Human Senses

What we have done

Our idea from last week was “a publishing app that helps communicators tell their stories in a more engaging format, building on modern technologies that trigger different senses: It lets users enter text, sound, 3D pictures and smell.”

We spoke again to Emiliano, the journalism student who we had worked with before, and contacted Anna and Matilda to get their feedback on our idea. Through the feedback and our own discussions it became clear to us that the exact functioning of our solution was not clear to us. Would it be an app, a social media network (Smellagram?), a publishing website? What kind of file would it be? How would the output work?

We had a whole afternoon session where we discussed this challenge and several other topics:

(1) Problem and research

We wrote a better problem description and discussed especially on the influence of smell on our memory, how it can enhance storytelling and how technology could help us better connect to our surroundings again. 

Inspirational sources:

• “If the digital age has increased the volume of communication, it may not have improved the quality.” http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/17/tech/innovation/the-ophone-phone-lets-you-send-smells/
• “...this sense is keener and more influential on our species than many people realize.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hidden-power-of-scent/

(2) Technology

We fixed certain assumptions that we take about technology in 10 years: Most smartphone cameras will be able to take 3D pictures. Looking on how far oNotes has taken the olfactory communication already, we also assume that smell files and olfactory databases will be widely available, like mp3 is nowadays - kind of like iTunes or Flickr for smells. We believe that smartphones are still widely used, but also smartwatches, 3D television and projections.

(3) Solution

The problem we saw was how to easily combine them in one story, in one file. That is what our platform does: Any user will be able to enter the text, smells, sounds and pictures he or she wishes, either their own files or creative common files from the web. The platform then lets them combine them in the desired way: smells and sound can either be auto-played or only when the consumer of the story “plays” them. They can be added throughout the whole story or only in certain parts. Furthermore, our solution enables the output of text as speech if the story is consumed through a smartwatch. This could look somehow like this (only a quick, first draft):

Information on oNotes:

• http://www.onotes.com/about-us/
• https://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/with-new-scent-messaging-app-your-food-photos-may-never-be-the-same

The biggest challenge and discussion point was actually...

(3) … the output of the story

One idea was to put this in form of an app that would let you arm and then save your story as a certain file that could be shared. Or should it be something like the Storyhouse app or Instagram - a social network? But then, how could journalists use this? Our final decision was to put our solution in form of a web platform where the story could be assembled. It would then be published on the same platform. In the free version, the story would be publicly available on our platform, in a paid version, however, we would make it possible to keep it private and embed it on other websites or allow access only with a password.

Finally we started doing...

(4) Personas - our users

It was clear that by adding smells, the use of our platform would be  depending on the story since it is only in certain cases that it would be possible to add smell. To find some convincing examples how to successfully use our platform and better explain it, we started to describe three Personas, three user cases:

• Journalist, writing a book review about ‘Regnet luktar inte här’. (journalistic)
• Jenny, communication manager at the Museum of History, preparing an exhibition about London in the 15th century. (corporate)
• Laura, travel blogger (private)

What we will do

• finish our personas
• do a mock-up of our solution to visualize it and more easily explain it
• discuss how and what to write for the book chapter
• start discussing our ideas for the final presentation