULTS
"We usually have dinner on Friday nights. This is the time when we can sit down and talk.”
- THE ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS
DEFINEBy analyzing data on connecting family relationships, we seek a collaborative approach to respond to it.
Analysis and Synthesis
HOW MIGHT WE enhance the experience of sharing and preparing family meals through the sense of smell?
IDEATE + PROTOTYPEBrainstorming to modernize the activity of connecting family relationships and narrow down to unite physically distant families by sensation and perception.
Rapid Ideation
60 thumbnails ideations
Our team came up with 60 ideas based on the research and data we have done. Some might be physical, and some might be digital. And we ended up with the idea of sending smells
Simple Activation
The aroma dispenser begins the process of capturing a kitchen’s scent with a simple tap.
Automatic Scent Catcher
Upon activation, the aroma dispenser begins analyzing the scents of your kitchen prior to transmission and replication.
Tailor-Made Aromas
The recipient’s dispenser vents out a spot-on replica of the sender’s cooking scents.
Scentsational Connection
When scent evokes emotion or memory, it is called a Proustian moment. The Proust phenomenon is described as the “involuntary evocation of an autobiographical memory, including a range of related sensory and emotional expressions.” So, the smell is a remarkable sense that evokes past emotions and memories. Specifically, odors can stimulate the imagination and creativity of the visual cortex.
Exploration Technology
Upon activation, this aroma dispenser utilizes smell-replicating technology to automatically fill a person's home with the aroma of shared smell. Red, green, and blue are the three primary colors that can be combined to produce an array of hues. Thus creating different types of odors using these primary odors is the similar concept of seven "primary" odors has been proposed in the past.
Story Board
A tool to best illustrates such interaction between users and scenarios. Simply squeeze to record a favorite dish, and your Smello! will automatically send aromatic information to it’s supplementary application.
TESTAn aroma dispenser to enhance the experience of sharing and preparing family meals through the sense of smell from distance.
Participatory Design
INSIGHTS:
• Family meals permeate into participants' deep minds and memories. Each dish is connected with one story.
INSIGHTS:
• Participants considered scent a valuable medium for sharing & connecting among locationally-distant relationships.
INSIGHTS:
• The device should not focus on scent alone. Combination with other means of sharing, such as visual or auditory cues, can assist in enriching & enhancing the scent-sharing experience.
• Participants wanted a portable aroma dispenser that could function well in a cooking environment and act as a centerpiece for the dining area.
INSIGHTS:
• Considering the device’s daily usage, participants expressed the most value for convenience, aesthetics, privacy, and additional functions to allow them to have control & comfort with their device.
• For consumers to trust this device, participants suggested including privacy settings such as an on & off option to avoid awkward time conflicts with scent sharing.
Smello!This project and its many virtues will certainly serve as a foundation for a generation of observational and compassionate problem solvers.
Multi-dimension
This process taught us about the multiple perspectives of establishing a well-rounded design. To make a complete and satisfying design, you have to be willing to spend time and effort listening to and getting to know your audience.
No prejudge
There is value in keeping an open mind. We have learned to be open to change, not to get too attached to a concept, to trust the process. We are truly grateful to have had this experience and to have gotten an early sample of the industry.
Observation
This project and its many virtues will certainly serve as a foundation for a generation of observational and compassionate problem solvers.
