Human Senses

What we have done.

(1) The technology behind our concept

We managed to get our concept really clear, and changed it’s name from Sensory to Scent-O since we want to focus more on aromas. The next step was to discuss in more depth of how Scent-O would work:

How should we allow our users to add scents. How would they be able to adapt and create them? How would they be played? Would they „capture“ the scents like you capture an image with a camera, or would they choose a type of smell (like rose) and this would tell the device to play a certain chemical combination of this aroma? 

All these questions required more research about the oPhone technology. Finally we agreed that Scent-O should include:

• Obrary, a library for digital smells (kind of like iTunes for mp3)
• Scent-O Bulb, an editing tool for the smells where users could adjust the intensity of the aromas, combine different aromas and set for how long a certain aroma should be played.
• Scent-O would allow anyone to publish their aroma-enhanced stories on the Scent-O platform. Free accounts would have to be published publicly while paid accounts should allow to keep the publications private, password-protected or allow for embedding in external websites.

A big question was also whether we should include pictures, videos and/ or VR. On one hand we wanted to really focus on smell, on the other hand visuals are becoming more and more important. And aromas themselves can obviously only tell a story if combined well with words- and pictures. Finally we agreed on including pictures, videos and 360° videos, but not VR. 

(2) The article

We outlined our article, including a future scenario to show it’s applications - but also its drawbacks! Because we do want to make clear that Scent-O would not solve any problem and automatically produce better stories, but it will be a tool for it. It will still depend on the ability of the journalist to use this tool efficiently and create compelling stories.

What we are doing.

We are now finishing the article and producing some visuals- a logo and possibly a mock-up of the platform.

What we are going to do.

Finishing the article and then start off with the final presentation.