Designing for social change and awareness narratives with smell

The talk will cover designing for olfactory and multi-sensory interfaces. Designing with smell presents special challenges which are unique to this medium. We will be walking through how we designed the user experience of these new media installations. We used artifacts such as electronics, perfumes/ attars, which presented opportunities and challenges and gave a unique experience to the users which helped them empathize with the subjects and evoked memories to move them emotionally. The four installations we will present are: Jallianwala Bagh: This focused on the horrific events during the massacre. We enabled the audience to experience the horrors of the event first hand through the unconventional medium of smell.Identity Stories: This is an interactive installation which uses multi-sensory interactions to narrate of the stories of two persons and how their identity is shaped by having lived in different parts of the country.Mir Abdul Attarwala: This installation portrays the life of people in the conflict zone through a mix of smell interactions, poetry, and cultural artifacts.
Xeno 500: Set in an alternative time of India, this exhibit paints a scenario of how xenophobia would be treated as a social evil and a critical condition.