Designing Across Senses

Chapter 6. Modalities and Multimodalities

Test Drive Modalities

Here’s a little exercise: take a sensory inventory of where you are right now. Look, smell, touch, feel, flex. Take a sip of your delicious and refreshing beverage, if you have one. Take a minute or two to take it all in. This information will be used to perform some tasks on the following page. Don’t peek ahead!

Now, try to perform the following tasks:

1. Count the number of blue objects nearby.

2. Name the directions that light is coming from.

3. Identify the position of the loudest sound source.

4. Describe the texture of the closest object to you.

5. Determine whether your clothing still smells like laundry detergent (or fabric softener).

6. Sit up straight and relax your shoulders.

There is a good chance that you missed a lot of this information in your initial scan.

But more importantly, did you feel different? You probably needed to use your senses in a different way than you might have anticipated. Observing the light or colored objects may have led you to taking in more of their surface details. Listening for sound may have given you a greater sense of distance and space. You might notice how your frame of mind tends to shift with each different task.

The way we use our senses, the kinds of information we can parse, and what we are trying to accomplish are tied together. The first exercise requires the identification of color, and the unique items in the room. The second exercise combines matching our own position relative ...