In this episode we look at multi-sensory design, exploring how digital experiences can be extended beyond visual interfaces into hearing, touch, taste and even smell.

On this edition

• Marek Pawlowski, co-host & founder of MEX (@marekpawlowski)
• Peter Law, Creative Producer, Flying Object (@peterjlaw)
• Co-host Alex Guest returns in the next edition

News from the MEX community

• Lennart Andersson, Director of Interaction Design at Veryday – who spoke at MEX/13 about experience co-creation – picked up the grand prize at the UX Awards in New York for his agency’s work on an airline departure sequencing tool for a Swedish airport.
• We published ‘User experience principles for proximity‘, building on the results of Alex Guest’s MEX/15 creative session and picking up on themes explored in episode 1 of this podcast.

Interview: Peter Law

Some of you will know Peter from his MEX sessions on multi-sensory UX over the years, where he has worked with facilitators such as Lindsey Green and Alyson Webb to organise some of our most engaging creative challenges.  When he’s not blindfolding people in design workshops, Peter is producing projects like Flying Object’s multi-sensory art installation at the Tate Britain gallery.  We talk about everything from haptics and 3D audio to teaching broader design skills and what you can learn from walking across meadows with your eyes closed.

• Flying Object
• Tate Sensorium
• Papa Sangre, an audio-only iPhone game made by a team (including Peter) at Somethin’ Else
• Scentee, a scent pack triggered by your smartphone
• MSc programme at University of Sussex, Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems, a course Peter went on in 2001-2 that shaped his thinking, with a strong emphasis on embodiment and environment in cognition
• Kevin O’Regan & Alva Noë’s paper, ‘A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness‘, which inspired Peter in his undergraduate degree, full of interesting ideas about how we construct worlds from our perceptions and ways of explaining how we respond when we make odd new perceptual worlds or fiddle with existing ones
• Tassos Stevens, an interactive theatremaker, who Peter worked with on projects including Papa Sangre
• Annette Mees, theatremaker, who Peter worked with on the staging and storytelling of Tate Sensorium
• Paul Bennun & Nicky Birch of Something Else talk about Papa Sangre & audio design in mobile UX at MEX/12
• Jim Kosem’s MEX/11 talk about audible UIs connecting children with the sensitive history of their country
• Interview with Patrizia Bertini in episode 1 of MEX Design Talk, where we discuss embodied cognition

User story: the flustered customer and contactless payments

Change is afoot, even in rural backwaters, as the adoption of ‘the tap’ in contactless payments plays into our illogical attitudes to finance.

• MEX User story archive

About MEX Design Talk

The podcast for the MEX community, interviewing UX pioneers, exploring emerging technologies, user behaviour and how to design better digital experiences.

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Thanks

• Jukedeck, for the artificial intelligence engine which provided the music