Ludic Odour : Designing a Digital Artefact with Smell at ...

Doctoral Dissertation

Academic Year 2016

Ludic Odour :

Designing a Digital Artefactwith Smell at Bathingfor Family Bonding

Mei Kei Lai

Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

Category: Design

Doctor of Media Design

This dissertation is submitted to

Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MEDIA DESIGN

in the category of

Design

Dissertation Advisory Committee:

Dr. Naohito Okude.........................................................(Principal Advisor)

Professor at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

Dr. Kouta Minamizawa............................................................(Co-Advisor)

Associate Professor at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

Dr. Masa Inakage..................................................................... (Co-Advisor)


Doctoral Dissertation Review Committee:

Dr. Kouta Minamizawa.................................................. (Committee Chair)

Associate Professor at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design

Dr. Masa Inakage..........................................................................(Member)


Dr. Keiko Okawa.......................................................................... (Member)


Dr. Liwei Chan............................................................................. (Member)

Assistant Professor at National Chiao Tung University

Dr. Takuji Narumi........................................................................ (Member)

Senior Assistant Professor at The University of Tokyo

Abstract

Ludic Odour, digital artefact, promotes family bonding between

parents and child through creating first encountered experience

with smell at family bathing. It brings the value of smell at

family bonding into daily bathing through digital olfaction tech-

nology. Ludic Odour includes the categories of scents associated

with family daily life. It provides a way for parents and child

select the scents based on their family routines and preferences.

When parents and child uses the soap scrubbing on the body, the

bathing artefact soap detects the strength and duration of scrub-

bing. It sends the signal to the emission device of Ludic Odour

through MESH application to trigger corresponding odour emis-

sions. The family can create different olfactory experience at daily

bath through different sequence and duration of odour emissions.

The proof of concept was conducted at the real family bathing in

Macao. Questionnaire, voice recording and contextual inquiry in-

terview were adopted to collect the responses from both parents

and child. This dissertation describes the design and the devel-

opment of Ludic Odour. It contributes in a way to design digital

artefact with smell to create first encountered olfactory experience

for promoting the family bonding between parents and child at

bathing in the digital age.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my principal advisor

Professor Naohito Okude for his guidance and patience through-

out my doctoral study, especially the moments when I got lost in

research. He showed me how to read, to write and to think in

academically. I would like to show my greatest appreciation to my

review committee chair Associate Professor Kouta Minamizawa for

offering his valuable advice about interaction and validation. Also

to my co-advisor, Dean and Professor Masa Inakage for pointing

out the inconsistency in my writing that pushed me to rethink

about the whole thing. I thanks to Professor Keiko Okawa and

Project Senior Assistant Professor Liwei Chan as my doctoral dis-

sertation review committee for giving me very helpful advices on

my thesis. For Dr. Takuji Narumi, his projects inspired me a lot

when I started my doctoral research. It is my honour to have him

as my external reader and thanks for his precious comments in

the review. I am also grateful to my previous co-advisor Professor

Masahiko Inami for his inspiring discussion at the proposal stage.

I would like to express my gratitude to KMD doctoral members.

Special thanks to Project Assistant Professor, also my senpai, Chi-

hiro Sato for all her helps in academic and living guide since I

joined KMD, and Assistant Professor Daisuke Uriu for the idea

discussion at the early stage. Also I am sincere grateful to Dr.

Susana Sanchez for her sharp mind that giving me a clear picture

how to reconstruct the writing. And I thanks to Yan Yan Cao for

all the valuable discussions along this academic scented journey.

I am sincerely thanks to my colleagues in Macao Polytechnic In-

stitute for their supports and understandings in the past six years.

Special thanks to George Chow for his amazing skills on prototype

making, and Sun Yan for his grateful logistics help. Also warmly

thanks to Iani Chan for her help on soap making.

I owe a very important debt to all the families who are willing

to open their home for fieldwork, and trust my design to let their

children experience at bathing. I also thanks to my friend Fiona Lin

for library resource support, Naoko Seddon for her encouragements

during all my ups and downs, Ellen Mok for her listening heart,

also KECF & TBC members for their supports in Japan.

Here, I would like to offer my special thanks to my tutors Gordon

Davies, Stephen Boyd Davis and Magnus Moar in my postgraduate

study. Without the encouragements and loves from them, this

smell exploration journey could not be started eleven years ago in

Middlesex University. And I would not be where I stand today.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my big Lai’s family. They give

me such a close bonding family to grow up, and all the happiest

childhood memories shared with my cousins. It gives me a deep

motivation to design for promoting family bond in my research.

Words are hardly enough to express my deep sense of gratitude

and heartfelt thanks to my parents. Their unconditional love and

endless supports give me strengths to explore what I love through-

out my life. This thesis is dedicated to them. May all the glory

and honour be to my Lord.

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The Value of Odours to Family Bonding in the Digital Age . . 6

1.2 The Opportunities Provided by Digital Olfaction . . . . . . . 9

1.3 Ludic Odour, Digital Artefact with Smell for Family Bonding . 13

2 Literature Review 15

2.1 The Impact of Odour on Family Bonding . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.2 Digital Artefacts for Family Bonding at Home Living . . . . . 25

2.3 Designing through Digital Olfaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.4 Ludic Odour - Digital Artefact with Smell for Family Bonding 51

3 Design 52

3.1 Ethnography Research in Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

3.1.1 Fieldwork in Chu’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.1.2 Fieldwork in Lei’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.1.3 Fieldwork in Chan’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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Table of Contents

3.1.4 Integrated Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3.2 The Personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

3.3 The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

3.4 Initial Design and Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.4.1 About the Categories of Scents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.4.1.1 The Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.4.1.2 The Materials of Scents . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

3.4.2 About the Selection of Scents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

3.4.3 About the Bathing Artefact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

3.4.4 About the Emission Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

3.5 Pilot Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

3.5.1 The Participative Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

3.5.2 The Process of Pilot Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

3.5.3 The Pilot Study in Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

3.5.4 Findings in the Pilot Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

3.6 Refined Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

3.6.1 About the Personas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

3.6.2 About the Selection of Scents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

3.6.3 About the Bathing Artefact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

3.6.4 About the Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

3.6.5 About the Emission Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

3.6.6 About the Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

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Table of Contents

4 Proof of Concept 121

4.1 The Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.1.1 Questionnaire for Parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.1.2 Questionnaire for Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

4.1.3 Family Holistic Experience through Thinking Aloud &

Contextual Inquiry Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

4.1.4 The Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

4.2 The Participant Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

4.2.1 Rainey, 4 Years-Old Girl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

4.2.2 Carson, 5 Years-Old Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

4.2.3 Owen and Cheung, 6 and 3 Years-Old Boy . . . . . . . 135

4.3 The Result of Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

4.4 Contextual Inquiry Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

5 Conclusion 142

A Model Analysis of Fieldwork 154

A.1 Model Analysis in Chu’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

A.2 Model Analysis in Lei’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

A.3 Model Analysis in Chan’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

A.4 Consolidated Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

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List of Figures

3.1 Family Chart of the Families in Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3.2 Fieldwork in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.3 Fieldwork in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.4 Bath time in Chan’s Family, Video Screenshot by Mrs. Chan . 66

3.5 Persona - Parents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.6 Persona - Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.7 The Concept of Ludic Odour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

3.8 Initial Trials of Materials - (Left) Fragrance; (Middle) Essential

Oil; (Right) Soap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

3.9 Experiments of Scented Liquid with Extraction Method . . . . 80

3.10 The Categories of Scents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

3.11 Initial Trials of Input Sensors - (Left) Blow to Smell - Electret

Condenser Microphone; (Middle) Press to Smell - CdS sensor;

(Right) Shake to Smell - ADXL335 sensor . . . . . . . . . . . 85

3.12 Initial Experiment in Bathroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

3.13 Sony MESH Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

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List of Figures

3.14 Rinse Cup with Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

3.15 Shower Head with Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

3.16 Pump Bottle with Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

3.17 Soap with Sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

3.18 Initial Trials of Bathing Artefacts - (From Left to Right) Pump

Bottles; Shower Head; Soap; Rinse Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

3.19 Spray Bottles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

3.20 Aroma Diffusers (Left: Bottle-shaped; Right: Round-shaped) . 92

3.21 Atomizers Prototype #1 (four ultrasonic atomizers in one pot) 93

3.22 Atomizers Prototype #2 (stand-alone ultrasonic atomizers) . . 93

3.23 Atomizers Prototype #3 (with 3D print cover) . . . . . . . . . 94

3.24 The Initial Setting of Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

3.25 Carson’s Bathroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

3.26 Pilot Study in Carson’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

3.27 Ho’s Bathroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

3.28 Pilot Study in Ho’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

3.29 Josephine’s Bathroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

3.30 Pilot Study in Josephine’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

3.31 Nick’s Bathroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

3.32 Pilot Study in Nick’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

3.33 Soap Making and the Sensor Embedded . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

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List of Figures

3.34 MESH Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

3.35 The 3D Models of Emission Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

3.36 3D Printed Emission Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

3.37 3D Printed Emission Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

4.1 Questionnaire for Parent (Part 1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

4.2 Questionnaire for Parent (Part 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

4.3 Questionnaire for Child (Part 1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

4.4 Questionnaire for Child (Part 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

4.5 The List of Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

4.6 Ludic Odour in Rainey’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

4.7 Ludic Odour in Carson’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

4.8 Ludic Odour in Owen & Cheung’s Family . . . . . . . . . . . 136

A.1 Flow model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

A.2 Sequence model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

A.3 Artefact model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

A.4 Physical model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

A.5 Cultural model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

A.6 Mental model in Chu’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

A.7 Flow model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

A.8 Sequence model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

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List of Figures

A.9 Artefact model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

A.10 Physical model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

A.11 Cultural model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

A.12 Mental model in Lei’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

A.13 Flow model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

A.14 Sequence model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

A.15 Artefact model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

A.16 Physical model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

A.17 Cultural model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

A.18 Mental model in Chan’s family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

A.19 Consolidated Cultural Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

A.20 Consolidated Mental Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

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List of Tables

3.1 Twenty Scents with Numerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

3.2 Background of the Families in the Pilot Study . . . . . . . . . 97

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Bonding is the emotional relationship development closely tying between par-

ent and child enduring life time. Marshall H. Klaus, well-known neonatologist

scholar in family bonding from University of California, has conducted a se-

ries of studies about bonding since 1976. Klaus et al. stated that bonding is

the process of emotional relationship development between parents and child

across time and space1. Family Studies scholars Orthner and Mancini stated

that bonding is strengthened through spending time together in a joint activ-

ity among family members2. Bruce D Perry, researcher in brain development

and children in crisis, further pointed out that the family bonding happens

when the reciprocal positive experience loops between parents and child. Ac-

cording to British psychologist John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, the family

bonding between parents and child at early stage affects children development

and the relationship throughout life time3. His colleague Mary Ainsworth

further stated that the interference would bring negative impacts on children

emotional and personality development persistently4.

1. Marshall H Klaus and John H Kennell, “Maternal-infant bonding: The impact of earlyseparation or loss on family development,” 1976,

2. Dennis K Orthner and Jay A Mancini, “Benefits of leisure for family bonding,” Benefitsof leisure, 1991, 289–301

3. John Bowlby, “Attachment and loss: retrospect and prospect.,” American journal ofOrthopsychiatry 52, no. 4 (1982): 664

4. Mary S Ainsworth, “Infant–mother attachment.,” American psychologist 34, no. 10(1979): 932

1

Family bonding is a core value in Chinese culture. Family is treated as a

holistic unit rather than discrete individual. Family bonding and gathering

time are placed a higher priority than personal agenda5. Daniel T. L. Shek,

psychologist from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, conducts a series of

studies about the family bonding in the Canton Chinese culture context. He

stated that Canton Chinese parents consider bonding as the quality of the

parent child relationship to develop an ideal child6. Shek found out that the

family bonding in the contemporary Canton Chinese culture has the tendency

to reverse from the traditional model of strict father, kind mother to the con-

temporary model of strict mother, kind father. It means the bonding between

father and child is to develop a kind emotional relationship while the bonding

between mother and child is carried through discipline. The study also showed

that the family bonding become poorer in the early adolescent years in the

contemporary Canton Chinese culture7.

Mark Greener, research pharmacologist, pointed out that the most intimate

family bonding time through smell happens at bath time. As the child comes

to be naked, the child feels the parents and the surrounding naturally through

sensation. Bathing, the process of body washing, offers a rich sensory experi-

ence intimately sharing between parents and child which is hardly provided by

other family routines. The smell in the bathing environment not only makes

the experience enjoyable, but also promotes the bonds between parents and

child. The bonding experience with smell affects the behaviour and physiology

of the child for long term. The family bathing is a great sensory experience

5. Jianghong Liu, Libo Li, and Fan Fang, “Psychometric properties of the Chinese versionof the Parental Bonding Instrument,” International journal of nursing studies 48, no. 5(2011): 582–89

6. Daniel TL Shek and Lai K Chan, “Hong Kong Chinese parents’ perceptions of the idealchild,” The Journal of Psychology 133, no. 3 (1999): 291–302

7. Daniel TL Shek, “A longitudinal study of perceived differences in parental control andparent-child relational qualities in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong,” Journal of AdolescentResearch 22, no. 2 (2007): 156–88

2

for parents and child to play and bond in daily life8.

In the Johnson’s Global Bath Time Report 2015, they did the survey for

over 3500 parents who have 0 - 3 years old child across seven countries including

Brazil, Canada, China, India, Philippines, United Kingdom and United Stated.

According to their report, over 84% of the parents considered bathing as the

some of the best quality time they shared with their children. Over 55%

of them had good bonding experience at bathing. Meanwhile, the survey is

reported that 68% of the children love bathing9. It is shown bathing is the

mutual positive bonding moment for both parents and children.

Sociologists Waskul et al found that people relate their favourite smell

mostly to the early encountered experience they shared together with family

in childhood. They collected the journals from 23 participants to examine how

they reflected their olfactory experience over life time. The result showed that

70 percent of participants related their favourite smell to the early encountered

experience spending with their family members. One participant reported

the smell of baking related her to the pleasant time with her family as her

mother always baked a lot at Christmas. The smell of baking refers beyond

the ingredient of baking itself, but the pleasure she had with her mother in the

old days. Another participant related a clean laundry smell to the experience

hanging out with her aunt in childhood as she was always doing laundry when

she stayed with her. One lady at her aged 49 described vividly how a particular

combination of smell brought her the feeling of being a little girl to give her

father a welcome home hug. Other participant related the smell of rain to

the summer vocation spent with family saying “Every time I smell that aroma

8. Mark Greener, “Bath time: More than good clean fun,” Journal of Health Visiting 4,no. 2 (2016): 92–94

9. JOHNSON, http://www.jnj.com/caring/patient-stories/Johnsons-So-Much-More-Campaign

3

now, it reminds me of all the fun times we had as a family.”10. The meaning of

smell is beyond the object it represents. It associates with what the family do

together, where they go together, with whom they hang out together. Their

study showed that the early encountered experience with smell at childhood

closely bonds the people with their family members throughout the lifetime.

In Chinese culture, family bonding time are always related to different ol-

factory experience. For example, Chinese New Year is considered as the most

important family bonding time in a year. The smell of citrus, narcissus, cook-

ing, firecracker and incense are some of the examples the family encountered

together in the family traditions. Besides, the smell of white champaca and

the smell of Liushen floral water were commonly found in the Canton Chinese

family environment in 70s to 80s as home fragrance was not common at that

time. The early encountered olfactory experience at childhood ties closely with

the family activities in Chinese families.

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) studies have been promoting family

bonding through providing multisensory artefacts for parent and child inter-

action, for example, networked toy for distance play11, paper book for story-

telling12, pajama for hugging13, shoes for shopping14, etc. While family spends

time together in a shared activity, they feel each other with all sensations as

10. Dennis D Waskul, Phillip Vannini, and Janelle Wilson, “The aroma of recollection:Olfaction, nostalgia, and the shaping of the sensuous self,” The Senses and Society 4, no. 1(2009): 5–2211. Hayes Raffle et al., “Pokaboo: a networked toy for distance communication and play,”

in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children(ACM, 2011), 201–412. Hayes Raffle et al., “Family story play: reading with young children (and elmo) over

a distance,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (ACM, 2010), 1583–9213. James Keng Soon Teh et al., “Huggy pajama: a parent and child hugging communica-

tion system,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design andChildren (ACM, 2009), 290–9114. Yoonjung Hong et al., “’STEPS’: walking on the music, moving with light breathing,”

in CHI’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2010),4799–804

4

well. These artefacts promote the bonding through visual, audio and haptic

sensation. The sense of smell, which closely bonds the parents and child to-

gether, is yet to be widely explored in designing digital artefact for the family

bonding in the digital age. The value of smell can bring a great impact to

family bonding through digital olfactory technology.

Ludic Odour, digital artefact, promotes the family bonding between par-

ents and child through creating the first encountered experience with smell

they enjoy together at bathing. It associates the pleasant experience between

parents and child with smell through digital olfactory technology. The bathing

artefact soap is embedded with a sensor inside to detect the bathing behaviour,

which can trigger different odour emissions from the emission device accord-

ingly. It lets the parents and child select their own scents based on their family

activities and preferences. When the parents and child uses the soap to scrub

on the body, the sensor embedded inside the soap detects the strength and

the duration of the movement. It sends the signal to the system to trigger the

odour emission from the emission device with different sequence and duration

of emission. Bathing, the process of body washing, is the daily routine for

parents also the play time for child. It is the intimate time that the parents

and child simply enjoy each other without any distractions from outside. It is

a place where a process of odour changing happens from smelly sweat to re-

freshing scent. Ludic Odour provides the categories of scents which associated

with the experience that parents and child encountered together in their daily

life, such as the scent of nature, fruit, party and living. This dissertation takes

bathing as the instance of daily experience which intimately shared between

parents and child to implement the concept of Ludic Odour. It provides a

way to design digital artefact with smell for parents and children to promote

family bonding at bathing.. In this dissertation, the term of odour refers to

the chemical molecules detected by human olfactory system. It can be used

for both pleasant and unpleasant. Smell is used when describing the perceived

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1.1. The Value of Odours to Family Bonding in the Digital Age

odours of a place, an object or an activity such as the smell of home, the smell

of orange or the smell of cooking. Scent refers especially to the pleasant smell

and its trail15. The olfactory experience refers as the experience perceived

through the sense of smell16.

1.1 The Value of Odours to Family Bonding inthe Digital Age

Olfaction plays an important role at family bonding, especially parents and

children. Infants recognise their mothers by smelling their body odours17.

Mothers can also identify their own infants through smelling the T-Shirts with

their infant body odours18. Bonding between mother and infant happens far

before the infant is born through the smell of amniotic fluid19. Trygg Engen,

a well-known human olfaction psychologist from Norway who published the

book calledOdour Sensation and Memory stated that if the odour is firstly

encountered with a pleasant experience, this odour could bring pleasant emo-

tion to the subject in the future. On the contrary, the odour encountered with

unpleasant experience would trigger the unpleasant emotion to the subject20.

For example, an odour of jasmine may remind a subject about the pleasant-

ness of her wedding, while it may also bring sadness to another subject about

her love one’s funeral.

15. Uri Almagor, “Odors and private language: Observations on the phenomenology ofscent,” Human Studies 13, no. 3 (1990): 253–7416. Clare Batty, “A representational account of olfactory experience,” Canadian Journal

of Philosophy 40, no. 4 (2010): 511–3817. Aidan Macfarlane, “Olfaction in the development of social preferences in the human

neonate,” Parent-infant interaction 33 (1975)18. A Fleming et al., “Postpartum factors related to mother’s recognition of newborn infant

odours,” Journal of reproductive and infant psychology 13, nos. 3-4 (1995): 197–21019. Benoist Schaal and Luc Marlier, “Maternal and Paternal Perception of Individual Odor

Signatures in Human Amniotic Fluid–Potential Role in Early Bonding?,” Neonatology 74,no. 4 (1998): 266–7320. Trygg Engen, Odor sensation and memory (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991)

6


Newborn babies showed happier when exposed to the smell of their own

mother21. The odours encountered at the early stage of life triggers an emo-

tion that affects the behaviour unconsciously. Children experienced a frus-

tration mood and lower performance when presented with unfamiliar odour22.

However, if the underachieving children experienced unexpected success with

the presence of odours, the same odours would exert the positive effect on

their next school performance while compared with other groups of children23.

These studies showed that the positive experience with odour could affect the

children behaviour positively for long term.

Melanie L. Shoup and others psychologists from Pittsburgh University

found that people smell the clothing of family members to feel close to each

other. The odour on the clothing of the loved one made the participants feel

like being with the family members. Some of their participants reported that

they even sleep with the clothing of the family members because it smells

like them. The bonding triggered by the odour gave the subjects comfort

even when the family members were apart. The clothing becomes the artefact

carrying a particular odour to bond the family members together24. As it is

shown that olfaction could affect both parents and child emotion positively, it

has the potential to bond the family emotional relationship in the digital age,

which is arguably destroyed by technology in the past decades.

New York Times reported that modern families connect entirely separate

activities through technology whereas share a common space25. It leads to

21. Regina M Sullivan and Paul Toubas, “Clinical usefulness of maternal odor in newborns:soothing and feeding preparatory responses,” Neonatology 74, no. 6 (1998): 402–822. Gisela Epple and Rachel S Herz, “Ambient odors associated to failure influence cogni-

tive performance in children,” Developmental psychobiology 35, no. 2 (1999): 103–723. Simon Chu, “Olfactory conditioning of positive performance in humans,” Chemical

senses 33, no. 1 (2008): 65–7124. Melanie L Shoup, Sybil A Streeter, and Donald H McBurney, “Olfactory comfort and

attachment within relationships,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 38, no. 12 (2008):2954–6325. Williams, Alex. “Electronic Devices Redefine Quality Family Time”, New York Times,

7


the paradox which Sherry Turkle called Alone Together. Turkle, a professor

on Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, is well-known for her

studies on the psychology of human relationship with technology. Early in

1984, she discussed how computers would become part of daily life rather than

simply a tool in her book The Second Self 26. Later in 1997, she embraced the

freedom of online identity the internet empowered people in her another book

called Life of the Screen 27. After nearly fifteen years, her optimism towards

technology has changed based on the interviews with hundreds of children

and adults. Turkle observed how digital artefacts let people interact while

being inattentive or absent. This relentless connection leads to a new solitude.

She argued that technology affects emotional relationship by turning people

close to the objects instead28. While the family emotional relationship in the

digital age is being challenged, HCI community attempts to provide the ways

to sustain the family bond.

Yarosh and Abowd, HCI researchers from Georgia Institute of Technol-

ogy, found that parents and children hold different perspectives on family

bonding. They interviewed fourteen distant families to understand how they

sustain family bond. They found out that parents focus on virtual presence

through using communication tools while being away. However, children focus

on physical presence through seeking collocated adult for help and the eventual

reunion with their parents29. They proposed a system called ShareTable for

remote sharing in 2013. The family separated in distance can share what they

April 29, 2011, Accessed May 31, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/fashion/01FAMILY.html26. Sherry Turkle, The second self (Simon / Schuster, 1984)27. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen (Simon / Schuster, 1997)28. Sherry Turkle, Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each

other (Basic books, 2012)29. Svetlana Yarosh and Gregory D Abowd, “Mediated parent-child contact in work-

separated families,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Com-puting Systems (ACM, 2011), 1185–94

8

1.2. The Opportunities Provided by Digital Olfaction

do on the table through synchronous remote system. It provided the sense of

closeness for parents and children with multisensory communication30.

Ludic Odour aims to bring the value of odours on family bonding through

designing digital artefact to create first encountered olfactory experience be-

tween parents and child in the digital age. The early encounter experience

with smell in childhood bonds the family members closely over the years. The

bath time offers the rich olfactory environment for parents and child bond to-

gether with smell at daily life. As the family bond in the digital age is greatly

challenged by the technology, Ludic Odour proposes to design digital artefact

with smell at bathing to promote family bonding through digital olfactory

technology

1.2 The Opportunities Provided by Digital Ol-faction

Joseph J. Kaye, a pioneer in digital olfaction, raised up the attention to ol-

factory medium in HCI based on his research in MIT Media Lab in 2001.

He targeted on using computer-controlled scent output to convey information

and called it as “Symbolic Olfactory Display” 31. Kaye developed his ideas

through several projects, for example, Dollars & Scents a device installed at

the entrance to display stock market up-and-down status through the scent

of mint and lemon. Kaye suggested that olfactory medium can be used for

displaying slow moving continuous information32. The application of olfactory

information display could be found in different studies, for example, email

30. Svetlana Yarosh et al., “Almost touching: parent-child remote communication using thesharetable system,” in Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperativework (ACM, 2013), 181–9231. Joseph Jofish Kaye, “Symbolic olfactory display” (PhD diss., Citeseer, 2001)32. Joseph Jofish Kaye, “Making Scents: aromatic output for HCI,” interactions 11, no. 1

(2004): 48–61

9


notification33 and wasabi alarm clocks34. Taking odour as the medium for

information display is only one of the examples in digital olfaction studies.

Takuji Narumi and other engineers from University of Tokyo took another

approach by using digital olfaction to stimulate user perception of gustatory

sensation. They developed a head mounted display called Meta Cookie con-

necting with different scents to stimulate the sense of taste in 2010. It stimu-

lated different taste perception with the same plain flavour cookie by changing

the augment scents emitted from the head mounted display35. Digital olfaction

output has also been used in augmenting the visual audio channels to enhance

the realism of multimodal experience, for example, providing different ingre-

dient smells in a cooking game36. In these studies, the role of digital olfaction

output is to represent the smell itself in the content.

The development of digital olfaction output is strongly influenced by the

concept of Smell-O-Vision which originated from the movie industry. It al-

lows the audience smell something related to what they see on the screen, for

example, the smell of chocolate was emitted when the scene of chocolate fac-

tory was shown in the movie. The smell represents the visual in the content.

However, olfaction is very subjective experience. By mapping the smell to a

certain object, like using the smell of lavender to represent the lavender in the

digital content, it may lead to individual expectation gap37. Ghinea and Ade-

moye, researchers from Brunel University, investigated how smell affects user

experience in digital media. In 2009, they attempted to use smell to improve

33. E-mail Tries out a Sense of Smell, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3502821.stm34. Wasabi Alarm, http://www.pixen-e.jp/product/wasabi.html35. Takuji Narumi et al., “Meta cookie,” in ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Posters (ACM, 2010),

14336. Takamichi Nakamoto et al., “Cooking up an interactive olfactory game display,” Com-

puter Graphics and Applications, IEEE 28, no. 1 (2008): 75–7837. Trygg Engen, “The effect of expectation on judgments of odor,” Acta Psychologica 36,

no. 6 (1972): 450–58

10


user task performance but the result did not work as well as they expected38.

Later on in 2012, they focus on researching the user-perceived experience on

enhancing multimedia application with olfaction. Their findings showed that

the participants generally enjoyed the overall olfaction experience, but the

enjoyment is not necessarily the correct association with the video content39.

In 2014, Psychologist Koster et al. further indicated that the role of odour

in daily life is to link the people to the affective appreciation of surrounding40.

It tells us not only the smell of the objects in front of our eyes, but also tells

what is beyond our visual, audio and haptic sensation. Olfaction functions in

both informative way and affective way in our daily life. For example, ambient

scents can affect the customer decision making at the moment of purchase by

triggering their emotional connections to the brand in a subtle way41.

“Digital Olfaction Society”42 is an academic community which promotes

using smell with the digital technology to bring impacts on daily life. Its Dig-

ital Olfaction Society World Congress aims to draw the attention of academic

scholars to the potential of smell. They approach digital olfaction from two

perspectives: one is treating odour as the input by using odour detector, an-

other is treating odour as the output by odour emitter. Electronic nose sensor

is developed as the detector to identify specific odours using chemical sensor

arrays and pattern recognition technology. They are applied in environmental

monitoring, airport security, food quality controls, etc. Odour emitter, also

38. Gheorghita Ghinea and Oluwakemi A Ademoye, “Olfaction-enhanced multimedia: Badfor information recall?,” in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Mul-timedia and Expo (IEEE Press, 2009), 970–7339. Gheorghita Ghinea and Oluwakemi Ademoye, “User perception of media content asso-

ciation in olfaction-enhanced multimedia,” ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing,Communications, and Applications (TOMM) 8, no. 4 (2012): 5240. Egon P Köster, Per Møller, and Jozina Mojet, “A ‘Misfit’ Theory of Spontaneous

Conscious Odor Perception (MITSCOP): reflections on the role and function of odor memoryin everyday life,” Frontiers in psychology 5 (2014)41. Marc Gobe, Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People

(Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2010)42. Digital Olfaction Society, http://www.digital-olfaction.com/

11


known as olfactory display or smell diffuser, served as the output device to

emit the odours. It has been developed in various platforms, for example,

desktop devices, wearable devices, smelling screen, etc. It includes different

emission methods from one to multiple odours emission, also from single-user

nose tracking emission to public space vast emission. The development of dig-

ital olfaction goes beyond HCI to the academic community and industry. The

commercial computer-controlled odour emission devices have become tiny and

user-generated oriented. Olly43, ChatPerf44, oNotes45 and Sensorwake46 are

some of the examples introduced in the commercial market. All of these have

opened up the possibility of using digital olfaction towards the designers and

users side.

Digital olfaction takes the user experience to another stage by bringing the

olfactory sensation with the digital content. It has been applied in the way of

conveying the information, enhancing the realism of virtual environment, and

stimulating the perception. The potential of digital olfaction is not limited

to informative area. Its evocative and affective value has been brought to the

branding studies. The companies have been using the digital olfaction to bond

the relationship between customers with the brands. Interaction through dig-

ital olfaction could create a new possibility for family bonding in the digital

age. Therefore, I propose Ludic Odour to examine the feasibility of design-

ing digital artefact for promoting family bonding through creating the first

encountered olfactory experience at bathing in the digital age.

43. Olly, http://www.ollyfactory.com/44. ChatPerf, http://chatperf.com/45. oNotes, http://www.onotes.com46. Sensorwake, https://sensorwake.com/

12

1.3. Ludic Odour, Digital Artefact with Smell for Family Bonding

1.3 Ludic Odour, Digital Artefact with Smell forFamily Bonding

Ludic Odour, digital artefact, promotes the bonding between parents and child

through creating first encountered experience with smell at bathing by using

digital olfactory technology. It brings the evocative and affective value of

odours to the family bonding in the digital age by designing digital artefact

with smell at bathing. The soap becomes the digital artefact to detect the

bathing behaviour. When the parents and child use the soap to scrub on the

body, it triggers the emission device in the system to emit the corresponding

odour emissions. Parents and child can create their first encountered olfac-

tory experience based on their interaction at bathing. It associates the child’s

early experience of odour with the pleasant moments with parents at bathing

through the digital artefact. The concept of Ludic Odour is designed based

on the ethnography research method through fieldwork, thick description, and

mental models of contextual design. The feasibility of this concept is discussed

through the proof-of-concept at the family bathing in the real bathroom set-

ting.

The design of Ludic Odour includes four components: (1) the categories of

scents which are associated with family daily life, (2) the selection of scents

based on family activities and preferences, (3) bathing artefact embedded with

sensor to detect the bathing behaviour, and (4) emission device emitting dif-

ferent sequence and duration of emission based on the family bathing inter-

action. Ludic Odour provides four categories of scents related to the smell of

the places, the artefacts, the family activities that the parents and children

encounter together in their daily life. It is designed through the ethnogra-

phy research method including fieldwork and model analysis. One category of

scent represents the nature and the park. It is the places where the parents

love to bring the children to go at their leisure time. Another category is the

13

1.3. Ludic Odour, Digital Artefact with Smell for Family Bonding

fruit and vegetable as the parents observed in the fieldwork always encourage

the children to eat fruits and vegetable. The third category of scent is about

the party and holiday. The ethnography research showed that the party and

family holiday are the moments both the parents and child treasure very much.

The fourth category is about home living. It represents the smell the parents

and child come across at their daily routines at home including the smell of

laundry and the smell of furniture in the living room. From the categories

of scents provided by Ludic Odour, parents and child can select the scents

together for each bath based on their family routine.

Ludic Odour takes bathing artefact as the input sensor to detect the

bathing interaction. The input sensor is embedded inside the bathing arte-

fact soap. When the parents and child use it to scrub the body, it detects the

strength and the duration of the scrubbing movement. It affects the sequence

also the duration of odour emission. The emission device of Ludic Odour is

put inside the family bathroom. The parents and child can select the scents

from the categories of scents provided by Ludic Odour based on their family

activities and preferences. This research proposes Ludic Odour as the digital

artefact with the categories of scents for parents and child to create first en-

countered olfactory experience through their interaction at family bathing. It

contributes in the way that it brings the value of smell at bathing to promote

family bonding in the digital age through using digital olfaction technology.

14

Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1 The Impact of Odour on Family Bonding

“When the suitcase was opened, the kitchen would fill with the smell of wool,

sawdust, sweat and chainsaw oil. A whiff of that combination today sends me

back to being a little girl and giving my Dad a welcome home hug.” - Dennis

Waskul and others from the background of the sociology of the senses de-

scribed how a particular smell reminded one of their participants about the

memories and feelings of her father even in her age of 49. Waskul et al. col-

lected the olfactory experience from twenty-three participants through the use

of journals. The participants coming from different ethnics were asked to de-

scribe their daily olfactory experience and the memories associated with the

encountered odours over two weeks. Among the collected journals, nearly 70%

of the participants associated the encountered odours to the memories of the

particular people, places, activities and feelings in their childhood. For exam-

ple, the smell after rainstorm reminded one participant the memories of all the

fun times she had as a family in summer camping while the smell of a book

reminded another participant the happy childhood memories about reading

with family members. Odour bonds them together with their family members

across the time. One participant described her memories so vividly within a

precise context, “My mother always baked a lot at Christmas...The smell of

15

2.1. The Impact of Odour on Family Bonding

baking makes me think of a cozy house on a cold night with my family sitting

around with a treat after dinner.” Waskul et al. indicated that the partic-

ipant described “the smell of baking” without identifying the precise odours

implying that olfactory perception is not simply related to the sensation but

the memories of activities and associated experiencing feelings1. The way how

people experience the odour and the way how they describe are influenced by

their previous olfactory experience. The memories appear as the mental image

which shaped the sense of self into experienced sensation. 2 Waskul et al. used

the word of social anthropologist Uri Almagor to indicate that odour connects

“then and now” by linking the former self with present self. Uri Almagor is

the professor emeritus from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studied

the phenomenology of smell from social interaction perspective earlier in 1990.

Almagor explained that odour makes the past has existence in the present. It

is about being “here and there” at the same time. The other senses, like sight,

have limitations on dealing with the past, the future and the invisible. Yet the

sense of smell can recall almost the same feeling with its contextual associa-

tion in the past. Almagor said that the description of the olfactory experience

in everyday life includes the public and private meaning. For example, “the

smell of rotten eggs” conveys shared experience and similar message among

the general public while “the smell of my childhood playground” conveys a pri-

vate personal experience and meaning behind. The olfactory mapping is inside

the brain. The objective reality becomes subjective reality when the subject

inhales the odours3.

In a similar way yet more recently in 2011, Cooke et al. who addressed the

phenomenology of smell through philosophical perspective, suggested that ol-

factory experience should be considered as subjective perspective rather than

1. Waskul, Vannini, and Wilson, “The aroma of recollection: Olfaction, nostalgia, andthe shaping of the sensuous self”

2. ibid.3. Almagor, “Odors and private language: Observations on the phenomenology of scent”

16


as a neutral object existed in the world. Through sniffing along with bodily

movement, olfactory experience are richly extended the interaction with the

world4. In 2014, Ann-Sophie Barwich, philosopher and historian of science

with specialization in olfactory research, further argued that smell is a process

rather than the properties of objects. Barwich indicated that olfactory experi-

ence is a rich description of the modalities that are dynamic and intertwined.

They are not about objects and structures, but the interplay between different

aspects such as previous experiences, sniffing behaviour, airflow, temperature,

exposure time, etc. It is the experiences of variability5.

In 2015, Marin et al. from University of Florence claimed that the most

early olfactory experience in life could be happened on the newborn infants in

their first few days. They examined the head responses of nineteen two-day-

old breastfeeding infants while they were exposed to their own mother and

unfamiliar new mother. The result showed that the newborn infants’ heads

orienting towards their own mother with longer time than another unfamiliar

new mother. The infants can recognise their own mother simply through

smelling their odours. Odour plays an important role between infant and

mother since the early stage of life6.

Zohreh Badiee and other pediatricians from Isfahan University of Medical

Sciences in Iran indicated that the odours of women could affect infants on

emotional and behavioural aspects. In their study in 2013, they recruited

fifty preterm infants and separated them into two groups. They compared the

soothing effects of the odour of formula milk and the odour of mothers breast

4. Ed Cooke and Erik Myin, “Is trilled smell possible? How the structure of olfactiondetermines the phenomenology of smell,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 18, nos. 11-12(2011): 59–95

5. Ann-Sophie Barwich, “A sense so rare: measuring olfactory experiences and makinga case for a process perspective on sensory perception,” Biological Theory 9, no. 3 (2014):258–68

6. MM Marin, G Rapisardi, and F Tani, “Two-day-old newborn infants recognise theirmother by her axillary odour,” Acta Paediatrica 104, no. 3 (2015): 237–40

17


milk by placing a filter paper with milk near the infants’ noses. The result

showed that the infants who were exposed to the odour of mother’s milk had

less distress with a shorter crying duration compared with those who were

exposed to the odour of formula milk. The odour of mother could bring the

comforts to the infant7.

Neuroscientists Lundstrom et al. from Monell Chemical Senses Center used

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology further indicated

that the impact of odour on infant and mother is bidirectional. Odour is

shown to be an important mediator to the bonding mechanism of women. In

2013, Lundstrom and his colleagues did an experiment to collect the body

odours of eighteen newborn infants through the undershirts they slept in for

the first two nights. They recruited two groups of women, one was fifteen

women newly given birth for the first time while another was fifteen women not

given birth. The women were asked to smell the odours extracted from these

unfamiliar new-born infants. Lundstrom et al. compared the cerebral activities

of two groups of women through fMRI. Throughout the study, they found

that the body odour of newborn infants would trigger the reward learning

mechanisms in the cerebral areas of the subjects regardless of their maternal

status. They explained that this reward mechanism would elicit the women

emotional responses and motivates them to take care the newborn infants

even though they were unrelated by blood. Their study showed that the body

odours of newborn infants could influence the bonding mechanism in women’s

brains8.

In 2014, Swain et al. from the Department of Psychiatry in University

of Michigan showed that the bonding mechanism elicited by odours could

7. Zohreh Badiee, Mohsen Asghari, and Majid Mohammadizadeh, “The calming effect ofmaternal breast milk odor on premature infants,” Pediatrics & Neonatology 54, no. 5 (2013):322–25

8. Johan N Lundström et al., “Maternal status regulates cortical responses to the bodyodor of newborns,” Frontiers in psychology 4 (2013)

18


be found on fathers’ side as well. Based on the brain imaging of mothers

and fathers, Swain et al. discovered that the infant’s sensory cue such as

odours could trigger the cortico-limbic circuit of parents’ brains to releases a

bonding hormone, known as oxytocin. This hormone is responsible for creating

bond, trust and empathy. The cortico-limbic circuit would regulate parental

sensitivity such as the motivation, caring behaviour and emotion regulation

at early parent-infant interaction. All of these form the basis of parental

attachment towards the infants. Their study showed that the odours of infants

affect parental attachment in brains9 .

Olfaction psychophysicist Donald H. McBurney from University of Pitts-

burgh pointed out that the attachment elicited by odours could be carried

through intimated objects. McBurney et al. conducted a study by asking the

participants about their experience of smelling the clothing of a loved one dur-

ing separation and their reasons behind. Both male and female participants

reported that smelling the odours of the partner’s clothing brings them comfort

and secure. Furthermore, the participants smelling more frequently resulted in

higher scores on their secure attachment. McBurney et al. explained that the

attachment at the early relationship could be strongly activated in the time

of distress through olfaction. The participants thereby would find the attach-

ment with loved ones by smelling the clothing even when they are separated10.

This affective and evocative retrieving experience with family could be evoked

not only by the odours of the clothing, but also by the odours of a product.

Rachel S. Herz, well-known olfactory psychologist from Brown University,

conducted a study with the research team of Japanese cosmetics corporation

9. JE Swain et al., “Approaching the biology of human parental attachment: Brain imag-ing, oxytocin and coordinated assessments of mothers and fathers,” Brain Research 1580(2014): 78–10110. Donald H McBurney, S Streeter, and HA Euler, “Olfactory comfort in close relation-

ships: You aren’t the only one who does it,” Olfactory cognition: From perception and mem-ory to environmental odours and neuroscience, 2012, 59–72

19


Kao in 2015. They took the affective and evocative retrieving experience

elicited by olfaction, known as “Proust Phenomenon”, into body lotion evalua-

tion study. First of all, they tried to find out the anchor odour which evokes the

most autobiographical memories among the consumers. Throughout the pilot

study, they found out that the cherry-almond fragrance of Jergens Original

Scent was the benchmark odour evokes the most autobiographical memories

among the participants in the pilot study. The research team explained that

it is because the product has been available in the market since 1926, it made

their participants associated it to their childhood memories. Later in their

main experiment, the research team found that the lotion scented with the

fragrance which evokes autobiographical relevant memories is perceived more

appealing compared with another lotion yet scented with an equivalently pleas-

ant fragrance without any autobiographical relevant memories. This result fur-

ther showed that the impact of “Proust Phenomenon” on product perception

is influenced by the odour-evoked memories rather than the odour itself. The

autobiographical memories evoked by odours would affect how people perceive

and evaluate the products.11.

The relationship between odour-evoked memories and encountered expe-

rience were widely discussed in Herz’s early series of researches12. She found

that the perceptual and cognitive responses to odours are based on associative

learning from the early stage of life. They are continuously shaped through

culture and experience. Here, the brain plays an important role on interpret-

ing the olfactory patterns as specific odours according to previous experiences.

When encountering a new odour, the brain would build up the link between

the new odour and the encountered episode. If the odour is initially perceived

in a pleasant context, this odour would likely bring pleasant emotion to the

11. Haruko Sugiyama et al., “Proustian Products are Preferred: The Relationship BetweenOdor-Evoked Memory and Product Evaluation,” Chemosensory Perception 8, no. 1 (2015):1–1012. Rachel S Herz, “A naturalistic analysis of autobiographical memories triggered by

olfactory visual and auditory stimuli,” Chemical Senses 29, no. 3 (2004): 217–24

20


subject in the future. It makes olfactory perception and its associated mem-

ories subjective among individuals. Herz found that odour-evoked memories

were more emotional compared with those evoked by other modalities. This

affects the hedonic perception of odours as well13. Her studies echoed the

early finding of Trygg Engen, known as the pioneer in odour memory studies,

which pointed out that the emotions associated with odour-evoked memories

are determined by the situational context in the first encountered experience14.

Maria Larsson, professor from Department of Psychology of Stockholm

University in Sweden, indicated that the odour-evoked memories formed at

the first decade of life are hardly replaced later on. In 2014, Larsson and

her colleagues presented different sensory cues to ninety-three participants

to examine how they were related to the autobiographical memories. The

sensory cues included verbal (word), visual (picture) and olfactory (odour)

information. The participants reported that the memories evoked by odours

were older than those evoked by other sensory modalities. Those memories

were mainly associated with their first ten years of lives15. These odour-evoked

memories were less often evoked by other sensory cues. The odours gave them

stronger feelings of being brought back in time16. As most of the odours

are firstly encountered at the early stage of life, this makes the encountered

experience with smell at childhood becomes very crucial.

Arshamian et al.17, members of Larsson’s Olfactory and Cognitive Research

Lab in Sweden, furthered the study by using fMRI technology to compare the

13. Rachel S Herz, “Odor memory and the special role of associative learning,” OlfactoryCognition: From Perception and Memory to Environmental Odours and Neuroscience 85(2012): 95–11414. Engen, Odor sensation and memory15. Maria Larsson et al., “Olfactory LOVER: behavioral and neural correlates of autobio-

graphical odor memory,” Applied Olfactory Cognition, 2014, 4116. Johan Willander and Maria Larsson, “Smell your way back to childhood: Autobio-

graphical odor memory,” Psychonomic bulletin & review 13, no. 2 (2006): 240–4417. Artin Arshamian et al., “The functional neuroanatomy of odor evoked autobiographical

memories cued by odors and words,” Neuropsychologia 51, no. 1 (2013): 123–31

21


brain activities of the autobiographical memories in the first decade (child-

hood) and those in the second decade (young adulthood) of life when cued by

odours and words. Their experiment showed that odour-evoked memories of

childhood had a stronger activity in the brain region involved in social and

emotional behaviour compared with those evoked by words. Their participants

reported that odour-evoked autobiographical memories are more pleasant and

emotional. Arshamian et al. concluded that the odour-evoked autobiograph-

ical memories formed at childhood is more perceptually and imagery based.

Their finding supports the early study conducted by Alan R. Hirsch about the

comparison of nostalgic memories evoked by odours among different genera-

tions. Hirsch, one of the leading American researchers in the area of sensory

phenomena about odours and flavours, interviewed near one thousand peo-

ple randomly in Chicago about their odour-evoked memories. He found that

those who were born around 1930s referred the nostalgic memories related to

the natural odours like flowers, grass and sea; whereas those who were born

around 1970s referred to the artificial odours like baby powder, mother’s per-

fume and suntan oil18. This perceptual imagery memories evoked by odours

is brought to the industry of marketing to influence the customers perception.

Aradhna Krishna, well-known expert on sensory marketing from Ross

School of Business in University of Michigan, studies the value of odour-evoked

memories in marketing by researching how the odour affects the customers

perception and behaviour subconsciously. She found that the ambient scent

associated with the product could increase recall of the brands and emotional

connections. As odour-evoked memories last longer than other modalities,

the ambient scent could bring a longer branding impact on the customers.

Moreover, pleasant scents could enhance the customer’s evaluation of the prod-

18. Alan R Hirsch, “Nostalgia, the odors of childhood and society,” The smell culturereader, 2006, 187–89

22


ucts19. In 2014, she further stated that the impact of odour on creating attach-

ment towards brands not only limited by actual odours, it can be activated

through olfactory imagery in marketing as well. Olfactory imagery is origi-

nally defined by Stevenson et al.20 as the experience being able to have the

sense of smell without the actual odours. Krishna and her colleagues examined

olfactory imagery in marketing context. They found that olfactory imagery

can significantly affect customer’s salivation, desire and consumption on an

advertised product21.

In 2014, Kim et al. researchers from Hospitality and Tourism Management

background brought the impact of odour into tourism industry by examining

the effect of olfactory cues on memory retrieval on cultural event experience.

They invited one hundred visitors who have tried bibimbap, Korean dish with

the ingredient of sesame oil, into a culture event two weeks before the study

to rate their autobiographical memory about the event. During the study, the

visitors were exposed to the smell of sesame oil and vanilla oil separately. The

result showed that the visitors had significant improvement in recalling the

cultural event when they were exposed to the smell of sesame oil which was

encountered in the cultural event. They suggested that olfactory cues aid to

deliver memorable tourism experiences to the tourists over an extended pe-

riod22. The experience encountered with smell could also elicit the associated

emotion which affects the bonding among people.

Siio et al. researchers from engineering and architecture background, used

19. Aradhna Krishna, “An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the sensesto affect perception, judgment and behavior,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, no. 3(2012): 332–5120. Richard J Stevenson and Trevor I Case, “Olfactory imagery: a review,” Psychonomic

bulletin & review 12, no. 2 (2005): 244–6421. Aradhna Krishna, Maureen Morrin, and Eda Sayin, “Smellizing cookies and salivating:

a focus on olfactory imagery,” Journal of Consumer Research 41, no. 1 (2014): 18–3422. Jong-Hyeong Kim and SooCheong Shawn Jang, “Memory Retrieval of Cultural Event

Experiences Examining Internal and External Influences,” Journal of Travel Research, 2014,0047287514553058

23


everyday appliances with smell to bond the communication at workplace. They

designed a coffee smell generator called Meeting Pot to encourage the informal

communication in the office. Their system detected the operation of the coffee

maker. Once a colleague turned on the coffee maker in the common room, the

system would send the signal to the other coffee smell generators which were

located in different floors of the office to emit the smell of coffee. When the

colleagues smell the coffee, it reminded them someone having a coffee break

at the common room. It encouraged them to join the coffee break together.

They compared the group of coffee notification with another group with email

notification. The result showed that the colleagues found the smell of coffee

was more naturally to encourage their informal communication by telling that

someone is preparing the coffee in the common room. Their subjects preferred

it more than email communication. Their study showed that the bonding

through the smell could encourage the communication between the co-workers

in workplace23.

The reviews above have showed that odours have a strong impact on bond-

ing through retrieving autobiographical memories and emotions across time

and space. The odour-evoked memories and associated emotions are based on

the first encountered experience which is mainly formed at childhood. The

brain would associate the encounter experience with the specific odour. When

people come across the familiar odours which associated with pleasant memo-

ries, it would elicit the pleasant emotion and strengthen the attachment bond

positively. Researchers have brought the impact of odour on memories and

emotions into different fields like marketing and tourism. They found odour-

evoked memories affected customer’s recall and attachment towards a brand

and a place. The evocative and affective impact of odour on bonding are worth

to be taken into family bonding in the digital age through design. My research

23. Itiro Siio et al., “Digital Decor: Augmented Everyday Things.,” in Graphics Interface,vol. 2003 (2003), 159–66

24

2.2. Digital Artefacts for Family Bonding at Home Living

would contribute in the way by designing digital artefact for parents and child

to bond together based on their interaction at bathing. The odours the family

enjoy together at bathing would associated them with their pleasant experi-

ences at bath time. Through digital artefact design, it could bring the affective

and evocative value of odours to promote family bonding in the digital living.

The literature about the latest approaches about designing digital artefacts

for promoting family bonding at home living would be thereby reviewed in the

following section.

2.2 Digital Artefacts for Family Bonding atHome Living

Carman Neustaedter, assistant professor from Simon Fraser University in

Canada whose research focus on technology-mediated communication for fam-

ilies, questioned that if technology helps to strengthen the family bonding or

stress the tension in between. In his co-edited book named Connecting Fam-

ilies: The Impact of New Communication Technologies on Domestic Life, he

indicated that communication technologies have been developed for supporting

the communication at workplace which emphasize on the “informational con-

tent” of connection. It is about the accuracy and efficiency of communication.

Yet in the family context, the focus would become different. The communi-

cation in family emphasizes on “feeling” connected. The role of technology in

family should not only rooted in sharing information and coordinating tasks,

but also showing affection and feeling connected24. In 2015, Neustaedter and

other HCI researchers further illustrated that by taking video chat system as

an example to examine how communication technology mediated family mem-

bers connect with each other over long periods. They conducted a series of

24. Carman Neustaedter, Steve Harrison, and Abigail Sellen, Connecting families: Theimpact of new communication technologies on domestic life (Springer Science & BusinessMedia, 2012)

25


studies respectively related to long-distance partners and teenagers with the

use of video chat during major life events. They found that current tech-

nologies mainly support conversation sharing rather than the expressions of

intimacy over distance. Yet the feelings of connectedness is very crucial for

families especially for children. They argued that the future design for com-

munication technology should move beyond communication towards producing

feelings of presence and closeness in everyday life as the way to strengthen the

relationships in family members25.

Xiang Cao et al. from Microsoft Research Cambridge conducted a study

illustrated how family users change the usage of communication tool in order

to feel the presence of each other. Cao and his research team interviewed

twelve families to investigate how they coped with the challenge for commu-

nication while living in different time zones. They found that family members

preferred to use synchronous communication tools rather than asynchronous

ones. It was because synchronous method offered them the emotional con-

tact in the sense of presence and connectedness for demonstrating caring but

not simply exchanging information for keeping each other updated. In some

interviewed families, for example, people would turn on the live synchronous

communication tool without speaking anything, but simply for feeling the

presence of each other26. It showed that being able to hear and see each other

could give the emotional sense of presence to the family members.

HCI researchers Jun Wei et al. from National University of Singapore used

multisensory technology to provide virtual presence for families to sustain fam-

ily bonding when being away. They designed a remote dining system called

CoDine. It included a screen for gesture-based interaction, a table for remotely

25. Carman Neustaedter et al., “Sharing domestic life through long-term video connec-tions,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 22, no. 1 (2015): 326. Xiang Cao et al., “Understanding family communication across time zones,” in Proceed-

ings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (ACM, 2010),155–58

26


moving the dishes of distant family member, a tablecloth projected with ani-

mated images for display, and a food machine for transferring physical edible

message. Wei et al. suggested that CoDine enabled distant family members

share the dinning experience with multi-sensory through digital technology.

They used remote dining as the instance to provide the sense of presence for

families to sustain family bonding while being separated27.

Mamoun Nawahdah et al. from University of Tsukuba approached the

virtual presence at remote dining from another perspective by providing asyn-

chronous virtual system called KIZUNA. It recorded the remote family mem-

ber’s dining session and played back when the local family member started the

meal. The speed of playback would be adapted according to the local family

member’s dining progress. It enable users share the meal with family members

living at different time-zones. Both CoDine and KIZUNA focused on provid-

ing the virtual presence at daily routine by using multisensory technology to

sustain bonding for distant families28.

Japanese researchers Tsujita et al. used the physical daily artefacts as the

medium to provide the sense of presence through the synchronization of the

operation. They took the lamps and the trash boxes to provide the awareness

for the couples living over distance. For example in their SyncLamp system,

when one person switched on the lamp, the partner’s lamp in another apart-

ment would also be switched on remotely. Through the synchronization of

daily artefacts, they provided a warm feeling of communication. Their result

showed that couples would prefer to use the synchronized artefacts to get the

27. Jun Wei et al., “CoDine: an interactive multi-sensory system for remote dining,” inProceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing (ACM, 2011),21–3028. Mamoun Nawahdah and Tomoo Inoue, “Virtually dining together in time-shifted en-

vironment: KIZUNA design,” in Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supportedcooperative work (ACM, 2013), 779–88

27


attention of each other rather than the emails. These interaction with artefacts

prompted the couples to actually contact with each other29.

Svetlana Yarosh, HCI researcher at AT&T Research Labs in New Jersey,

indicated that virtual presence might be good for parents side, yet the chil-

dren side emphasizes more on the time of real reunion. Yarosh has been

studied about the technology-mediated parent-child interaction among sepa-

rated families for many years. In 2013, she deployed her system ShareTable

at two divorced households for four weeks for them to share activities, emo-

tional moments and communication. It was a shared projected tabletop space

with video-chat installed that supported synchronous remote communication

between children and parents in divorced families. The sense of closeness

and engagement was aimed to achieved through the audio-visual on videochat

and metaphorical touch on shared tabletop space. Throughout the study of

ShareTable, she found that family focused on not only the conversation but

also activity sharing. For example, when parents conversation went into si-

lence, children would show their toy and invent activities for feeling together30.

In another study conducted by Yarosh and others, fourteen pairs of parents

and children from distant families were interviewed about how they sustained

family bonding during the separation. They reported that the parents tend

to rely on communication tools to maintain consistent virtual presence with

their children, whereas the children tend to seek the co-located adult for help

meanwhile looking forward to the real reunion with their parents31. It revealed

that the co-location reunion time is very important for the children regarding

family togetherness.

29. Hitomi Tsujita, Itiro Siio, and Koji Tsukada, “SyncDecor: appliances for sharing mutualawareness between lovers separated by distance,” in CHI’07 Extended Abstracts on HumanFactors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2007), 2699–70430. Yarosh et al., “Almost touching: parent-child remote communication using the

sharetable system”31. Yarosh and Abowd, “Mediated parent-child contact in work-separated families”

28


Konstantinos Kazakos, research associate in the Culture Lab at Newcastle

University, focus on how to make best use of the reunion time to strengthen the

family bonding through digital technology. He found that current technolo-

gies give very limited support for the preparation for next separation while the

families were reunion. Kazakos et al. therefore designed a wooden box called

Rendezvous which can collect any digital contents like photos sent by family

member who stayed at home. The contents cannot be accessed during the sep-

aration. Only until another family member came back home for reunion, the

wooden box could be opened to show all the collected digital contents. The

digital contents kept in the Rendezvous become the medium for sharing during

the family reunion. Kazakos suggested that technology should be developed to

support parents and children build up closeness through care and play activ-

ities. Digital artefact could be designed to enrich the reunion experience and

sustain for next separation among family members32. In 2013, Kazakos and

others co-organized the first workshop in a series under CHI called “Exploring

the diversity of families: designing technologies for the contemporary family

life”. At the workshop, they challenged that the future family research focus

should go beyond the outcome of the technology towards the experience that

the technology produces33.

Wei-Chi Chien et al. from Folkwang University of Arts in Germany focus

on designing the form with interaction using digital artefact to shape the de-

sired experience for enhancing intimacy in everyday life. They proposed an

interactive artefact called Whisper Pillow for couples to leave voice messages

for each other. It took the form of pillow as the digital artefact to mediate

the emotional expression among close relationships. The user could open the

32. Konstantinos Kazakos, “Understanding the role of technology in parent-child reunion,”in Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work companion(ACM, 2013), 61–6433. Konstantinos Kazakos et al., “Exploring the diversity of families: designing technolo-

gies for the contemporary family life,” in CHI’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors inComputing Systems (ACM, 2013), 3255–58

29


pillow and whispered the message into it. Once the message was recorded,

the pillow would inflate to give a tangible expression of being filled with the

message. Another user then opened the message pillow to play back the voice

message. Once the message was played back, the pillow would deflate to in-

dicate that the message was listened. Chien et al. placed the prototype of

Whisper Pillow at the home of six couples for two weeks respectively and in-

terviewed about their experience before and after the usage. The result showed

that, though some of the users mistreated it as a toy or ceased to use it for

emotional expression, the majority of the interviewed couples found the digital

artefact created the meaningful experience of closeness and togetherness for

them. Chien et al. argued that the functionality, the form and the interaction

with the digital artefact should integrate thoughtfully to create the desired

experience of intimacy34.

Other forms of digital artefacts have been also developed to promote in-

timacy and emotional expression in close relationships. For example, TaSST

took the form of tactile sleeve for emotion expression35, Hugginess took the

form of smart clothes for hugging36, Ring* U took the form of wearable ring

for intimate communication37, etc. Phil Turner and Susan Turner from the

School of Computing in Edinburgh Napier University found that the physical

availability and proximity of the artefacts would strongly influence the degree

of the attachment with users. They interviewed over hundred of the partici-

34. Wei-Chi Chien, Sarah Diefenbach, and Marc Hassenzahl, “The whisper pillow: a studyof technology-mediated emotional expression in close relationships,” in Proceedings of the 6thInternational Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (ACM, 2013),51–5935. Gijs Huisman and Aduén Darriba Frederiks, “Towards tactile expressions of emotion

through mediated touch,” in CHI’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in ComputingSystems (ACM, 2013), 1575–8036. Leonardo Angelini et al., “Hugginess: encouraging interpersonal touch through smart

clothes,” in Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers:Adjunct Program (ACM, 2014), 155–6237. Yongsoon Choi et al., “Ring* U: a wearable system for intimate communication using

tactile lighting expressions,” in Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Advances in ComputerEntertainment Technology (ACM, 2014), 63

30


pants and asked them to name four digital artefacts and four non-digital ones.

They compared their attachment to each of the artefacts. The result showed

that the artefacts being carried or worn appeared to show higher emotional

attachment. The proximity of the artefacts made a difference on the degree of

attachment38.

SUNSTAR, a Japanese oral care company, took a further step of designing

digital artefact to influence children behaviour in daily routine. They turn the

toothbrushing routine as a playful experience by designing a digital artefact

called GUM Play39. It is a digital artefact with acceleration sensor which could

be attached on the toothbrush to analyze the user’s brushing data. GUM Play

comes with a mobile game application called MOUTH MONSTER. When the

child brushes the teeth, the sensor inside the toothbrush would analyze the

brushing data. The data would be converted to defeat the monster charac-

ters in the game application based on actual oral bacteria. It encourages the

children do the toothbrushing routine like playing a game. Similarly TEAR-

AIKAGAMI 40, developed by Nishihara et al., makes handwashing like playing

a game to encourage the children do hand washing correctly. It adopted Leap

Motion41 with a mirror projection. The system would detect if the user do

the hand washing pose correctly through Leap Motion. If the user scrubs the

hands correctly, the virtual germs on the mirror projection would be killed

accordingly. These digital artefacts turn the daily routine into enjoyable ex-

perience to encourage the children do the daily routine.

As the reviews are shown above, family members value feeling connected

more than simply informational connected. HCI researchers have been us-

ing multisensory technology to provide the sense of presence for families to

38. Phil Turner and Susan Turner, “Emotional and aesthetic attachment to digital arte-facts,” Cognition, technology & work 15, no. 4 (2013): 403–1439. GUM Play, https://www.gumplay.jp/en/40. TEARAIKAGAMI, https://vimeo.com/9547627041. Leap Motion, https://www.leapmotion.com

31

2.3. Designing through Digital Olfaction

sustain bonding. Different forms and the interaction with digital artefacts

were designed to create experience of closeness and intimacy. Current digital

artefacts mainly evoke emotional expression through visual, audio and haptic

sensation. Yet the sense of smell, which is closely related to memories and

affectional bond, has seldom discussoin among current digital family living

studies. Hence, my research would contribute in the way by designing digital

artefact through olfactory technology for parents and child bond together at

daily routine. In the following section, the literature about digital olfaction

and its current application would be thereby reviewed.

2.3 Designing through Digital Olfaction

In CHI 2016 conference, multisensory researcher Marianna Obrist and other

scholars stated that olfactory experience is considered as the one of the future

yet largely underexploited multisensory experience design in Human Computer

Interaction (HCI). They held a workshop to raise up the concern for what ol-

factory experience the designers could design through technology, and how to

bring out the meaningful multisensory experience through interaction. They

believed that the discussion of the interactive design system for olfactory ex-

perience in HCI community should expand from the focus on meeting tasks

and solving problems to the meaning and possibilities behind42. Early back

in the CHI 2014 conference, Obrist already showed her concern on olfactory

experience design through her paper called “Opportunities for Odor: Experi-

ences with Smell and Implications for Technology”. She conducted the study

with Psychology researcher Alexandre N. Tuch and HCI researcher Kasper

Hornbaek altogether in order to examine the issue from both perspectives

42. Marianna Obrist et al., “Touch, Taste, & Smell User Interfaces: The Future of Mul-tisensory HCI,” in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on HumanFactors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2016), 3285–92

32


of technology and psychology. They pointed out that, even though olfac-

tion is known as a subjective sensation that varies among individuals, most

of previous olfactory technology evaluation studies mainly concerned whether

the user could perceive a certain odour under a specific environment setting

rather than the user holistic subjective experience. Hence, they collected the

smell-related subjective experience stories from 439 participants and analysed

them into categories. Then they invited HCI researchers to brainstorm the

ideas of olfactory technology based on the experience stories provided by the

participants. According to the result, they questioned to what extent cur-

rent olfactory technologies emerging in HCI match the user experience with

smell in their daily life. They therefore urged the HCI community should not

only focus on technology-driven olfactory research, but also design relevant

experience for smell43.

Under the same session with Obrist in CHI 2014 called “Sensory Experi-

ences: Smell and Taste”, Sue Ann Seah et al., who came from the Interaction

and Graphic department at University of Bristol, showed the challenge behind

olfactory experience design. They proposed to use scents as the carrier on the

bubble to deliver the trace of events as notification, award or punishment for

game. They introduced a chrono-sensory mid-air display of sight and smell

called SensaBubble for projection platform and information delivery. It let

users associate the scent with a person or an event by themselves, then pro-

jected the visual information on a scented bubble. When the bubble was burst,

the scent would be released as the trace of event. Yet in the experiment, Seah

et al. found that users would mix up their associations during the time, not to

mention the difficulty happened while the users tried to identify the difference

between odours, for example, the aroma of apple and cinnamon. Their study

reflected one of the main challenges behind using smell in digital media - it

43. Marianna Obrist, Alexandre N Tuch, and Kasper Hornbæk, “Opportunities for odor:experiences with smell and implications for technology,” in Proceedings of the 32nd annualACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (ACM, 2014), 2843–52

33


is the digital olfactory experience, which is about how the users perceive and

go through the holistic olfactory moments within the digital context44. The

discussion of olfactory experience design is not limited in CHI, it is also found

in other academic conferences.

Assunta Matassa from University of Torino and other co-organizers held the

“Workshop on Full-Body and Multisensory Experience” in a series continuously

in the Ubicomp 2015 conference45 and 2016 TEI conference46 to raise up the

discussion of multisensory experience including the sense of smell. They used

the bottles of different scents along with other sensory objects to stimulate the

discussion of the multisensory experience at the design thinking process of the

workshop. They aimed to go beyond the discussion of multisensory experience

which conventionally focusing on visual, audio and haptic. Their workshop

focused to stimulate the perspectives on the role of human body and senses

experiencing in the external world including olfactory experience.

In order to provide olfactory experience in digital context, digital olfaction

researchers inevitably put a great amount of efforts on facing two crucial tech-

nical challenges, which are treating odours as the input of the system through

odour sensing technology and treating odours as the output of the system

through odour display. The development of odour sensing technology has

been mainly found in the areas of quality and security monitoring. For exam-

ple, Kazuya Iwata and others from Kyushu University developed multispectral

fluorescence imaging sensor to visually discriminate the spatial distribution of

44. Sue Ann Seah et al., “SensaBubble: a chrono-sensory mid-air display of sight andsmell,” in Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computingsystems (ACM, 2014), 2863–7245. Assunta Matassa et al., “Workshop on full-body and multisensory experience in ubiqui-

tous interaction,” in Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Perva-sive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Symposiumon Wearable Computers (ACM, 2015), 923–2646. Assunta Matassa et al., “SecondWorkshop on Full-Body and Multisensory Experience,”

in Proceedings of the TEI’16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, andEmbodied Interaction (ACM, 2016), 790–93

34


odorants in the environment47. Mohammed Zahid and other researchers from

India designed an odour-compass to detect the direction of odour source such

as fire and gas leaking through a sensor array48. Laura Capelli and other

chemistry researchers from Milano used electronic nose to assess the environ-

mental odour exposure of landfill in Italy49. Yet the applications of electronic

nose is not limited on the environmental aspect. Veronica Sberveglieri and

her colleagues adopted electronic nose in the food industry to examine the mi-

crobiological quality and safety of food50. Nicoline Leunis and other medical

researchers from Netherlands adopted electronic nose in the medical industry

to detect the chemicals from the patients’ breath for the diagnosis of head and

neck cancer51.

Odour sensing is only part of the components to realize digital olfactory

experience in the concept of Teleolfaction, which was proposed by Takamichi

Nakamoto and his team in 2008. Teleolfaction is a system that can capture

odours through odour sensing system at remote site, then transferred the olfac-

tory information through Internet, finally reproduced the odours by olfactory

display at real time to synchronous with the visual information of remote site52.

Nakamoto is a professor at the Precision and Intelligence Laboratory in Tokyo

Institute of Technology who has been working for the realization of human

olfactory interface for many years since 1988. Nakamoto and his team have

been developing a wide range of olfactory technologies from odour sensing,

47. Kazuya Iwata et al., “Preparation of Fluorescent Molecularly Imprinted Polymer Mi-cropowder for Odorant Visualization,” Sensors and Materials 28, no. 3 (2016): 173–7948. Mohammed Zahid et al., “Development of odor compass: Source direction detection

system,” in Physics and Technology of Sensors (ISPTS), 2015 2nd International Symposiumon (IEEE, 2015), 138–4149. Laura Capelli et al., “The need for electronic noses for environmental odour exposure

assessment.,” Water Science & Technology 69, no. 1 (2014)50. V Sberveglieri et al., “A novel electronic nose as adaptable device to judge microbio-

logical quality and safety in foodstuff,” BioMed research international 2014 (2014)51. Nicoline Leunis et al., “Application of an electronic nose in the diagnosis of head and

neck cancer,” The Laryngoscope 124, no. 6 (2014): 1377–8152. Takamichi Nakamoto et al., “Reproduction of scent and video at remote site using odor

sensing system and olfactory display together with camera,” in Sensors, 2008 IEEE (IEEE,2008), 799–802

35


odour recorder to olfactory display. Teleolfaction is only one of the examples.

In 2014, they furthered digital olfaction by using quartz crystal microbalance

gas sensors with learning vector quantization algorithm to achieve high accu-

racy of odour detection at real time53. Later on in 2016, Nakamoto’s research

team went further to develop a tiny wearable olfactory display using a surface

acoustic wave device with micro-pumps. It can be controlled by tablet PC

to release low volatile odours under certain speed. This helped to deliver the

low volatile odour compounds without remaining the previous odour inside

the tubes like the conventional olfactory displays do54. In order to provide a

wide range of odours without increasing the odourant sources, they introduced

the method of odour approximation which creates a target odour similarly by

blending multiple odour components based on a mass-spectrum database55.

Moreover, they also tried to tackle the problem of odour materials by using

the scented powder to make olfactory display portable and shorten the re-

filling time56. The development of olfactory display brings users a variety to

experience digital olfaction differently.

Haruka Matsukura et al. from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Tech-

nology proposed an olfactory display system that generated odour distribution

on a two-dimensional display screen in 2013. They called it Smelling Screen.

It included four fans installed at the four corners of the screen. By adding

odour into the airflow and directing it towards a certain location of the screen,

Smelling Screen lets the users perceive the odour as if it was emitting from

the image of the screen. For example, the smell of coffee would be emitted

53. Fumikazu Yoshino and Takamichi Nakamoto, “Odor Recognition System Using Em-bedded Leaning Vector Quantization Circuit,” Sensors and Materials 26, no. 3 (2014): 137–4754. Kazuki Hashimoto and Takamichi Nakamoto, “Tiny Olfactory Display Using Surface

Acoustic Wave Device and Micropumps for Wearable Applications,” IEEE Sensors Journal16, no. 12 (2016): 4974–8055. Takamichi Nakamoto and Yuma Nihei, “Improvement of Odor Approximation Using

Mass Spectrometry,” Sensors Journal, IEEE 13, no. 11 (2013): 4305–1156. Heng-Chung Chang et al., “A novel powder based olfactory display,” Journal of Digital

Olfaction Society 3, no. 1 (2014): 46

36


when the image of coffee was shown on the screen. It successfully drew the

attention of users toward the screen rather than the olfactory display system

at the corner. They proposed this system to be used for the odour presentation

of the virtual object on screen-based applications such as digital signage and

computer games57. The screen-based olfactory display may make the users

experience the digital olfaction in a limited space in front of the screen.

Yasuyuki Yanagida, a professor of Science and Technology at Meijo Uni-

versity who is one of the pioneers in olfactory display studies, provided another

alternative of spatio-temporal control in olfaction display that enabled users

move freely near the space without any wearable device. Early in 2004, he in-

troduced a projection based olfactory display using nose tracking technology.

He used air cannon to project the vortex rings of scented air to the user by

tracking the user’s nose position without influencing the people nearby. Yet the

behavior of scented air after projection was hardly controlled58. Later in 2006,

Fumitaka Nakaizumi et al., members of Yanagida’s team, developed the dis-

tributing technique of colliding two vortex rings together59. In 2013, Yanagida

et al. further modified the scent projector by adjusting the expelling timing

and velocities of two vortex rings. It successfully provided user the scented air

with a better distribution control60.

Though olfactory display systems are getting advance on the technology

side, David McGookin and Dariela Escobar from multimodal interaction back-

ground argued that the development focuses on the technical devices rather

than how they are used. In the Late-Breaking Work section of CHI 2016,

57. Haruka Matsukura, Tomokazu Yoneda, and Hiroto Ishida, “Smelling screen: develop-ment and evaluation of an olfactory display system for presenting a virtual odor source,”Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on 19, no. 4 (2013): 606–1558. Yasuyuki Yanagida et al., “Projection based olfactory display with nose tracking,” in

Virtual Reality, 2004. Proceedings. IEEE (IEEE, 2004), 43–5059. Fumitaka Nakaizumi et al., “SpotScents: a novel method of natural scent delivery using

multiple scent projectors,” in Virtual Reality Conference, 2006 (IEEE, 2006), 207–1460. Yasuyuki Yanagida et al., “Pilot study for generating dynamic olfactory field using

scent projectors,” in Virtual Reality (VR), 2013 IEEE (IEEE, 2013), 151–52

37


they pointed out that the existing technical engineering barriers restrict the

discussion of olfactory design in HCI community. It is lack of easy access for

the researchers without engineering background to reproduce the olfactory dis-

play system. This makes the gap between those who study olfactory display

technology and those study the role of smell in HCI. Therefore, they proposed

to develop an open source olfactory device called Hajukone. They aimed to

make it available for reproduced by other researchers and designers. They

used the CNC machine with 3D printer to make the portable olfactory device

container, then combined Arduino to trigger the odour emission61. Though

it is still a work in progress, they raised up the need to develop open source

olfactory display system which could ultimately expand the role of smell in

HCI community.

Rather than taking smell as the role to augmented visual and audio chan-

nels, Takuji Narumi and other engineers from University of Tokyo approached

it from another perspective. They developed a system called Meta Cookie

which consisted of six air pumps with controller and filters. By detecting

the marker pattern printed on the plain flavor cookie, Meta Cookie generated

different smells of flavours to the users with the corresponding visual image

overlaid on it. While five air pumps released the scented air to the area near

the user’s nose through the aromatic chemicals in the filters, the sixth one

released fresh air to adjust the intensity of the scented air. In their study,

over 70% of the participants perceived the cookie as different flavours through

the change of the olfactory and visual stimuli on it while the ingredient of the

cookie stayed the same62. Compared with other olfactory display applications

taking smell as supplement to augment visual-audio channel, Narumi’s team

61. David McGookin and Dariela Escobar, “Hajukone: Developing an Open Source Ol-factory Device,” in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on HumanFactors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2016), 1721–2862. Takuji Narumi et al., “Augmented reality flavors: gustatory display based on edible

marker and cross-modal interaction,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on humanfactors in computing systems (ACM, 2011), 93–102

38


treated smell as substantive medium with visual aid to augment the gusta-

tory perception of users. Later in 2014, they further simplified their olfactory

display system in a pseudo-gustatory drink by using one olfactory stimulus

to simulate two to four similar flavours. For example, the smell of mandarin

would represent the flavour of lemon, grapefruit and orange respectively. Their

approach was different from the conventional way of olfactory display system

that simply using one olfactory stimulus for one flavour. By using the ambi-

guity of olfaction and the illumination of visual, they successfully reduced the

number of odour sources to represent different olfactory patterns in a pseudo-

gustatory simulation system. Narumi’s team provided the ways to tackle the

cross-modal effect between smell and other sensations in interaction63.

In TEI 2015, Kao et al. from MIT Media lab explored another way to

navigate smell in interaction. They proposed to interact with smell through

manipulating the form of a clay. They called it as a smell-composing device

clayodor. It included a clay which was placed on a pressure sensing mat on

top of the device. When the user shaped the clay by their hands into different

forms, it would trigger different emissions from the odour releasing system

embedded inside the device. For example, if the device detected the form

of clay as banana, the smell of banana would be released from the system.

In clayodor, they tried to challenge the mapping between form and smell in

interaction64.

In the same conference of TEI 2015, Cao et al challenged the mapping

between lighting and smell through a digital artefact called Scented Pebbles.

They proposed to use smell with lighting to create sensorial imagination to

engage users’ mind. Scented Pebbles can detect user’s gesture movement to

63. Takuji Narumi et al., “Simplification of olfactory stimuli in pseudo-gustatory displays.,”IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics 20, no. 4 (2014): 504–1264. Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao et al., “Clayodor: Retrieving Scents through the Manipulation

of Malleable Material,” in Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible,Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (ACM, 2015), 697–702

39


emit the corresponding smell and lighting. Through the interaction, it blended

the smell in different ways to engage users mind in different scenarios such

as Hawaiian Sunset or Japanese Onsen. They suggested that multisensory

experience with smell could prompt the enchantment to affect users emotion

and mind65.

Psychologist Matthieu Ischer and others from University of Geneva in

Switzerland attempted to take the affectional and evocative impact of olfactory

display to the clinical virtual therapies. They applied the olfactory display on

immersive virtual reality environment for behavioural science researches. In

their study, the odours were embedded with pictures, videos and sounds in a

three-dimensional interactive virtual environment for enhancing the realism of

laboratory environment that close to real life experience. The result showed

that it was effective to investigate the chemosensory perception by adopting

olfactory display to provide virtual scenarios in a more precise controllable

way both temporally and spatially. They indicated that it is very crucial in

behavioural science to elicit vivid experiences along with the control of the

experimental variables. Hence, they believed that olfactory display could be

a powerful tool for clinical virtual therapies, for example, in restoring the

memory of brain injury patients, reducing the anxiety of burn victims, and

enhancing the behavioural treatments of eating disorder people66.

Garcia-Ruiz et al. from Algoma University brought the evocative value of

olfactory display to the area of learning. They believed that there is potential

of olfactory display for stimulating information recall. In the study, they used

Arduino to control the odour emission by activating electronic circuit to heat

the scented liquid, then used a fan to circulate the odour into the air. They

65. Yan Yan Cao and Naohito Okude, “Scented pebbles: interactive ambient experiencewith smell and lighting,” in Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible,Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (ACM, 2015), 409–1066. Matthieu Ischer et al., “How incorporation of scents could enhance immersive virtual

experiences,” Applied Olfactory Cognition, 2014, 119

40


suggested, for example, using stinky odour emission to indicate engineering

students while computer detects network traffic, or applying the smell of blood

in medical simulator for training to enhance the students’ immersion. They

proposed to evaluate students learning outcomes by using the olfactory display

in the tests. It could help immerse learners into educational simulations and

supporting other human senses for learning67.

Industrial designer Marina Carulli and other researchers from Politecnico

di Milano in Italy brought the value of olfactory display into industrial product

design. They adopted the study conducted by Bosmans et al which claiming

that ambient scent can influence consumers’ behaviors and preferences towards

product evaluation68. They therefore took olfactory display into virtual pro-

totyping for eliciting vivid sensory experience during the phrase of product

ideation. In the study, a wearable olfactory display was developed to emit dif-

ferent odours with three virtual reality models of washing machines without

noticing the users. It enabled the users interact and experience the new prod-

uct with the sense of smell while it was still under the stage of prototyping.

The result showed that the pleasant odour indeed brought the influence on the

users evaluation regarding the shape of product and its perceived value like in

the real environment. Based on the users emotional response in virtual proto-

typing, Carulli et al. assessed users’ attitudes towards the products far before

the production phrase. It greatly helped the industrial designers to reduce

the development cost and shorten the development time of a new product69.

While the academics are taking the cutting-edge digital olfaction to apply in

different areas, the industries also notice the potential of olfaction in the digital

67. Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz and Pedro Santana-Mancilla, “Design, evaluation and im-pact of educational olfactory interfaces,” 2013,68. Anick Bosmans, “Scents and sensibility: when do (in) congruent ambient scents influ-

ence product evaluations?,” Journal of Marketing 70, no. 3 (2006): 32–4369. Marina. Carulli, Monica. Bordegoni, and Umberto Cugini, “A study on the influence

of odors on the users’ evaluation of industrial products in a VR multisensory environment,”Journal of Digital Olfaction Society 3, no. 1 (2014): 52

41


age. Scentee70 is one of the companies that making attempts to realize digital

olfaction in the mobile market. In early 2013, they launched up a smartphone

plug-in cartridge called ChatPerf. It was an USB-size scent cartridge coming

with software development kit. It could emit a certain scent when the user

received a message on the phone. Within two months, they not only got the

attention from the media coverage, but also successfully raised their startup

fund more than double on a Japanese based crowd-funding platform. It re-

vealed how eagerly the industries response to the idea of digital olfaction in

the mobile market. Later they further developed it as 3.5 mm mini-plug for

both iPhone and Android system, and renamed it as Scentee. Meanwhile, they

launched up an app called Hana Yakiniku, which means tasting the barbeque

with nose. Scentee provided the replaceable tanks with three types of scent

including short ribs, beef tongue, and buttered potato. The advertisement

proposed that, by smelling the scents of barbeque through Scentee, their users

could have barbeque experience even though they were simply eating the plain

rice. Due to the USB-size scent cartridge design, Scentee is limited to one type

of scent emission per time.

Cyrano71 is a digital olfactory device which is also targeted to the mobile

market. It was developed by oNote company in 2014. Instead of plugging

into the mobile phone, all twelve scent cartridges were inserted in a standalone

device. The range of scents includes vanilla, lilac, pine, lavender, orange ginger,

honeysuckle, wingz, coconut, peppermint, suntan, guava and venetian bellini.

The scent emission was controlled by a mobile app. The company adopted

the concept of music note into scent emission and claimed that Cyrano like a

scent speaker. It emitted the scent like playing a music note. The mobile app

preset different combinations and sequences of scent emission. They provided

three different mood melodies including the mood of awake, relax and escape.

70. Scentee, https://scentee.com71. Cyrano, http://www.onotes.com

42


While some of the commercial digital olfactory devices focus on mobile

interaction, Sensorwake72 extends the digital olfaction into domestic life. It is

an olfactory alarm clock which was developed by a 18-year-old French called

Guillaume Rolland. The product was selected as one of the top 15 Google

science fair project and was launched on Kickerstarter in 2015. In Sensorwake,

the user can select the smell of coffee, croissants, ocean, or even the smell of

money to wake them up in the morning. The scented capsule can be inserted

into the olfactory alarm. When the scheduled wake up time comes, the alarm

would emit the corresponding smell. The scented capsule are packaged in pair

to provide different themes, for example, the capsule pack of espresso and

croissant is named as Continental breakfast while the capsule pack of bacon

and orange juice is called American breakfast. One special pack is called

VIP lounge which is claimed to include the smell of dollar and ebony luxury.

These commercial digital olfactory products show that the variety of smell

combination and the concept behind are as important as the technical devices

to the customers.

As the digital olfaction is getting more and more attention in academics and

industries, an international organization called Digital Olfaction Society73 was

formed in 2010. Since then, Digital Olfaction Society (DOS) World Congress

is held annually which focuses on taking the power of olfaction towards the

age of digital technology. Its aim is to gather the olfaction professions from

academics and industries to explore the possibilities of digital olfaction. The

organization considers three main challenges for the congress: one is to con-

nect the interdisciplinary researches of olfaction from science and technology

perspectives such as neuroscience, engineering and computer science; another

is to explore the practical applications of digital olfaction in the areas such as

communication, food, medical, and cosmetic, etc; the third challenge is to take

72. Sensorwake, https://sensorwake.com73. Digital Olfaction Society, http://www.digital-olfaction.com/

43


the digital olfaction applications into everyday life for bringing the impact on

people lifestyle, as they believe that the potential of digital olfaction should

not limited in the existing areas.

As digital olfaction is increasingly being used in different areas, Belma

Ramic-Brkic et al. from University of Warwick pointed out the limitations

of digital olfaction. In 2014, they setup an experiment to examine about the

amount of time when olfactory adaptation coming to a threshold in virtual

environment. The participants were asked to hold a scented strip under the

noses when watching an animation, and gave out signal if noticed any an-

imation quality difference existed. The result showed that the participants

hardly discriminated the quality difference of the animation after the smell

was presented around 150 seconds. Though the researchers admitted that

their method of asking the participants to hold a scent paper may bring the

distraction for watching, they could not deny their results revealing that the

existence of olfactory adaptation in virtual environment. Thus, they suggested

that the future digital olfaction studies should extend to consider the moments

after the users adapt to the smell in the environment74. This reveals that user

experience design is very crucial in the discussion of digital olfaction.

Marc Hassenzahl, professor of User Experience and Ergonomics at Folk-

wang University of Arts in Germany, is a leading researcher in the field of

Experience Design. He urged that HCI community should focus on creating

pleasure experience positively rather than preventing usability problem nega-

tively, as he believed that it is essential to recognize the need of human in expe-

rience and emotion. He argued that current approach in HCI mainly concerns

the role of emotion from the technology perspective by making computers de-

tect and response like being a substitute for human care. Yet he believed that

74. Belma Ramic-Brkic and Alan Chalmers, “Olfactory adaptation in virtual environ-ments,” ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP) 11, no. 2 (2014): 6

44


it is also important to consider from human perspective by taking emotion as

the mediator of technology use. Rather than designing computerised toys for

soothing a crying child, user experience designers should focus on designing the

context for building affective rituals. It enables the emotion expression blend

into daily life75. By doing so, it may avoid the paradox of “Alone Together”

which criticized technology turning people affection towards to the artefacts

instead. Hassenzahl indicated that User Experience is the intersection of user

emotion, designed system and the context. He suggested that the attention

of the HCI community should move beyond the instrumental design towards

“Experience Design”, as it is the approach that places creating pleasurable and

meaningful moments as the center of design. In 2013, Hassenzahl et al. further

proposed that experience could be conceptualized as experience patterns. It

could help designers bring the meaning into materials to create experiential

artefacts. For example, they took psychological needs such as positive feeling

like happiness as the way to categorize experience into the designed patterns.

Based on the experience pattern, they chose the relevant materials for artefacts

to shape out the action. They believed that, rather than simply designing for

materials, considering the experience helps to bring the meaning into artefacts

with the materials for creating new experiences to the users76.

In 2014, Eva Lenz and other members of Hassenzahl’s research group fur-

ther emphasised that interaction design should in line with experience design.

They proclaimed that interaction is involved in not only a series of action-

reaction in the motor-level, but also the experience itself in the be-level. They

questioned that the development of interaction is overemphasised on tech-

nology and efficiency in the past, the aesthetics of interaction such as the

experience and meaning is less discussed. This leads to the gap difference

75. Marc Hassenzahl and Noam Tractinsky, “User experience-a research agenda,” Be-haviour & information technology 25, no. 2 (2006): 91–9776. Marc Hassenzahl et al., “Designing moments of meaning and pleasure. Experience

design and happiness,” International Journal of Design 7, no. 3 (2013)

45


happened among interaction and experience77. Lenz’s statement echoed to

what reviewed earlier in above sections that Obrist et al. and Kazakos et al.

respectively mentioned digital olfaction and digital family research should go

beyond the outcome of technology towards the experience that the technology

produces. Lenz et al. therefore developed a set of interaction vocabulary for

designers to clarify the relationship between the desired experience and inter-

action attributes. They suggested that designers should specify the desired

experience first, and design the corresponding interaction with it afterwards.

This helps designers focus on not only the how-level in interaction, but also

the why-level in experience design.

Sari Kujala, researcher from the department of Design at Aalto Univer-

sity in Finland, took mobile as an artefact example to examine the relation-

ship between experience, emotion and usability in real life for 5-month usage.

Throughout the study, Kujala et al. found that emotion and memories affect

how the users evaluate the product. For example, positive emotion is related

to good experience, and negative emotion is related to low usability. The emo-

tional experience of user is changing over the artefact usage time in real life.

They concluded that the evaluation is not only happened at the moment when

the users interact with the product, but also happened at the moment when

the users reflect their usage78. Hence, user retrospective evaluation should not

be neglected. It is importance to consider user emotion and episodic memory

in experience design.

Meschtscherjakov et al. from ICT&S Center of University of Salzhurg in

Austria considered it as an important bond which connects the users with

77. Eva Lenz, Sarah Diefenbach, and Marc Hassenzahl, “Aesthetics of interaction: a liter-ature synthesis,” in Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interac-tion: Fun, Fast, Foundational (ACM, 2014), 628–3778. Sari Kujala and Talya Miron-Shatz, “Emotions, experiences and usability in real-life

mobile phone use,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Com-puting Systems (ACM, 2013), 1061–70

46


the technological artefacts. They proposed a conceptual model called “mobile

attachment”. It refers to the cognitive and emotional bond connecting the

individual’s self and the mobile phone that varies over time in strength. The

mobile attachment may also extend towards brand attachment. iPhone users

transferring their attachment of the old iPhone to the new one is one of the

cases. They suggested that user experience designers can design for attachment

through providing self-empowerment, self-enrichment, and self-gratification.

For instance, the artefact could be designed as the container of memories to

evoke autobiographical meaning to the user79. Stimulating the pleasurable

experience with the artefact is helpful to foster user’s positive attachment

with the technological artefact.

As it is shown that memory and emotion play an important part in expe-

rience design, some studies seek to evoke affective experience through sensory

approach in retail industry. Charles Spence, professor of Experimental Psy-

chology at Oxford University in United Kingdom, examined how to enhance

consumer affective experience and shopping behaviour through sensory atmo-

spherics in stores. As online shopping brings up enormous competition on

the market shares, retail stores struggle to increase their sales. Some stores

attempt to engage the consumers with five senses in their physical retail en-

vironment. The study showed that consumers were willing to pay more at

the winery while under the fluorescent red lighting. The genre of background

music playing at the retail store also affected the customers’ rating on the

genre of the wine. A heavier glass let the customers perceive the wine with

higher quality as well. Spence et al. indicated that when consumers were im-

mersed in the store environment with visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and

gustatory atmospherics, their experience and perception towards the products

79. Alexander Meschtscherjakov, David Wilfinger, and Manfred Tscheligi, “Mobile attach-ment causes and consequences for emotional bonding with mobile phones,” in Proceedingsof the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (ACM, 2014),2317–26

47


would be influenced accordingly80. Compared with other senses, the sense of

smell is reputed for evoking affective experience. Yet in the field of experi-

ence design, there are limited discussions about olfactory experience in digital

media context.

Gheorghita Ghinea, Reader in Computing from department of Computer

Science in Brunel University, is one of the few researchers who studies about the

olfactory experience in digital media context. Ghinea treated olfaction as the

medium to enhance multimedia experience. He and his colleague conducted

a series of studies to examine about olfactory experience within multimedia

context since 2009. At first, they mainly used smell as direct stimuli to improve

user task performance; however found that it would bring a negative impact

on user information recall and task performance81. Later they focused on user-

perceived experience on traditional multimedia audio-visual application with

olfaction. Their findings showed that odour discrimination was easier for users

to manage while compared with odour recognition and identification. Their

participants reported to have a better perceive experience when the odour was

associated with the content of the video clips. They concluded that olfaction

could enhance user multimedia experience and increase the sense of reality and

relevance82. In recent years, Ghinea and other researchers further suggested

that multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) would become the new multimedia

challenge in the coming decade, as they believed that multimedia applications

should engage with three or more senses by combining conventional media

like visual and audio channels with non-conventional media such as olfactory,

haptic and gustatory channels. Therefore in 2014, they called for papers to

explore the challenges and opportunities of mulsemedia in ACM Transactions

80. Charles Spence et al., “Store atmospherics: A multisensory perspective,” Psychology &Marketing 31, no. 7 (2014): 472–8881. Ghinea and Ademoye, “Olfaction-enhanced multimedia: Bad for information recall?”82. Ghinea and Ademoye, “User perception of media content association in olfaction-

enhanced multimedia”

48


on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications83. Moreover,

Ghinea’s research team emphasised that whilst the mulsemedia technologies

are getting advance in various ways, it is always the users who have the final say

on the mulsemedia applications. Hence, Quality of Experience (QoE) should

not be ignored as the key element of user acceptance towards mulsemedia

applications84.

Murray et al. from Athlone Institute of Technology in Ireland furthered the

QoE study of olfaction with visual media synchronization considering users’

age, sex and culture. Different from the approach of Ghinea and Ademoye,

they focused on studying the user subjective evaluation of olfactory experience

on video without contextual audio. They launched a laboratory experiment for

84 participants between the ages of 19 to 60 from different industries and cul-

ture background including Africa, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.

They investigated the QoE on the aspects of enjoyment, relevance and reality.

According to the result, female, 20 to 30 years-old and African group of users

showed the highest sensitive compared with their other respective equivalents

in terms of enjoyment. The participants were more noticeable to the smell

before the video rather than after, yet more tolerable of the smell presented

after the video. Murray concluded that the skew between olfaction and video

sometimes would bring a negative impact on user-perceived experience85.

Egon Peter Koster, professor who specialized in olfaction perception psy-

chology from Utrecht University in Netherlands, pointed out that there is a

“misfit” happened on the role of olfactory memory between olfactory researches

83. Gheorghita Ghinea et al., “Introduction to special issue on multiple sensorial (MulSe-Media) multimodal media: Advances and applications,” 2014,84. Zhenhui Yuan et al., “User quality of experience of mulsemedia applications,” ACM

Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM) 11,no. 1s (2014): 1585. Niall Murray et al., “User-profile-based perceived olfactory and visual media synchro-

nization,” ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications(TOMM) 10, no. 1s (2014): 11

49


and daily life experience. Koster et al. indicated that the evocative role of

odour in daily life most of the time is not for laymen to remember the odour

name or identify the odour source, except those particular good or bad ones,

but to link them to the affective appreciation of surrounding and the episodic

memories. While compared with other sensory modalities, the autobiograph-

ical memories evoked by odours are related to the earlier stage of life. Since

then, the first subjective impression of odour is hardly replace in the later stage

of life. Yet they found that current olfactory memory researches overflow to-

wards the studies of conscious smelling rather than its unconscious emotional

role in daily life86.

The digital olfaction studies reviewed above has shown that the academia

and the industries are rapidly developing towards olfaction digitalization

through the cutting-edge technologies of odour detection, olfactory display,

and teleolfaction. The potential of digital olfaction is also being applied in

different areas such as information, entertainment and augmented multimedia

application. On one hand, it opens up the possibilities for designers to take

it further to consider smell as an alternative beyond conventional audio-visual

medium. On the other hand, both academia and industries all have to face the

same challenge in designing olfactory experience when realizing digital olfac-

tion in front of the users in the real world. The field of experience design has

been using sensory approach to create pleasurable and meaningful moments

to the users. Its concern lies on the intersection of user emotion, designed

system and the environment context. However the sense of smell, which is

closely related to human emotion and memory, is mainly remained in being

studied for augmented multimedia experience in the field of experience design.

Its affective and evocative aspects in family daily life experience is yet to be

explored. My research would contribute in the way by using the smell as the

86. Köster, Møller, and Mojet, “A ‘Misfit’ Theory of Spontaneous Conscious Odor Percep-tion (MITSCOP): reflections on the role and function of odor memory in everyday life”

50

2.4. Ludic Odour - Digital Artefact with Smell for Family Bonding

substantive medium to creative olfactory experience in daily life among chil-

dren and parents. By deploying in the real family environment, it would help

to prove the feasibility of the concept.

2.4 Ludic Odour - Digital Artefact with Smellfor Family Bonding

“Ludic Odour” is designed for promoting family bonding through using smell as

the medium in parent-child interaction at daily bath. The review of olfaction

studies has shown that smell has a strong impact on bonding. It can retrieve

autobiographical memories and emotions across time and space. The odour-

evoked memories and associated emotions are related to the first encountered

experience which mainly formed at childhood. This changes the perception of

odour as well. The review of neuroscience studies has shown that the brain

would build up the link between the new odour and the encountered episode.

It makes olfactory perception and associated memories subjective among in-

dividuals. The field of Neuromarketing has applied this into marketing. They

create the pleasant encountering experience with their brand smell. When the

customer encountered the smell again, it retrieves the positive emotion to the

customer and promote their attachment to the brand. Yet it has not been

experimented in digital family context. The review of digital olfaction has

shown that many digital olfactory technologies have been developed. Its po-

tential successfully caught the attention from both academics and industries.

Digital olfaction has been applied to game, product and communication. This

makes it possible that user can experience odours in a digital way. Hence, I

will design a digital artefact “Ludic Odour” for creating olfactory experience

at family daily bathing. It provides a pleasant context for families to en-

countered their particular odours in their bath time. It helps to trigger their

positive memories and emotion to promote family bonding.

51

Chapter 3

Design

Ludic Odour, digital artefact, promotes the bonding between parents and child

through creating the first encountered olfactory experience they enjoy together

at bath time. It brings the value of odour in family bonding into daily bathing

through digital olfactory technology. As the family bonding between parents

and child is being challenged in the digital age, daily bathing provides a great

sensory environment to bond the parents and child intimately through the

sense of smell. The pleasant olfactory experience in the early stage of life in

children is very crucial that strengthening the family bonding throughout life

time. As the digital olfaction is getting advanced, it brings the possibility

to design digital artefact to provide early encountered olfactory experience at

bathing for promoting family bonding in the digital age based on each family

occasions. The concept of Ludic Odour is to design a digital artefact with

smell for the parents and child to enjoy at their family bathing. It combines

the bathing interaction with odour emission along the family chosen scents

related to family daily life.

The design of Ludic Odour is aimed for the family like Chan’s family, one

of the families being visited during the fieldwork. The parents are aged at their

30s who have to take care their 3 years-old son in bathing everyday after work.

The father prepares the water to wash the son, while the mother sits next to

52

3.1. Ethnography Research in Design

them singing and chatting altogether. The bath time is the most intimate

moment for parents and child, as they all put down their works coming to this

private space altogether. This is the real situation revealed in the fieldwork

conducted in Macau.

Ludic Odour includes four components, which is (1) the categories of scents,

(2) the selection of scents, (3) the bathing interaction detection and (4) emis-

sion device. Based on the ethnography research, Ludic Odour provides four

categories of scents related to family daily life including the scents of nature

and park, the scents of fruit and vegetable, the scents of party and holiday,

the scents of living and cleaning. The parents and child can select the scents

together for each bath based on their family routine. They can setup the tim-

ing and the type of scents to be emitted which are associated to their family

schedule and activities. The bathing interaction is detected through the input

sensor embedded inside the bathing artefact soap. When the parents and child

use the soap to scrub on the body, it detects the strength and the duration

of scrubbing movement. The bathing artefact sends the signal to the system

application. It triggers the sequence, the intensity and the duration of the

odour emission from the chosen scents at the emission device accordingly. The

olfactory experience created through digital artefact Ludic Odour provides the

first encountered experience with smell at bathing to promote family bonding

between parents and child throughout life time.

3.1 Ethnography Research in Design

The concept of Ludic Odour is designed based on the ethnography research

method. It includes the fieldwork, thick description, and mental models of

contextual design. The fieldwork was conducted in three different families to

investigate the interaction between parents and children on their daily experi-

ence basis. The aim was to observe how parents and child interact with each

53


other for bonding throughout different artefacts at daily life. Thick descrip-

tions were recorded and were analysed into different models including flow,

sequence, artefact, physical, cultural, and mental model (See Appendix A).

Based on the ethnography research, Ludic Odour takes family bathing as the

instance of daily experience to design for first encountered experience with

smell for bonding. Family bathing is the moment intimately shared between

parents and child. The prototype of Ludic Odour is installed in real family

environment as the proof of concept to evaluate its feasibility.

Fieldwork is an initial step of contextual inquiry to understand the users’

needs and actions, suggested by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt1 who are the

authors of “Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems”. The

approach of contextual inquiry helps to understand the requirements of the

users in their real context. As family members are very habitual for their

daily interaction and routine that hardly express what it is, the method of

fieldwork helps to uncover the meaning within the context through observation

and interview at their home. This method has been applied in the studies of

smart home2 and family meal3. It is an active inquiry to go into the field

to discover how users interact on daily basis. Ludic Odour is based on this

approach to setup the fieldwork focus. The aim is to observe how parents and

child interact with each other for bonding throughout different artefacts on

daily basis.

The fieldwork invitation was sent out to the families through acquaintance

in Macau. The families were targeted on the young parents who have at least

1. Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, Contextual design: defining customer-centered sys-tems (Elsevier, 1997)

2. Scott Davidoff, John Zimmerman, and Anind K Dey, “How routine learners can sup-port family coordination,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors inComputing Systems (ACM, 2010), 2461–70

3. Hasan Shahid Ferdous et al., “Pairing Technology and Meals: A Contextual Enquiryin the Family Household,” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian SpecialInterest Group for Computer Human Interaction (ACM, 2015), 370–79

54


one child (either boy or girl). The purpose of the fieldwork was described in

the invitation. Some families rejected due to privacy reasons. At the end,

three families responded and opened their home for researcher to visit (Figure

3.1). One is Chu’s family who has two daughters aged at three and seven.

Another is Lei’s family who has a son aged at two. Third is Chan’s family

who has a son aged at three. The first two fieldworks were focus on observing

the interaction of parents and child at family bonding time on daily basis.

The third fieldwork was focus on observing how the parents and child interact

for bonding at family bathing. The approach of the fieldwork was clearly

explained to the parents before the fieldwork was conducted. The visiting

date and time was suggested by the families. The first two fieldworks were

held around eight o’clock to ten o’clock at weekday night, as it is the mutual

time for all the family members being at home. It is the time between family

dinner and children bed time. The families usually treat this time for bonding

with their children during weekday after work. Based on the observation of

the first two fieldworks, the third one was conducted to focus on family bath

time. In the following sections, I would describe the fieldwork conducted in

these three families in Macau.

Figure 3.1: Family Chart of the Families in Fieldwork

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3.1.1 Fieldwork in Chu’s Family

Figure 3.2: Fieldwork in Chu’s family

Mr. Chu and Mrs. Chu both are social workers. They have two daughters.

The elder one aged at seven is called Katie and the younger one aged at three

is called Kay. Katie is at her first year in primary school while Kay is at

preschool. When parents go out for work at daytime, their maid would pick

up Katie from school at afternoon and take care Kay at home. The fieldwork

in Chu’s family was conducted at a weekday night from eight o’clock to ten

o’clock on the 22nd of March in Macau (Figure 3.2).

Thick Description in Chu’s Family

The time between dinner and bedtime is the most precious period for working

parents Mr.Chu and Mrs.Chu everyday. Mrs.Chu was busy with checking her

elder daughter Katie’s homework while talked to younger daughter Kay about

her dolls. Mr.Chu was enjoying his relax time, lying on the sofa and watching

the television. Elder daughter lean over her father’s shoulder and watched

together. Kay introduced all her different dolls with their own names. The

mother said, “Kay named them all by herself.”, then she asked Kay, “has you

milked them (the dolls) all tonight?” The mother recalled, “one day when I

56


came back from work, I saw all the dolls were lined up altogether and toy food

were well prepared in front of each of them by Kay. It’s just like how Kay was

treated at school.” While recalling, Mrs. Chu stroked younger daughter Kay’s

hair and kept giving hugs and kisses to her. The mother further revealed that

the girls’ room has been recently re-furnished. Two daughters used to sleep in

the parent’s room together while they were young. Now, she wanted to make

a special space for two daughters for their own as their were grown up.

Then Kay suddenly went to the parent’s room to take out the family photo

album. Mrs. Chu pointed to one photo of elder daughter Katie and said to

Kay, “this is the photo of your elder sister while she was in your age”. Mrs.

Chu said, once in a while they would pick out some digital photos to printout

as they are worried that the digital files might be crashed down one day.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was elder daughter Katie’s friend’s call. Katie

picked up the phone and chatted happily. While she walked pass her parent’s

home, she saw her mother and young sister flipping the family photo album.

Katie walked closer and found one of her old photo in the album. She told

her friend over the phone, “tell you what...while I was young, I used to smell

the hair of the doll in order to fall asleep...haha.” It was the scenario shown

inside the photo in the album.

Later on, Mrs. Chu took out the baby tooth of Katie from a little bag. She

explained that they would keep this little memorable things of two daughters

to mark their grow-up mementos. Then Mr. Chu came in to further tell the

story behind. He said that they found the baby tooth was nearly broken at

one late night. It was too late to find a dentist nearby that they decided to

take off the baby tooth by themselves. At first Katie was so afraid, yet Mrs.

Chu talked to her to distract her attention while Mr. Chu took it off manually

using floss.

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On the door of the girls’ room, there was an award checklist for the girls’

daily routine tasks. The father explained that they would tell two daugh-

ters the to-do-list at every morning. For elder daughter Katie, it was about

learning-oriented like finished the school works and piano practicing. For the

younger daughter Kay, it was about behaviour-oriented like finished all the

meals. When they finished the task, they were rewarded a chop on the list.

Once they gathered up a certain amount of the chops, the daughters can visit

their favourite parks or do the things they want during the weekends. Mrs.

Chu said, there was one time she went to business trip. Her husband helped to

make up the mock test for elder daughter. He found some cartoon characters

online and printed it on to the mock test paper. This made Katie found it

interesting and finished the mock test quickly.

Later on, Katie and Kay entered their little playground in their room. The

younger one went around to pick up the toy food and pretended to eat, while

the elder one focus on setting up the table and pretend to cook. Once the food

was set, the younger daughter passed it to her mother. Mrs. Chu pretended

to eat and enjoyed their cooking. Meanwhile, the younger one feed her dolls

with the toy food. After a while, Katie ran out to the living room to stay with

her father watching T.V. Kay followed and used a spoon to pretend serving

different soups to her sister and father.

Summary of Chu’s Family

Throughout the fieldwork at Chu’s family, it is found that the parents hold

different approach of family bonding towards the children at different stages.

For the preschool child, the parents would give more intimate bodily inter-

action and guide the preschool child through play. For the child in primary

school, the parents would give more attention on the study and communicate

through conversation. Besides, they used cartoon characters to encourage the

girl’s for study. They also turn the daily routine like a gameplay checklist.

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The daughters can earn the game points to exchange their awards by finished

the tasks on the list daily. The focus of bonding is also different from the per-

spective of the child. The younger one rely on her parents more. She always

stays around her parents and needs them for companion. The elder one is

shown to be more independent. She would do her own things even parents are

not around physically. She also wants to have her private space to develop her

social life like making phone call to her friend. Regarding the family memories,

parents would treasure and store the artefacts of the memorable moments of

the family. For example, the parents would keep the baby tooth of the daugh-

ter in a small bag. When they took it out from the bag, they would tell the

story behind how the father helped to take off the first baby tooth of the elder

daughter. Besides, they would select some memorable photos from the digital

album and printed them out to keep in a physical album. They would open

the physical album once in a while to share these family memories. It helps

to bond the family by telling the children how they grew up and how parents

accompanied with them. The elder daughter recalled her childhood memories

while she looked at the old pictures.

Based on the fieldwork in Chu’s family, it is found that parents have more

intimate bodily interaction with the younger child at preschool. Similarly,

the younger one depends on her parents more compared with the elder one.

The parents, especially the mother, would stay closer to the younger child

physically at home. She would follow the younger one when she goes to living

room or bedroom. Besides, the parents would guide the children through play,

and make the daily routine like a gameplay checklist. Therefore, the second

fieldwork is aimed to focus on the family with preschool child and observe how

the parents and child interact at family play time.

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3.1.2 Fieldwork in Lei’s Family

Mrs. Lei is a kindergarten teacher and Mr. Lei is a clerk in an university.

They have a son aged at two called Gabriel. When they are out for work,

the grandparents of Gabriel would come to his home. They would take care

of him at daytime. The maid would do the housework such as cooking and

cleaning. Sometimes Mrs. Lei would come back home earlier in the afternoon.

She would take Gabriel to the park nearby to play around. Then they would

go back home for dinner. Mr. Lei would join them for dinner after work. The

fieldwork in Lei’s family was conducted at one weekday night from around

eight o’clock to ten o’clock on the 1st of April in Macau (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3: Fieldwork in Lei’s family

Thick Description in Lei’s Family

Gabriel is the 2-years-old boy in Lei’s family. The time after dinner is the

play time for him with his parents. Gabriel was the first one who finished the

dinner. He picked up two rolls of papers to knock on the sofa like playing a

drum. Later on, his father finished the dinner and joined Gabriel to play in

the living room. Mr. Lei passed a ball towards Gabriel and asked what that

60


is. He explained to his son that it is football. It is to be played by foot. He

then pointed to another ball and said, “that is plastic ball, it can be thrown.”

The father and the son threw the ball back and forth. After a while, Mrs. Lei

joined them in the living room after dish washing. She picked up the drum

and the musical instrument toys. Gabriel went to his mother’s side to grab

the drumstick, and told his mother to beat time. Then he walked to sofa and

knocked it with the drumstick along with his mother’s beat. Meanwhile, Mr.

Lei picked up another musical instrument toy ready to join. Gabriel dropped

off his drumstick and picked up the toy trumpet nearby. Mr. Lei tried to

correct his hand pose. After Gabriel successfully made a music note with the

trumpet, Mr. Lei encouraged him continue to make another one.

Then Mrs. Lei picked up a pile of picture flashcards with all kinds of

musical instrument picture. She asked his son to read out the name of each

instrument. When Gabriel read till the name of harmonica, he suddenly re-

called his harmonica. He asked his father to get it for him. Mr. Lei went

upstairs to get the harmonica. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lei continued the flashcard

game with her boy. When the picture of the drum was shown, Mrs. Lei put

the flashcard on top of the toy drum next to them and asked Gabriel to hit

it. After a while, Mr. Lei found the harmonica in their bedroom. Gabriel ran

to his father to grab the harmonica, he put it near his mouth to blow into the

holes. Gabriel can only make one note. His father corrected him again saying

that he held the harmonica in the opposite direction. Gabriel kept blowing

into the same hole. Mr. Lei encouraged him to blow into another holes of the

harmonica. Gabriel went to his father side and sat down. Mr. Lei smiled and

said, “oh...would you play better when you sit beside me?”

At another corner of the living room, Mrs. Lei was playing an ice-cream

toy. Gabriel saw his mother playing it. He went to pick it up and shared the

ice-cream with his doll beside. Mrs. Lei turn the toy trumpet upside down

61


and pretend it as a pant to dress up Gabriel’s doll. When Mrs. Lei put down

the doll, Gabriel suddenly found the new jigsaw puzzle behind. He turn to his

father to ask him to open the puzzle package for him. Mr. Lei told Gabriel to

ask the permission from mother. Mrs. Lei replied him to ask father. Gabriel

turned around to ask his parents to open it up. Finally, Mr. Lei opened the

puzzle package and took out all the puzzle pieces. Mr. Lei gave out the hints

to his son and tried to guide him to play the puzzle. He separated the pieces

with similar colour altogether and handed them to Gabriel. Meanwhile, Mrs.

Lei helped to put the pieces into right position. As Gabriel loved the character

on the puzzle a lot, he was so eager to see the puzzle pieces of his favourite

character being put together. Mr. Lei tried to give out hints by put the correct

pieces to the nearby position. All Gabriel needed to do was simply to press

the pieces onto the puzzle frame. Sometimes, Mr. Lei also asked Gabriel to

help to find a certain piece. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lei tried to finish the rest of the

puzzle. After the character pieces were all combined together, Gabriel was so

excited that he said “Hi” to the character on the puzzle. When coming to the

last piece of the puzzle, Mr. Lei let Gabriel put it onto the frame by himself.

After the jigsaw puzzle was completed, Gabriel suddenly remembered that he

has a book with the same character. He asked his mother to get it for him.

Mrs. Lei then picked up the book and read it for him.

After a while, Lei’s family turn to play the paper musical instruments.

Gabriel grabbed the paper roll to pretend it as different instruments. Once it

was treated like a flute by holding it near his mouth horizontally, then suddenly

it becomes a violin bow in his eyes that he turn to make a violinist pose. A

minute later, Gabriel turn this violin bow as a cello bow by changing his pose

like a cellist. Later on, Gabriel walked up to the stairs to pretend making his

musical performance on stage. While seeing his son acting like a musician,

Mr. Lei accordingly turn to act like a conductor standing at the back end of

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the living room. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lei picked up something nearby to act like

a flute player to follow their performance act.

Mr. and Mrs. Lei had many bodily interaction with Gabriel. Mrs. Lei

would kiss Gabriel once in a while. Mr. Lei would put the ball on his arms

like a ball track. Gabriel would try to grab the ball from his father’s arms.

Mrs. Lei would juggle several balls at the same time. Gabriel would come to

imitate then. Yet after a while, Gabriel suddenly was having fun to play with

saliva. Mr. Lei immediately became serious to correct him. Gabriel ignored

his father and kept playing. Mrs. Lei interrupted and asked Gabriel take a

paper to wipe his mouth and his father’s hand, also to say sorry to his father.

When it came to the bed time, Mrs. Lei asked Gabriel to brush the teeth.

Gabriel seemed not ready for that. He kept walking around the living room.

His mother tried to convince him saying that, “let’s read the storybook together

after you brush your teeth.” Gabriel then went to bathroom by himself to

brush his teeth. Mrs. Lei went to Gabriel’s bedroom to get things ready.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lei took out Gabriel’s broken toy to repair.

Summary of Lei’s Family

Through the fieldwork observation, the parent-child interaction in Lei’s family

was found to be all family members involved. Each family members can initiate

the play, the other members would response accordingly. It is especially shown

in the music play. When Gabriel did the act of playing a musical instrument,

Mr. and Mrs. Lei would act as other musicians accordingly. Besides, they

would change the roles during the time. At one moment, it is Mr. Lei to

lead and guide Gabriel to play the harmonica; at the next moment, Mrs. Lei

would use flashcard to guide Gabriel to learn the pronunciation of the musical

instrument. Both of them would use Gabriel’s interest - music - as the tool

to guide him to play and learn. Gabriel, as a 2-years-old boy, changes his

63


mind and focus very quickly. Compared with music play, the puzzle might

look like a bit difficult for Gabriel. Once the goal is completed, the game is

finished. Comparatively, paper music instrument is shown to be more flexible.

The artefacts can become different things in the eyes of the family members.

It is about imagination and acting.

As the fieldwork in Chu’s and Lei’s families show that the parents would

give more intimate interaction to the preschool child. The parents focus to

bond with the preschool child through playful interaction. They establish the

bonding at this stage without being distracted by the burden of the school ex-

amination like the child in primary school. Also the preschool child is shown

to be more dependent on the parents while compared with the child in pri-

mary school. When all the family members involved in the playful interaction,

they got engaging experience throughout this. They would take turn to lead

the play. The other members would follow accordingly. The children play

with their imagination and role acting. Based on the observation above, the

third family fieldwork would further focus on observe how the parents and the

preschool child interact at intimate bodily family time, which is family bath,

and see how they use the bathing artefacts to interact.

3.1.3 Fieldwork in Chan’s Family

Due to the privacy of the family bath, video ethnography is chosen as the

method for the family bath fieldwork. Video ethnography helps the researcher

gain a deeper insight into the experiences of home from users’ perspective. Val

Mitchell4 and other researchers on user experience design from Loughborough

University suggested that video ethnography could help further understand

the experiential aspects of home living holistically. This method treats the

4. Val Mitchell et al., “Situating digital interventions: mixed methods for HCI researchin the home,” Interacting with Computers, 2014, iwu034

64


home as an experiential context. It helps to understand the habitual and tacit

routines within home environment. This study would adopt the method of

video-diary in video ethnography for the third fieldwork regarding family bath.

It helps to observe how the family interact within this intimate environment on

everyday basis. Video-diary5 is similar to the diary method which created by

the participants to record the activities in their daily life. En et al.6 claimed

that video diary could provide the first person perspective from the subject and

the third-person perspective from the researcher about overall experience. It

helps to focus on the experience perceived by the user rather than the designed

system.

This family bath fieldwork was held in Chan’s family who has a son aged at

three. It is a family who has a habit to keep the memories of the child through

taking pictures of different moments, including bathing. The child hereby is

familiar on facing the camera of his parents even during the bath. The purpose

of the fieldwork and the usage of video dairies was explained to the parents

beforehand. In this fieldwork, the video-diaries were shot by the mother in

a couple of days throughout a week (22nd, 25th, 26th of September). The

video dairies recorded the bathing and head washing experience of her child

while her husband was bathing the son. The thick description below is written

according to the video dairy shot by Mrs. Chan on the 22nd of September in

Macau (Figure 3.4). The bath time was around 18:30, the time Mr. Chan and

Mrs. Chan were all back home from work.

5. Andy Alaszewski, Using diaries for social research (Sage, 2006)6. Looi Qin En and See Swee Lan, “Social gaming?analysing Human Computer Interac-

tion using a video-diary method,” in Computer Engineering and Technology (ICCET), 20102nd International Conference on, vol. 3 (IEEE, 2010), V3–509

65


Figure 3.4: Bath time in Chan’s Family, Video Screenshot by Mrs. Chan

Thick Description in Chan’s Family

The father prepare the bathing basin and adjust the temperature of the water.

He turned on the cold water from the tap while pouring the hot water from the

kettle, then used his hand to testify the temperature of the water. Meanwhile,

he put some bath toys inside the bathing basin. After that, the father took

off his son’s clothes. The son walked into the bathing basin. His father then

poured the shower gel onto his hands and washed his son’s body. The son

sang and clapped his hands during the time. Then he grabbed his toys and

played around, while his father took up a cup filled with water to rinse his

body. His father continued to wash by moving around his son’s body. The boy

was singing, making some sounds, and moving his body, staring at his father,

holding toy with his hands. Then his father laughed, the boy laughed as well.

The son held the toy kept pushing toward and backward onto the water.

His mother chatted with the son, “what kind of toys do you take for bath

today?....are you driving a boat?” Then the father poured the shampoo on his

son’s head. His son responded, “don’t wash my head. He was holding his toy

while looking at his father. His father continued to scrub the son’s head with

shampoo and said, “I know that you don’t like head washing, but your head is

indeed smelly.” His mother laughed, “I don’t know why your head is smelly

even you have such little short hair”. Meanwhile, the son kept playing with his

66


toys. Then his father asked him to look up at the ceiling. His mother asked,

“are you ready?” The son started to scream.

His father then filled the cup with water going to wash the head. The son

kept resisting and tried to grab the rinsing cup from his father’s hand. Yet his

father quickly changed another hand to wash his head. The mother reminded

the boy, “do you remember that I have taught you to cover your eyes with

hands?” His father meanwhile already prepared the handkerchief. His mother

started counting, “1, 2, 3, are you ready?”. Then the son closed his eyes and

covered with his hands. His father used the handkerchief to wrap his head and

asked, “are you ready?”. His mother added, “1, 2, 3......good boy.” His father

poured the water from the cup for several times. His mother kept saying, “you

are such a good boy today.” After rinsing, the son opened his eyes with smiles

and said, “oh yeah.” The mother said again, “you are indeed a good boy.” The

son smiled and clapping his hands. After they finished the bath, the father

took the son out from the basin and wrapped him with towel, then put the

clean clothes on him.

3.1.4 Integrated Findings

The fieldwork data of three families were analysed into five models according

to Beyer et al. method7. It includes the flow model, sequence model, artefact

model, physical model and cultural model (See Appendix A). The model anal-

ysis helps to find out an integrated view among three family fieldworks. Beside,

the mental model suggested by Kim Goodwin8 also helps to understand how

the users relate the action in their mind. Though each family has their own

approach of family interaction for bonding, there are some similarities found

among three families.

7. Beyer and Holtzblatt, Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems8. Kim Goodwin, Designing for the digital age: How to create human-centered products

and services (John Wiley & Sons, 2011)

67


Intimate interaction at preschool stage

In three families, parents are shown to give the preschool child more inti-

mate interaction in close proximity while compared with elder child in primary

school. For example in the mental model of Chu’s family, Mrs. Chu would

show more bodily interaction to the younger child such as stroking the younger

daughter’s hair when talking to her. Lei’s family also shows the same that Mr.

Lei would give his preschool son hugs when playing the ball with him. In the

physical model analysis, Mrs. Chu would follow the younger one wherever she

goes. While comparatively, the elder one is more independent. She would talk

over the phone and do her own works even her parents were not nearby. In

Lei’s family, Gabriel is also shown to be dependent on his parents. When he

remember certain things, he would ask his parents to get that thing for him

and sat near his parents. In Chan’s family, it is also shown that the father had

many intimate sensation interaction with his son throughout the bath time

such as the eye contact and the skin contact when scrubbing his son’s body.

It gave him the enjoyment of intimacy shared with his son during the private

bath time.

Family routine guiding through playing

For the preschool child, the parents focus on guiding them through playing. For

example in the cultural model of Chu’s family, they would make a behaviour-

oriented gameplay alike to-do-list to guide the preschool child to finish certain

routines. They would give the child awards after they accomplished it. In the

cultural model of Lei’s family, they also take the play time as the chance to

teach and guide the child for learning correct attitude. They show their loves

and encouragements for him during the play time. Sometimes they guide the

son how to play, sometimes they simply enjoy following the playing instruction

from the son. Yet when the son did wrong or play naughtily, they would

correct him immediately. For Chan’s family, the mother would use counting

68


and singing to encourage his son to go through the hair washing which is his

son unfavoured routine. Parents are like the playmates for the child. They

build the family bonds through playful interaction. In the sequence model of

Lei’s family, it is found that all family members were involved in the play time.

When one of them initialled the play, the others would follow accordingly and

take turns to act in leading role at play. The sequence model of Chan’s family,

it is also shown that the son would move his body along with his father’s

washing movement even though he was playing with his toy. The consolidated

cultural model showed that parents promote family bonding while balancing

with their daily routine. They valued the family bonding time with their

children. Yet while the child sometimes does not follow the daily routine, it

make the parents feel frustrated on top of the exhaustion after work.

Daily artefacts as the medium for interaction

Through the artfact model, it is found that the daily artefact in parents’

perspective could be treated as a toy in child’s perspective. For example, even

though there were bath toys around, the son in Chan’s family would play

the rinsing cup with water while his father used it to wash his body. Lei’s

family loves to take the simple daily artefact and turn that as a toy through

imagination. For example, the paper roll can be treated as a flute or a violin

bow in their hands. Also they love to create different ways to play using the

same artefact. The artefacts are not limited for one purpose. Chu’s children

also play with artefacts in their imagination. Two daughters love to invite their

parents to play the cooking game and dolls together. Mrs. Chu would pretend

to be the customer of a restaurant when the girls did the cooking. Besides, it

is found that parents would use children’ interest to guide them. For example,

Mr. Lei would use the puzzle and the book with the Buzz Lightyear cover (his

son favourite character) to encourage his son to learn during play.

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3.2. The Personas

Summary of Integrated Findings

Based on the finding of the model analysis in the fieldwork, Ludic Odour

thereby proposes to take family bathing as daily routine which shared inti-

mately among parents and child. The design focus is for the family with

preschool child aged under six, as the fieldwork showed that the parents have

more intimate sensation interaction with them at this stage and the child de-

pends on the parents to take care the daily routine. Also the fieldwork showed

that the families builds the bond by guiding the daily routine through playful

interaction. Ludic Odour lets the parents guide the child taking the bathing

while the child is playing with the bathing artefact. It provides the context for

both parents and child involved in the selection of scents for bathing. Ludic

Odour adopts the form of bathing artefact along with the bathing interaction

between parents and preschool child to create first encountered olfactory ex-

perience at daily bath. It takes odours as the medium to promote bonding

between parents and child through the family interaction at everyday life.

3.2 The Personas

According to Kim Goodwin9, personas could help to envision what the po-

tential users most need from their situation. It describes the goals and the

behaviour patterns of the users through the method of storytelling. By defin-

ing the personas of Ludic Odour, it helps to visualise the thoughts and the

behaviours of the potential family users of the design. This study defines the

personas of parents shown in Figure 3.5 and the personas of preschool child in

Figure 3.6.

9. Goodwin, Designing for the digital age: How to create human-centered products andservices

70

3.2. The Personas

Figure 3.5: Persona - Parents

71

3.2. The Personas

Figure 3.6: Persona - Child

72

3.2. The Personas

A young family like Edmond, Tammy and Jay is the target personas for

Ludic Odour. They are young couple both are working for professions. They

have one child in the aged of three called Jay. They enjoyed spending time

with their son, yet they have to go out for work at day time. They value the

family bonding time very much when they spend with their child. After a long

working day, it is always a great reward to see their child again. The child

Jay also longs to see his parents after a whole long day. However, Edmond

and Tammy also need to go through all the housework and daily routine with

Jay after work like bathing. Sometimes they feel exhausted after work if Jay

resists to follow these routines. For example, sometimes Jay loves to bath so

much that he resists to leave the bathroom. Edmond and Tammy would worry

that he would get cold. While in some occasions, Jay enjoyed so much playing

with his toys at the living room. It is difficult to get him to take bath. Not to

mention that if this is the day for hair washing, it is like a disaster for both

parent and child side. As Jay dislike the hair washing experience that he is

afraid of the water flowing acroos his eyes, while his parents also feel frustrated

to finish the hair washing routine after an exhausted working day. Here, Ludic

Odour aims to design for this personas for promoting their family bonding

time at bathing by creating early encountered olfactory experience through

their family interaction. It lets the child enjoys having different scents at each

bath, while also lets the parents feel relax when smelling the scents triggered

by their child.

73

3.3. The Concept

3.3 The Concept

Figure 3.7: The Concept of Ludic Odour

The concept of Ludic Odour is to design digital artefact with smell for parents

and child for family bonding through creating the olfactory experience at their

daily bath. It treats smell as the medium to bond the parents and child

together. Ludic Odour provides the categories of scents related to family daily

74

3.3. The Concept

life. It lets the parents and child choose the scents for daily bathing based on

their preferences and family activities. Family interaction at bathing would be

detected through the input sensors which are embedded in the bathing artefact

soap. It would trigger the odour emission from the emission device installed in

the bathroom. The duration and the sequence of odour emission are changed

based on the family interaction.

The design is targeted for the family like the personas Edmond, Tammy

and Jay. They are young family with preschool child. The parents need to

work at daytime, also take care the housework and daily routine after work.

They value the bonding time spending with the child. The child is in his

preschool stage who loves to play. He depends on his parents take care of him

about the daily routine such as bathing. Everyday after work, the first thing

the parents do is to take the bath for him. It is the most intimate moment

between parents and the child in a day. The parents take this chance to check

his physical health while bathing with him. The child also longs to see his

parents after a long day. He loves to play at bathroom while his parents wash

him.

Ludic Odour would be deployed at real family bathroom. It is a shared

space among family members for their private time. It is not only a process

of odour- changing process from unpleasant sweat to pleasant refresh odour,

but also a process of family intimate interaction. Family bathing is the time

for cleaning, refreshing and relaxation. Ludic Odour takes family bathing as

the daily routine which is shared intimately between parents and child for

bonding. On one hand, the parents persona enjoy pleasant experience with

the scents they select together with child while also doing the daily routine to

wash the child. On another hand, the child persona could also participate in

creating the olfactory experience with the parents.

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3.3. The Concept

The system of Ludic Odour provides the categories of scents which matches

with the daily family routine. As the preference of smell is subjective to each

family due to their previous experience or the allergy of family members, Ludic

Odour lets the family choose the scents to represent the family routine or sea-

son. For example, one family may choose the smell of grass to represent their

last visit to the park while another family may choose the smell of ocean to

represent the expectation of the coming summer vocation. Children may also

choose their favourites like the smell of chocolate to represent their fondness.

Ludic Odour adopt the bathing artefact into the form of interaction. The

bathing artefact become the instrument to create the olfactory experience

based on the parent-child interaction at bathing. It embeds the input sensor

into the bathing artefact soap. When the parents and child use the soap

scrub on the body, the sensor detects the strength and the duration of it. It

connects the system application to trigger the corresponding odour emission

from the emission device which is put inside the bathroom. The duration and

the sequence of odour emission would be changed according to the scrubbing

detection. Ludic Odour provides the first encountered experience with smell

for parents and child to promote bonding at daily bath with the smell they

select together from the categories related to their family daily life.

This study aims to bring the value of odour in family bonding to daily

bath through digital olfaction technology. It takes smell as the substantive

medium as the output of family interaction by turning the bathing tools into

digital artefacts to create olfactory experience. It lets the preschool child first

experience the odours in a pleasant context when bathing with parents. The

child takes part in the selection of smell to create the olfactory experience

with parents together. Also it lets the parents enjoy the olfactory experience

created by their child through Ludic Odour while doing the daily bathing.

The parents can take this chance to bond with the child through the first

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3.4. Initial Design and Experiments

encountered olfactory experience at family bathing. Ludic Odour brings the

possibility of digital olfaction into family bath for parents and child bond

together with smell based on their interaction at daily bath.

3.4 Initial Design and Experiments

Ludic Odour is designed based on the ethnography research method including

the fieldwork and model analysis. By defining the personas, it helps to clarify

the goal of the design. In order to realize the concept, the design of Ludic

Odour includes four components: (1) the categories of scents related to family

daily life, (2) selection of scents for family to choose their preferences based on

their family occasions, (3) bathing artefact to detect the bathing behaviour,

and (3) emission device to emitting corresponding odours.

3.4.1 About the Categories of Scents

3.4.1.1 The Categories

The categories of scents are designed based on the ethnography research in

the family fieldwork. They are related to the smells which the parents and

child encounter in their daily life. It includes the smells which the family

encounter when they go to the nature and park at their leisure time, the

smells which come from fruits and vegetable the parents provide at snack time

and meal time, the smells which the family encounter in birthday parties or

family holidays, and the smells which the family encounter at daily routines

like cleaning and reading.

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Nature & Park

In the cultural model of Lei’s family, they fond on guiding their son to learn

in the nature. They have a little garden in their rooftop. There were flowers

and plants. Gabriel would help to water the plants with his parents. Mrs. Lei

also love to bring Gabriel to the park nearby if she gets off from work early. In

the fieldwork in Chu’s family, Mrs. Chu said they would bring the daughters

to their favourite park or beach at weekend as a reward if the girls do good

during the week. In both families, it is shown that nature and park is the

places that the parents love to bring the children to go in their leisure time.

Thereby, the smell of nature and park would be chosen as one of the categories

in Ludic Odour. The smell of grass, lavender, bamboo, ocean, jasmine would

be used to represent the smells in the nature.

Fruit & Vegetable

In the fieldwork in Lei’s family, they would give blueberries to Gabriel after

dinner. They emphasis on giving the healthy food for their son. There is

orange juicer in Lei’s kitchen. They let Gabriel make the orange juice by

himself. In Chu’s family, Mrs. Chu encourages the daughters to eat vegetable

food as well. They would set it as one of the goals in the task list. Therefore,

the smells of fruit and vegetable would be chosen as one of the categories in

Ludic Odour.

Party & Holiday

According to the cultural model of Chu’s family, they emphasis on the rela-

tionship with other families and daughters’ friends. They often hold parties

to invite friends to their home. In their artefact model, some pictures in the

family photo album showed that they held the birthday party to celebrate

daughter’s birthday. Many food and sweets were provided. Katie’s friends

also brought gifts to come to celebrate her birthday. Another picture is the

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celebration party for new-born Kay. Through the family photo album, it is

shown that the birthday and celebration parties are the family events both the

parents and child treasure very much. In the consolidated mental model, it is

shown that the parents would organize the family events for family bonding

such as family vocation. Thereby, the smells of party and holiday would be

chosen as one of the categories in Ludic Odour.

Living & Cleaning

In the mental model of Chan’s family, the father would prepare the shampoo

and shower gel before bathing his son. He uses clean towel and baby powder

to dry his son’s body. Then he dresses the son with clean clothes. The smell

of cleaning would be chosen as one of the categories in Ludic Odour. Besides,

the families in the fieldwork value the storybooks. Chu’s family bring the

daughters to the public library once a month. The girls would pick up the

books they like while Mrs. Chu would also pick up the books she would love

to read for the girls. In Lei’s family, Mrs. Lei tells bedtime story every night

before Gabriel go to sleep. They would use paper to make different kinds of

toys as well. In the physical model in the families, it is shown that living room

and bedroom are the main areas that the parents and children spend their

family bonding time. For example, leather sofa were found in the living room

in both families. In Chu’s family, two daughters would go to sofa to stay close

with their father when he sat there to relax and watched T.V. In Lei’s family,

Gabriel would treat the sofa as the surface of the drum to play around there.

Wood is also found in the family environment setting. In the artefact model

in Lei’s family, they use wooden long stools instead of plastic chairs. Likewise,

the physical models in the families show that the children love to hang around

in parents’ bedroom. They would lie on the bed to listen bedtime story or play

around on the bed. Therefore, the smell of the living such as the furniture and

the book would be used in the Ludic Odour.

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3.4.1.2 The Materials of Scents

As the Ludic Odour is designed for using at the bathroom, different materials

of scents Figure 3.8 were considered for emission device to match the bathing

context. It includes the scented liquid and the scented soap.

Figure 3.8: Initial Trials of Materials - (Left) Fragrance; (Middle) EssentialOil; (Right) Soap

Figure 3.9: Experiments of Scented Liquid with Extraction Method

Regarding the scented liquid, several trials have been conducted initially.

In order to have a custom-made scents, the hand made ones were made with

the original materials with ethanol. Coffee, almond and the fruit peel were

used for trial, as shown in Figure 3.9. However, it turned out that there was

mildew grown inside due to technical issues. It is difficult to make it without

professional lab environment. Later I also tried to blend different essential

oils.Yet the outcome was not as good as expected. After these trials, the

scented liquid products are considered. As Ludic Odour is targeted for the

family with young child. The safety of the scents is a crucial concern from the

parents. The scented liquid products are proved before selling in the market.

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The scented liquid can be made by water soluble essential oils or the scented

mist. The advantage of scented liquid is that it can be controlled through spray

bottles or aroma diffusers. The duration and the sequence of the emission could

be controlled by power on and off. The scented air can be spread directly in

the bathroom once it is emitted. The scented experience is shared with all the

family members in the bathroom. The digital system could detect the family

interaction to trigger the scents accordingly. Also it provides the visual cue

of the odour emission through its mist. It gives the users about the feedback

of the system. The visual cue of the emission gives the visual attraction for

the child for interaction as well. The visibility of system status provides the

user a sense of control and safety. The user would know if any scented mists

were released through the system. The disadvantage is that the scented air

is easily influenced by the bathroom environment such as the physical space

and the ventilation system. The scent would remain in the bathroom. The

scented liquid can be made by water soluble essential oils or the scented mist

products available in the market. This increased the number of the types of

scents could be used in the design.

Another material is the scented soap. The advantage of the the scented

soap is that the scent would apply directly on the skin. The olfactory experi-

ence is shared through the intimacy. And the scent would be brought to the

living room after bathing along with the bather’s body. Also, it is part of the

bathing artifact which is generally used at bathroom. It relied on the bathers

to touch and grab the soap actively. It is more tangible olfactory experience

compared with the experience with scented liquid through emission device.

However, the scent on the soap is difficult to be changed through the digital

system. The scent of the soap has to be decided when the soap is made. The

types of the scent on soap are limited to certain essential oils which mainly

are herbs and fruity. Compared with different materials of scents, the scented

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liquid is chosen to be used in the system as it is more suitable for the design

context of Ludic Odour.

Three sources of the scented liquids are considered. One is the water soluble

essential oils from Muji as they are designed for aroma diffusers originally. The

categories of smell found in Muji are mainly related to the plants and herbs.

In order to provide the scents of fruits, the body mists from Body Shop are

used as they are safety to use on body as well. It provides the categories

of fruity and floral scents. For the scents related to the daily life, scenario

fragrance from Fragrance Library is used. It provides the scents which are

seldom available in the market such as the scents of baby powder, laundry,

leather, etc. Based on the material sources, five scents are selected in each

categories as shown in Figure 3.10.

Figure 3.10: The Categories of Scents

3.4.2 About the Selection of Scents

Based on the fieldwork and model analysis in the ethnography research, to-

tal twenty samples from the categories of scents were selected to represent

the scents of the places, the artefacts, the family activities that the parents

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and children encounter together in daily life. As each family has their own

subjective experience with particular smells, here I adopted the approach of

Sugiyama et al.10 to present the categories of scents for the families to choose

for their family bath. This approach helps to know the family subjective

thoughts and feelings on the odours. The odours were coded with random

numerals with three digits as shown in Table 3.1.

Categories Odours Random Numerals

Grass #227

Bamboo #776

Nature & Park Jasmine #957

Lavender #558

Ocean #920

Tomato #543

Coconut #661

Fruit & Vegetable Mango #854

Orange #903

Strawberry #952

Popcorn #189

Chocolate #532

Party & Holiday Vanilla #538

Coffee #576

Earl Grey Tea #693

Laundry #394

Baby Powder #961

Living & Cleaning Leather #852

Mahogany #418

Paper book #877

Table 3.1: Twenty Scents with Numerals

10. Sugiyama et al., “Proustian Products are Preferred: The Relationship Between Odor-Evoked Memory and Product Evaluation”

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Twenty samples were presented with the cotton inside the sealed bags.

Each bag was tagged with a label with its own random numeral. The families

were invited to smell the samples one by one to select two odours which related

them with their family members, events, places, artefacts, etc. After that,

they were asked to write down a detailed description of each chosen scent and

the reason behind. According to the selection of scents from the family, the

corresponding scented liquid would be put into the emission device.

3.4.3 About the Bathing Artefact

The scents that the family chooses from the category provided in Ludic Odour

would be integrated into the digital artefact system. The system includes input

sensor embedded inside the bathing artefact to detect bathing interaction, and

the output actuator to emit the scents accordingly. The target personas can

create their own family olfactory experience with the child together at daily

bath through Ludic Odour. The olfactory experience thereby associates with

family interaction on daily basis. The design of the interaction are based on the

observation in the fieldwork and the mental model analysis. In the fieldwork in

Chan’s family, it is found that the rinse cup is the bathing artefact in father’s

hands. He used the rinse cup to wash his son’s head and body. Yet in the

child’s perspective, it is a bath toy to him. The son loves to grab the cup

to play with water. The bathing routine and play time happens altogether.

Ludic Odour thereby takes the bathing artefact to detect the bathing behaviour

during bath time by embedding the input sensor inside.

Initial System with Arduino

Several input sensors were considered at the beginning of the design process

(Figure 3.11). CdS sensor was considered to detect if the bather presses the

body wash pump bottle or touch the soap. It helped to know when the cleaning

process starts. And it matched well with the shower gel context. However,

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Figure 3.11: Initial Trials of Input Sensors - (Left) Blow to Smell - ElectretCondenser Microphone; (Middle) Press to Smell - CdS sensor; (Right) Shaketo Smell - ADXL335 sensor

it limited the detection on whether the bather do a certain action or not. It

could not provide the variety of the bathing interaction. Accelerometer sensor

ADXL335 was considered. It helped to detect when the rinsing started and the

bather position through the movement of the shower head. Another one was

the electret condenser microphone. It matched well with the action of playing

with the soap bubbles. Breath in and out went in pairs. When the bather

made the breath out to blow the bubbles, he or she would make a deep breath

in afterward. The electret condenser microphone can detect when the bather

blows towards it. It made the action of smell going naturally with the action

of blow while playing soap bubbles. The scent would be breath in accordingly.

The initial idea was to encourage the child do certain poses during bath,

for example, raising up his hands to trigger a certain odour emission while his

parent was washing his body. The initial experiment was conducted in a real

bathroom (Figure 3.12). Three CdS sensors were attached on the slide door

and three aroma diffusers were deployed on the floor. They were connected

through Arduino system. However, the lighting and humid environment inside

the bathroom are varied at day and night. It affected the accuracy of the

sensor detection on the slide door. Also the safety is a very crucial concern

when designing for children at bath. The aroma diffusers need to be deployed

in a water proof environment to prevent from the electronic shock.

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Figure 3.12: Initial Experiment in Bathroom

Refined the System with MESH

In order to let the family users have more controls on the interaction setting

by themselves in situ, Sony MESH tags11 (Figure 3.13) are used as the system

of Ludic Odour. It provides not only the interface for family to set up the

interaction, but also the wireless connection through bluetooth which is more

suitable to use at the bathroom environment. Moreover, MESH provides the

IFTTT connection. It expands the possibilities of combining Ludic Odour

with other systems in Internet of Things.

Ludic Odour adopts the input sensors of Sony MESH tags including the

move tag and GPIO tag. The move tag is embedded inside the bathing artefact

to detect the duration and the strength of bathing interaction. MESH GPIO

tags are used as the actuators to trigger the odour emission from the emission

device. Once the move tag detects the actions of the bather, it sends the

signals to MESH application through bluetooth. The application responses

11. Sony MESH, http://meshprj.com/

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Figure 3.13: Sony MESH Tags

accordingly based on the user setting and transfers the signals to the GPIO

tags to trigger the sequence and intensity of emissions from the emission device.

Bathing Behaviour with artefacts

The interaction between parents and child at bathing is involved a series of

behaviours. Ludic Odour intends to integrate the bather behaviour with the

odour emission in the system. The behaviour depends on the bathing habits

in each family. According to the fieldwork in Macau, bathing and shower are

found in family bath. It depends on the stage of the child, the parents would

use different methods.

Rinsing using rinse cup

According to the observation in fieldwork, parents usually bath the child at

the bathing basin when the child is aged under three. They put the child

inside the basin to let them play with the water, while they stand outside the

basin to bath the child. Instead of using shower head, the parents use the

rinse cup for better control of the water rinsing. Besides, the child at this

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Figure 3.14: Rinse Cup with Sensor

stage loves to use rinse cup to play with the water by pouring the water in

and out. The rinse cup is treated like a toy in the child’s perspective. The

orientation sensor could be hidden at the bottom of the rinsing cup (Figure

3.14). When the bather uses the rinse cup to pour the water, the orientation

sensor can detect if the rinse cup is tilt or not. It could trigger the odour

emission correspondingly.

Rinsing using shower head

Figure 3.15: Shower Head with Sensor

When the child is aged in between three to six, the parents use shower head

combining with the bathing basin. They let the child stand inside the basin,

then they use the shower head to rinse the child’s body. When the shower head

is moving up and down, the attached move sensor (Figure 3.15) could detect

the movement. When the parent use the shower head to wash the child, the

move sensor could send the signals to the system to trigger the odour emission

accordingly.

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Cleaning using pump bottles

Figure 3.16: Pump Bottle with Sensor

The pump bottles are used for shampoo and body wash. According to the

fieldwork, the parents pressed the pump bottles to get the shower gel. The

young children aged under three mainly rely on their parents to do the scrub-

bing. In this case, the sensor could be attached at the bottom of the shower

gel and shampoo containers, as shown in Figure 3.16. When the parent presses

the container to get the shower gel, it would trigger the odour emission. By

doing this, the family can create different olfactory experience even using the

same shower gel.

Cleaning using soap

Figure 3.17: Soap with Sensor

When the child is growing up aged over three, the parents would let the chil-

dren learn to scrub by themselves. However, the children are not good at

handling the pump bottle to get the appropriate amount of shower gels. In

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this case, the parents would give the soap to the child. Soap provides a rich

haptic and olfactory sensory at bathing. It can be used as the bathing artefact

to detect the bathing interaction. The sensor embedded inside can detect the

strength of scrubbing. The brightness sensor could be hidden under the soap

(Figure 3.17 - left). When the bather puts the hands on the soap, it would

trigger the odour emission. Alternatively, the shake sensor could be embedded

inside a water proof container (Figure 3.17 - right). When the bather holds

the soap to scrub the body, it can trigger the odour emission from the emission

device at the same time.

Figure 3.18: Initial Trials of Bathing Artefacts - (From Left to Right) PumpBottles; Shower Head; Soap; Rinse Cup

Different trials of bathing artefacts with the MESH tags were conducted as

shown in Figure 3.18. Compared with different artefacts, the soap is chosen to

be used in Ludic Odour as it can let the children get involved in the cleaning

process at bathing. Also, the continuity of scrubbing matches better with the

continuity of odour emission.

3.4.4 About the Emission Device

In order to find out the feasibility of the emission device for bathing, several

odour delivery devices have been put into trials accordingly.

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Experiment with Spray Bottles

Figure 3.19: Spray Bottles

Battery powered timer air-freshener sprays were modified as the computer-

controlled scent output system. Yet the types of scents are limited to the

scents of the commercial air-fresheners such as citrus and lavender. In order

to provide different types of scents, the original aerosol bottles were replaced

of plastic spray bottles with scented liquid filling within (Figure 3.19). The

in-built timer was bypassed so that the activation of the odour emission can

be controlled by Arduino and MESH. By controlling its power on and off, the

system can complete the circuit to cause a default amount of the scented liquid

to be emitted when the spray bottle was pressed down. However, the odour

emission could not be made continuously unless the bather keeps pressing the

spray bottle up and down. Also it came with the audio noise of the servo when

the spray bottle was pressed down. Besides, the size of the air-freshener box

was quite large if there were several scents provided in the system.

Experiment with Aroma Diffusers

In order to provide the odour emission continuously, aroma diffuser was thereby

considered to be adopted in the system. Several USB powered aroma diffusers

and humidifier were modified to be the odour delivery system such as bottle

shaped and round shaped (Figure 3.20). The USB powered aroma diffusers

could be connected to Arduino. It can control up to thirteen aroma outputs

simultaneously. The advantage of aroma diffuser is that the mist of the odour

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Figure 3.20: Aroma Diffusers (Left: Bottle-shaped; Right: Round-shaped)

emission could be clearly seen without much noise. The content of scented

liquid could be easily replaced by the user. However, the bottle shaped aroma

diffusers occupied certain space at the bathroom if there were three to five scent

emissions to be provided at the same time. The round shaped humidifier could

be floated on the water. Yet its power on and off were controlled through the

press button on the surface. This made it difficult to be controlled by Arduino

or MESH directly.

Experiment with Ultrasonic Atomizers

Several aroma diffusers have been tried out for the odour emission device. Yet

the condition of the available diffusers are not stable. Due to the limited space

of the bathroom, the size of the aroma diffusers need to be downscale. For

this purpose, stand alone ultrasonic atomizers were adopted in the design. The

ceramic piezoelectric transducers inside the atomizer can transform the liquid

into mist through the vibratory motion made by high frequency sound wave

from ultrasonic nozzles. It can control not only the duration of emission, but

also the intensity of the emission.

The ultrasonic atomizers were put into a container with four holes inside.

It downsized the space of holding four diffusers altogether. Then the batteries

and the circuit boards could be hidden inside the plant pot (Figure 3.21).

However due to the design of the container, it is difficult to replace one type

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Figure 3.21: Atomizers Prototype #1 (four ultrasonic atomizers in one pot)

of scented liquid at a time. When one of the scented liquid was consumed, all

the other three scented liquid needed to be replaced altogether. This made

it inconvenience for the family users for daily usage. Therefore, small scale

standalone emission device needed to be designed.

Figure 3.22: Atomizers Prototype #2 (stand-alone ultrasonic atomizers)

Individual glass bottles were considered to be used as the containers of the

emission device. It enabled the users to change the scented liquid separately.

Glass bottles were also easy to clean and could avoid the scent materials re-

maining on the surface of the plastic bottles. The batteries and ultrasonic

circuit were all placed inside a sealed container to protect from humid envi-

ronment in the bathroom. The ultrasonic atomizers were soldered with the

circuit and put on top of the glass bottles (Figure 3.22). A cotton stick with

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scented liquid were placed inside the glass bottles. All containers were all

connected through the system. The base of the containers takes the form like

a cart. The family can arrange the locations of each emission device based

on their need. The emission device include the MESH GPIO tag, the piezo,

the cotton stick and the scented liquid. The MESH GPIO tag and batteries

were put into a sealed plastic box to protect from the water at the bathroom

environment.

Figure 3.23: Atomizers Prototype #3 (with 3D print cover)

The standalone container is good for individual use. However, it occupied

a certain space if several containers were located in the same places. Hence,

the modified version was developed according to this. The bottle-sized of

ultrasonic atomizers were adopted for container. The batteries and circuits

were hidden underneath the pot. In order to make the container look like a

toy, 3D print models were used to cover the bottle of the container (Figure

3.23). The family can use their favourite character to represent different scents.

The example of the 3D print models were created by faberdasher12 and used

12. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:283304

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under the “Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike”

license.

The Initial Setting of Interaction

The initial design of the interaction was setup as shown in Figure 3.24.

When the bather uses the bathing artefact pointing to one orientation, it would

trigger the odour emission related to that orientation. The odour emission

would be continued until another orientation was detected. For example, when

the child holds the bathing artefact pointing upward, the scent of orange would

be emitted. When the bathing artefact is pointed downward, the scent of

mango would be emitted and the emission of orange would be stopped. The

connection of the bathing artefact and the emission device was made through

the MESH application.

Figure 3.24: The Initial Setting of Interaction

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3.5. Pilot Study

3.5 Pilot Study

3.5.1 The Participative Families

The families in the pilot study were recruited by acquaintance. The invitation

includes the families who has preschool boy or girl aged under 6. The purpose

and the method of the study are given at the invitation. Due to the privacy

and allergic reasons, some families turned down the invitation. At the end,

four families responded for pilot study.

Four families in the pilot study have some similarities in background but

different in bathing habit, as shown in Table 3.2. All the families have a child

aged under six. They are the first child in the family. In the first case, Carson

is a four years old boy who attends the second year (K2) in kindergarten.

Carson’s father and mother take turn to bath Carson. Another one is Ho who

is two years old boy attending child-care centre. During the weekday, it is

Ho’s grandmother who helps to bath Ho as Ho’s parents usually come back

home late. At the weekend, Ho’s mother would bath him instead. The third

one is Josephine who is a two years old girl. She is afraid of bathing due to

one accident at bath. Her parents take turn to bath her. The fourth one is

Nick who is a six months-old boy. Nick’s mother is the one who is in charge

of bathing Nick everyday.

3.5.2 The Process of Pilot Study

The prototype of Ludic Odour was installed in the real family bathroom en-

vironment of the families in Macao. By putting the prototype into the real

bathroom environment, it helps to reflect the fuzziness of real design problem

which lab research may not reach. Also, it provides a secure and familiar en-

vironment for the children to experience with the digital artefact Ludic Odour

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3.5. Pilot Study

Family Carson Ho Josephine Nick

Age 4 years-old 2 years-old 1 years-old 6 months-old

Sex male male female male

Status first and onlychild

first and onlychild

first and onlychild

first and onlychild

School K2 Child-carecentre N/A N/A

Setting Shower insidethe bathtub

bathing basininside theshower stall

bathing basinon the

bathroom floor

bathing basinoutside theshower stall

Table 3.2: Background of the Families in the Pilot Study

like the way they usually do at their daily bath. This in-situ evaluation also

gets the potential family members involved in reflecting the context in which

the Ludic Odour is used.

The families in the pilot study were asked to provide a picture which showed

their bathroom setting for family bath before the home visit for installation.

Below is the bathroom setting from four families. The bathrooms are all semi-

open space. For a better odour emission, the digital artefact Ludic Odour was

put within one meter distance from the bathing area. One of the purpose was

to ensure the odour emission could be delivered to the area of the bathers.

Another consideration was the safety. As the digital artefact Ludic Odour

included batteries inside, the artefact was placed outside the bathing basin to

avoid the risk of electric shock during bathing.

A phone interview was conducted accordingly regarding the family bathing

habit and bathing time after the bathroom picture was received. The questions

were about if the child uses bathing basin or shower, if the child usually stand

or sit inside the shower stall, if they use soap or shower gel, if they use any

scented products during the bath time, and how long the duration of the

daily bath usually take. The result of the interview helped to arrange the

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3.5. Pilot Study

prototype of Ludic Odour in-situ better which fit to each family bathroom

setting. Meanwhile, the date and the time of home visit would be confirmed

at the phone interview. The time was taken at the usual bathing time of the

child. The setup was conducted half hour before the bath.

During the bath time, the family was invited to use Ludic Odour at their

bathrooms. If the family was opened for observation, the researcher would

observe the child bathing from a distance. If the family required the privacy,

the researcher would wait at the living room. Either of the cases, the parents

were encouraged to take the pictures and videos when the situation allowed.

After the family finished bathing, the parent dried up their child’s body and

cleaned up the bathroom. Once they finished and settled down, a follow-

up interview would be conducted. The interview was about how the family

perceived the experience with Ludic Odour. The duration of the pilot study

included the setup, the selection of scents, the bathing and follow-up interview

taking around two hours for each family.

3.5.3 The Pilot Study in Families

Pilot Study in Carson’s Family

Carson is four years old boy who attends the second year (K2) in the kinder-

garten. Carson’s parents are at their 30s both having their own jobs at day

time. Though his father and mother take turn to bath him after work every

day, his mother is the one who is usually responsible for bathing his son Car-

son. The pilot study was conducted on a Sunday evening. The total time was

about two hours. At the beginning, the purpose of the study was explained to

Carson’s mother. Before the setup, the mother was asked to rate the likeness

of the bathing experience. Both parent and the child side were rated as aver-

age in Carson’s family. Then total twenty samples of odours were presented

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3.5. Pilot Study

to Carson’s mother. She was asked to write down if any odour related her

with her family. After that, two odours were selected, which are #903 scent

(orange) and #532 scent (chocolate). She explained in the description that

these two odours were Carson’s favourites. The #532 scent smelled very sweet

like chocolate. Carson loves chocolates a lot that he always puts the chocolate

powder into the milk for breakfast. Sometimes she would bake the chocolate

cakes for him at holidays as well. The #903 scent is very juicy. The odour of

orange made her relate to Carson favourite colour of orange. Carson loves the

odour of orange as well.

Figure 3.25: Carson’s Bathroom

In Carson’s family, the child has his own bathroom. There is a bathtub

inside. They use a curtain to separate the bath tub with the toilet area (Figure

3.25). Even though they have a bathtub, they usually do shower for child.

Considered this semi-open bathing area and the height of the bather inside

the bathtub, the digital artefact Ludic Odour was put on a stool next to the

bathtub.

As Carson is already four years-old boy, his parents wanted to keep the

privacy for him. So the instruction of Ludic Odour was given to the parents

and the child in the living room. When it was first demonstrated the Ludic

Odour, Carson said “Oh, it’s so smelly” and tried to go away from it. Then

his mother explained to him that, “Really? you try to smell it again.... it is

your favourite.” Carson went closer to smell it again. Once he figured out

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how to interact with it. He shaked the sensors up and down trying to see any

difference of the odour emission. When he found out that pointing toward

one orientation would trigger one type of odour emission. He tried to point to

another orientation to trigger the other types. Once he got familiar with the

interaction. He added up the frequency of shaking and put his nose closer to

the diffusers. Carson’s mother started to worry that his eyes got to close to it.

She told Carson, “let’s stop it now for a moment and keep it later for bathing”.

Figure 3.26: Pilot Study in Carson’s Family

After that, Carson’s mother went to prepare the water and clothes while

Carson was playing the Ludic Odour at the living room. He tried to smell

each emission one by one. After the water was ready, Carson’s mother urged

Carson to take the bath. As they took the shower insider the bathtub, the

emission device was put near the bathtub. Beside, they left the curtain a bit

open for the better air circulation. Then the researcher waited at the living

room when they took the bath.

After Carson finished bathing, he went out to the living room. His mother

stayed inside the bathroom to clean up. A follow-up interview was conducted

afterward. According to Carson’s mother, Carson could not see the emission

clearly at the beginning. So they moved the emission device a little bit closer

to the bathtub. Carson used the sensor to control the emission while his

mother washed him. Since Carson continuously triggered the emission, two

smells were a bit mixed up after a while. Then Carson’s mother told Carson

to slow down and put the emission device outside the bathtub again. Then

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she asked him to figure out which smell was emitting as he could not see the

emission device when he stood inside the curtain. Carson tried to guess but

hardly getting it right. Meanwhile, Carson’s mother continued bathing him.

She told him to step out the bathtub and found the answer by himself. Then

she wrapped him with towel and put on the clean clothes.

Carson’s mother later responded that it was a bit difficult to control the

emission distance in the bathroom setting. Also the odour became complicated

because her son kept triggering the emission. She said it would be nice if it

could be controlled by the parents and child at the same time. Besides, she

raised up the concern that the interaction with Ludic Odour might get her

son too exciting. She would prefer to use during weekend rather than the

weekdays. Having said so, Carson’s mother said that she might want to use it

at her own bathing time especially when her son stayed at his grandmother’s

home. So she could imagine to bath with him even he was not there. Also, she

said probably it could be nice to let Carson pick the odours which represented

his parents when he took the bath at grandmother’s home. Later on, she

added that the odours smell like commercial perfumes. It would be great if

there are unique odours for each family members which are not easily to be

found in the market.

Pilot Study in Ho’s Family

Ho is two years old boy. Ho’s mother is her 30s. Ho’s mother and his grand-

mother take turn to bath him during the week. As Ho’s mother usually comes

back home late after work, his grandmother takes response to bath him during

the weekdays. Ho’s mother bath him mainly at weekend. The home visit was

conducted at the evening on one Saturday. During the selection of scents, Ho’s

mother picked up the #558 scent (lavender) and #227 scent (grass). She ex-

plained in the description that the #558 scent made her related to the family

trip to a flower garden when Ho was one years old. This was the first ever trip

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they made together after Ho was born. Though it was tired to travel with Ho

while he was so little, the family vocation was very rewarding to them. And

the #227 scent gave her fresh feeling of the bath. It was like the feeling when

she brought Ho to the park near their home when she went back home early

after work.

In Ho’s family, the bathing basin was put inside the shower stall (Figure

3.27). According to Ho’s mother, the adult usually sits outside the shower

stall to bath the child. Yet sometimes they would step into the shower stall

to bath together. It depends on parents schedule. If Ho’s parents come back

home late due to work, Ho’s grandmother would help to bath Ho. In this case,

grandmother would sit outside the shower stall to bath her grandson. Yet if

Ho’s mother bath Ho by herself, she would step into the shower stall to bath

together sometimes. After the bath, they would pick up the bathing basin and

hang it on the wall. Considered the limited space in Ho’s family bathroom,

the digital artefact Ludic Odour was put on top of the toilet seat which was

next to the shower stall. The vertical height was near to the height of the

bather.

Figure 3.27: Ho’s Bathroom

Once she selected the scents, she went to prepare the water for bathing.

Ho’s mother first put the bathing basin inside the shower stall. Then the

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emission device of Ludic Odour was put on top of the toilet seat which was

next to the bathing basin. Then she brought Ho to the bathroom and told

him there was a new toy to play at bath. As Ho loves to play during the

bath time, Ho’s mother let him control the odour emission by giving him the

input sensor of Ludic Odour. The input sensor was sealed inside a waterproof

case. When Ho shaked it, it triggered different odour emission. When Ho was

playing with it, Ho’s mother washed his body accordingly. As the emission

device was located close to the mother, she kept smelling the scents which

triggered by her son. Yet Ho did not notice any difference so he kept shaking

it again and again. After Ho’s mother finished washing, she picked him up

from the water and dried his body with towel. Meanwhile, Ho dropped down

the input sensor of Ludic Odour, the odour emission was stopped by then.

Figure 3.28: Pilot Study in Ho’s Family

At the follow-up interview section, Ho’s mother responded that the interac-

tion with Ludic Odour could help to draw her son’s attention during the bath.

She could quickly bath him because of this. However as her son kept shaking

the sensor repeatedly, the odour emission kept changing from time to time.

She could not figure it out which is which. Having said so, she was happy that

she could finish the bath quickly this time. However, she expressed the doubts

if it could attract him every time if he played for a couple of times. Despite of

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it, Ho’s mother added that Ho was sick the week before. She was glad to see

it cheered him up through the new experience of bathing with Ludic Odour.

In Ho’s family, the meaning of the odour was about the family time between

mother and son. As Ho’s mother goes back home late during the weekdays, she

treasured most for the family bonding time at weekend and the family trip at

holidays. The odours which Ho’s mother selected showed her fondness to the

family bonding time they shared together in family trip or going to the park

nearby. She wanted to bring that feeling to the bath in the normal day. As

Ho is a two years-old boy, he is keen on exploring things around. His mother

lets him to explore the digital artefact by himself. Hence, the digital artefact

Ludic Odour to Ho’s mother was a toy for her son to draw his attention during

bath time.

Pilot Study in Josephine’s Family

Josephine is a one years-old girl. According to her parents, Josephine had

an accident at bathing two weeks ago before the pilot study was conducted.

She is scared of bathing because she once slipped on the floor. Her parents

tried all ways to comfort her at bathing. On the day of pilot study, Josephine’s

mother and father were both at home. When Josephine’s mother was invited

to select the odours before bathing, her husband was curious to know what

his wife has chosen. He sat next to her and picked up each sample to smell

once again after his wife chose the odours. Josephine’s mother picked up four

scents which include #952 (strawberry), #661 (coconut), #957 (jasmine) and

#854 (mango). She described that #952 reminded her about the odour of

Josephine skin. #661 scent reminded her the gathering time spent with her

family when they laughed and talked together. #957 scent gave her the sweet

feeling of her husband while #854 scent reminded her the first gift her husband

gave her. After Josephine’s mother has decided these four scents, her husband

smelled it one by one. He said, “how come the scents you chose are all similar.”

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Josephine’s mother responded, “of course, it’s because they are all related to

my family. There is no surprise that why they smell similar.”

In Josephine’s family, the bathing basin was put directly on the floor of

the bathroom (Figure 3.29). Her parents let her sit inside the basin when

bathing for her. As Josephine is afraid of taking the bath since the accident

two weeks ago, her parents tried to change her impression of bathing by using

a new basin. Also the mother and father would join the bathing together. The

digital artefact Ludic Odour was put on top of the toilet seat. This was the

location which Josephine could clearly see when taking the bath.

Figure 3.29: Josephine’s Bathroom

The instruction was given to Josephine’s parents before they took the dig-

ital artefact Ludic Odour into the bathroom. When the father prepared the

water, the mother got Josephine ready for the bath. Before Josephine entered

the bathroom, her father used Ludic Odour soap waving to different orien-

tations to prepare the odour atmosphere. After Josephine stepped into the

basin, they started rinsing. When her father bathed her, her mother would

talk to her at the same time. After rinsing, Josephine’s father introduced Lu-

dic Odour to her saying, “Josephine, today you have a new toy to play at bath.”

Then her father handed the soap to her. When Josephine looked at the soap,

she was curious to touch it. However the soap was too heavy for her to hold.

Then her father held the soap for her to touch it and demonstrated to her by

taking the soap pointing to different orientations.

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Figure 3.30: Pilot Study in Josephine’s Family

In Josephine’s family setting, there were four orientations available includ-

ing top, bottom, left and right. These four orientations were related four

different odour emission. The top and bottom were related to #661 scent

(coconut) and #952 scent (strawberry) respectively. The left and right were

related to #957 scent (jasmine) and #854 scent (mango). During the bath

time, top and bottom were the two main orientations to be triggered. The

family reported that they can smell up to three odours during bathing. After

a while, the scent of coconut was dominant at the bathroom. Regarding the

soap sensor, they found it was interesting to encourage Josephine enjoy the

bathing. As the soap showed their family picture, they would ask Josephine

pointing out the family members when taking the bath. Josephine’s parents

explained that if she does not like certain thing, she would react greatly. But

she was very calm and enjoyed when Ludic Odour was presented at bathing.

However, Josephine’s mother responded that the odour she chose for bathing

did not recall her any memory with her family members during the bath. She

simply wanted to focus on finishing the bathing without doing something extra

to trigger the odour emission. She would like to leave it to Josephine to play

with it.

Pilot Study in Nick’s Family

Nick is six months-old boy. His mother is her 30s who baths Nick everyday.

According to his mother, Nick loves to bath very much. During the selection of

scents, she quickly dropped some of the odour samples which did not evoked

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any memories behind. She also put some samples aside to compare later.

Sometimes she opened the sealed bag in order to smell more clearly. In the

middle of the selection, she held one in hand. It was found out to be the most

evocative smell later in her description. Besides, she went back to the early

chosen ones to smell once again. Then she decided the second one. After the

selection, she was invited to write down the association or the story behind

the chosen scents. She was asked to rate the pleasantness and evocativeness

of the odour as well. The scents chosen by Nick’s mother were #661 scent

(coconut) and #776 scent (bamboo). According to her description, the #661

scent reminded her the days she went with her mother to her workplace. The

#661 scent is similar to the aromatic bead which was very popular in her

childhood. When she walked on the street with her mother, she would find

the colourful aromatic bead in the shop. This scent reminded her about her

childhood with her mother. She would like to bring the scent to the family

bath to enjoy it with her son. For the #776 scent, it made her think of the

ocean. The odour of ocean reminded her about the blue sky and the blue sea.

Blue is her favourite colour as well. She chose this scent because she wanted

to bring the feeling of ocean to the family bath.

Figure 3.31: Nick’s Bathroom

In Nick’s family, the bathroom is shared by parents and child inside the

master room. The bathing basin was put outside the shower stall. Nick’s

mother has put the cabinet underneath to raise up the height of the bathing

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basin. There was a changing pad next to the bathing basin for drying up the

child’s body after bath (Figure 3.31). The digital artefact Ludic Odour was

put on the top of the sink at the bathroom. It is within one meter distance

from the bathing basin. The vertical height of the sink is close to the bathing

basin.

Figure 3.32: Pilot Study in Nick’s Family

After Nick’s mother chose the scents, she went to the bathroom to prepare

the water. Then she brought Nick to the changing pad for taking off the

clothes. The emission device of Ludic Odour was put on top of the sink near

the bathing basin. Nick’s mother left it there and simply focused on bathing

for Nick. According to the observation, she had a lot intimate interaction with

her son during the bath. She also did massage with him and chatted with

him when drying up his body. Nick’s mother chose to use #661 scent when

bathing her son, then used #776 scent when drying up her son’s body.

After the bath was finished, a follow-up interview was conducted in the

living room. Nick’s mother responded that the bathing experience with Ludic

Odour made her relax during the bath. However it also distract her to certain

extent as well as she was aware that that was an artificial odour. Therefore,

she said she would not consider to use it at family bath everyday. Instead she

would use in some special occasions for fun by making different atmosphere

for Nick to bath.

In Nick’s family, the meaning of the odour was about the associations

across the generation. Nick’s mother chose the scents which represented her

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own childhood with her mother. She wanted to bring that into family bath to

share with her son. Besides, as Nick is a six months-old boy, his mother paid

more attention on the bathing. The digital artefact Ludic Odour for her was

like setting up the atmosphere for bathing.

3.5.4 Findings in the Pilot Study

The Selection of Scents

By replacing the original label of the odour with random numerals, it helps to

let the families find out the odour which means special to them. It also reduces

the expectation gap between the name of the odour and the actual smell. For

example in Carson’s case, his mother chose the ones which representing his

favourites. Ho’s mother would relate #558 scent to the first family trip to a

flower garden though she could not identify clearly it was the scent of lavender.

Josephine’s mother related #952 scent (strawberry) to her daughter’s skin.

Also she related #957 scent (jasmine) and #854 scent (mango) to the sweet

feeling with her husband. Nick’s mother related the #776 scent (bamboo)

as the scenery of the blue sky and ocean to her. An interesting common in

both Carson’s and Nick’s case is that the odours made them related to certain

colour. Carson loves the odour of orange due to his fondness on the colour of

orange. Nick’s mother imagined the #776 scent as the blue sky and sea as

her favourite colour is blue. The selection of scents in the four families were

mainly the scents of the nature, fruit and food.

Besides, each families has different associations with family related odours.

Some related to the parents own childhood while some related to the current

family. The odours labelled with numerals let the user get the perception of

smell directly without the influence of the odour name. Yet it took a long time

for the families to select one by one. Also, the users preferred to know what

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they are smelling before actually smell it. Therefore, the refined design should

consider to let the family select the odours based on the family preferences,

activities and occasions instead.

The Associations with Scents

The mothers in the four families were asked to write down the association

when they chose the scents. Nick’s mother related the scents to her own

childhood, Carson’s mother related the scents to her son favourite, Ho’s mother

related the scents to their family vocation. Josephine’s related the scents to her

family members. However during the bath time, they would not recall these

associations when they were bathing their child. The mothers simply focused

on bathing their child. For example, Nick’s mother was the one who wrote

the most detailed association. Yet she would not recall the association when

she was bathing her son with that odour emission. However, she found the

scent made her relax. Ho’s mother, Josephine’s mother and Carson’s mother

responded similarly. They would not recall a particular association when they

bathed the child as bathing was such a short time for them. They wanted to

focus on finished their bathing. However, they all responded that the smell

made them enjoyable. Therefore, the association related scent may not happen

at the moment of bathing. Rather than that, the scents provided a pleasant

atmosphere for them to enjoy the bathing with child.

The Odour Emission

Though four scents were available to bring in for bathing through Ludic Odour,

most of the families chose to bring two scents for bathing. Even though

Josephine’s family has chosen four scents, they found confusing after using

for a while. Since the sequence of emission was related to the orientation of

the sensor, it is better to use one artefact for one scent at one time. After

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all the scents were blend altogether in the bathroom, the family hardly dis-

tinguished which was which. Strong scent covered the light one. Therefore,

the refined design should limited the number of scents to be used at one bath.

Also it is important to consider the sequence of the odour emission according

to the intensity of odour.

The Interaction

The interaction with Ludic Odour was found to be different according to the

age of the child. Nick was too young to grab the thing and his mother was

paying a lot focus on bathing him. The interaction was simple that his mother

would leave Ludic Odour as the background. She only changed the odour

emission when she finished the bath. Josephine was also too young to hold the

bathing artefact soap. Her curious mainly fell on touching the soap itself. Ho

was at the age of exploration stage. He loves to playing things around so his

mother directly gave him the bathing artefact to play when she was washing

him. Ho enjoyed the shaking of the artefact. His focus was on the interaction

rather than the odour emission. Ho’s mother smelled the scents created by

her son’s interaction with the artefact. Comparatively, Carson is the eldest

among four children. He was curious about how the interaction worked behind.

Once his mother told him there was difference among the odour emission. He

tried to find out the sequence patterns and the relationship behind by shaking

to different orientations. When the odour emission gradually mixed up, his

mother tried to guide him to slow down and played the guessing game to find

out which odour was emitting.

The Experience with Ludic Odour

As the meaning is associated by the family members themselves, the reason

of selection also revealed the value they expected to have in the family bath.

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Though the digital artefact Ludic Odour was appeared the same in four partic-

ipative families bathroom. However, it provides different olfactory experiences

to the families depending on the meanings behind. In Carson’s family, his

mother chose the scent which were Carson’s favourite chocolate and orange.

She used the digital artefact Ludic Odour to create her son favourite atmo-

sphere in the bath. In Ho’s family, his mother chose the scents related to their

family bonding time at weekend and holiday. She wanted to bring the holiday

mood into daily family bathing. The digital artefact Ludic Odour becomes

a platform to bring them the feeling of being somewhere else. In Josephine’s

family, her parent used Ludic Odour to prepare the odour atmosphere before

she entered into the bathroom. They treated the soap sensor as the attraction

for Josephine to take the bath. For Nick’s mother, the scents brought her back

to her childhood with her mother. She wanted to share it with her own son.

In Nick’s family, the digital artefact Ludic Odour was used as connecting the

memories and feelings across generation.

3.6 Refined Design

3.6.1 About the Personas

The age range of the child personas in the pilot study was targeted on those

who aged from six months old to three years old. The parents of this age range

children are usually willing to let the researcher observe how they interact at

bathing in-situ. Yet the pilot study reflected that this age range of children

are too young to handle the interaction of Ludic Odour. They simply enjoyed

shaking the sensor or touching the soap, but did not clearly know what is

going on at bathing. Besides, the soap was a bit heavy for some of them to

hold in hands. The parents of this age range children are very concern about

the safety of the scent as well. Most of them prefer the odourless environment

at bathing. Yet for those who aged from three years old to six years old, the

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children were more aware of the interaction. They were interested in exploring

different ways of the interaction with the digital artefact. Also they can clearly

express what and why they like certain scents, and how they think about Ludic

Odour. In addition, the parents of this age range children would let the child

explore in the scented environment and take part in the interaction. Therefore,

the target age range of the child personas is adjusted to those who aged from

three years old to six years old.

3.6.2 About the Selection of Scents

About the Selection Process

Through the pilot study, it is found that odour associations were hardly evoked

during bathing. Though the parents were invited to select the scent which

associated them with their family and wrote down the meaning behind it.

However during bathing, the parents simply wanted to focus on the bathing

for the child. Though the scents gave them relax at the moment, all of them

reported that they did not recall any associations in such a short time. Also,

some of the parents responded that they would like to know what the scent is

before they smell it. Therefore in the refined design, the name of the scent was

shown directly at the selection process of scent. Besides, as the age range of

the child personas is raised up to those aged from three years old to six years

old. The child could get more involved in the selection of scents. Therefore

instead of choosing only by parent, both the parents and child are invited to

choose the scents together.

About the Number of the Chosen Scents

In Ludic Odour, each emission device represents one type of scent. In the pilot

study, some families chose to have two to four different scents at bathing. Yet

the outcome showed that the more scents available, the more confusion it may

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3.6. Refined Design

cause. In most of the families, different odour emissions mixed together at the

end of the bath time. For example, in Josephine’s family, though the parents

reported that they can distinguish up to three types of odours during bathing,

they said that at the end they mainly smelled the odour of coconut. It is

not only because they frequently held the soap sensor in the orientation which

triggered the coconut odour emission, but also because the odour of coconut

is the strongest among the rest of the odours they chose (strawberry, jasmine,

and mango). Therefore in the refined design, the number of the chosen scents

is set as two scents.

3.6.3 About the Bathing Artefact

About the Soap

In order to let the parents and child interact naturally at bath, the bathing

artefact is adopted as the input device for the system of Ludic Odour. It lets

them control the odour emission through their actions in bathing. Due to the

water environment of the bathroom, several bathing artefact were considered

at the beginning. The initial prototype of bathing artefacts were put into the

family bathing. In the pilot study, it is found that the soap could be used when

scrubbing the child’s body. The soap can be designed with a handle for the

child easy to hold (Figure 3.33). It lets the child get involved in the bathing

process. Also it can detect the strength and the duration of scrubbing with the

sensor inside. The scrubbing of soap fits into the context of odour emission.

Therefore in the refine design, it focuses on using one bathing artefact soap to

do the bathing detection.

About the Appearance

In order to attract the child to hold the soap, several appearances of soap have

been put into trials including family picture and different soap patterns. It

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3.6. Refined Design

is found that the family picture soap could cause the young child curiosity to

touch. Yet it may cause the sensor orientation always pointing upward which

triggered only one type of odour emission. One parent in the pilot study

responded that the family picture embedded inside the soap may be good for

the young child to cause their curiosity. Yet when the child grows up, it may

look like the family members watching their bathing. The consume of the soap

may relate to the fading of the family as well. Therefore in the refine design,

the appearance of the soap takes the mold pattern instead. The mold of car

and bear were selected for boy and girl to use at bathing. Besides, the colour

of the soap is another concern. Though several colour of soap are available, the

parents generally responded that they would prefer the soap in white colour

which represents the feeling of clean. Also in term of system design, the colour

white is neutral to represent different odour emission. Moreover, the soap

is designed as the odourless. It helps to prevent the young child putting the

scented soap into their mouth. Therefore in the refine design, the soap is made

in white colour and odourless.

Figure 3.33: Soap Making and the Sensor Embedded

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3.6. Refined Design

3.6.4 About the Interaction

About the Detection

In the pilot study, the detection was combined with three types of movement

including the orientation, the shaking and the still. Yet it is found that the

combination of detection may cause the confusion. On one hand, the parents

did not want to distract at bathing by managing different orientations. On

the other hand, the child did not handle well for different types of orienta-

tions. They mainly pointed it to the top and down or simply kept shaking it.

Therefore in the refined design, the detection is focus on the strength and the

duration of the scrubbing movement. It keeps it simple and direct for both

parent and child side to manage. The continuity of scrubbing fits into the

continuity of odour emission as well.

About the Odour Emission

In the pilot study, the duration of the odour emission was depend on the dura-

tion of the sensor orientation. As long as the bather was holding the sensor in

one orientation, it would emit the corresponding odour continuously. When the

sensor was changed to another orientation, the original odour emission would

be stopped and the other odour emission would be started accordingly. When

the sensor was in a still position, all the odour emission would be stopped. In

the pilot study, this setting was shown to cause too much odour emission for

the bathroom environment. At the end of bathing, the bathroom was fully

occupied by different odour emissions. Therefore in the refined design, the

duration of emission is defaulted as 15 seconds to 30 seconds for each odour

emission.

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3.6. Refined Design

Figure 3.34: MESH Application

3.6.5 About the Emission Device

In the pilot study, the emission devices were in all standalone container. The

advantage is that the diffusers can be allocated in different areas at bathroom.

Yet the disadvantage is that it looks a bit messy on the family side as the

bathroom space is very limited in Macau. According to the pilot study, the

children mainly focus on the soap sensor in their hands. They might not

notice the emission devices which were put in a distance inside the bathroom.

Therefore in the refined design of the emission device would be targeted on the

parent side. The emission device is integrated into one container altogether

to make it tidy. The container is made by 3D printer which can be replicated

and modified according to the family preferences. Besides, the colour of the

container is set in white colour to make the feeling of pure and clean for the

parents side.

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3.6. Refined Design

Figure 3.35: The 3D Models of Emission Device

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3.6. Refined Design

Figure 3.36: 3D Printed Emission Device

3.6.6 About the Scenario

At the stage of preparation, the parents and child choose the scents together

from the categories of the scents provided by Ludic Odour. The selection of

scent can be based on each family occasions and preferences. Then the the

parents put the scented liquid into the emission device and put it near their

bathing area. Along with it, the iPad with MESH application can be put

outside the bathroom. During bathing, the parents and the child can use

the bathing artefact soap to scrub on the body. The MOVE tag embedded

inside the soap detects the strength and the duration of scrubbing. Once the

detection happens, the MESH application triggers the corresponding odour

emission from the emission device. The sequence and the duration of emission

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3.6. Refined Design

are changed accordingly. For example, the family who loves nature can choose

the scent of grass and lavender to bring into their bathing by creating the

experience scenario of garden. When the sensor inside the soap detects the

beginning of the scrubbing, the odour emission of grass is triggered firstly.

When the duration of the scrubbing is over one minute for instance, the odour

emission of lavender is triggered as well. It creates the experience scenario of

garden for the family to enjoy at their bathing. Meanwhile, it provides the first

encountered experience with these particular smells for promoting the family

bonding between parents and child at daily bath.

Figure 3.37: 3D Printed Emission Device

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Chapter 4

Proof of Concept

The proof of concept was conducted to examine the feasibility of Ludic Odour

for designing digital artefact with smell for promoting family bonding at

bathing. The aim is to examine how the parents and child enjoy the ol-

factory experience created by Ludic Odour in their daily bath through using

the bathing artefact with emission device. Ludic Odour is designed for the

family with preschool child to create their first encountered experience with

smell in childhood. When the family takes the Ludic Odour to bath, they

can enjoy the olfactory experience created through their interaction at bath

in different family occasions. The child can enjoy different odour emissions

while having fun with parents at bath. The parents can relax from their daily

routine through the olfactory experience brought by their child through Ludic

Odour. The pleasant olfactory experience they shared at bathing bonds the

emotional relationship between parents and child together.

This study is expected to find the mutual positive experience of Ludic

Odour from both parents and child in a real family bathing situation. As

family bonding develops when the reciprocal positive experience loops between

parents and child according to Bruce D Perry’s study1. This study evaluates

1. Bruce D Perry, “Bonding and attachment in maltreated children,” The Child TraumaCenter 3 (2001): 1–17

121

4.1. The Method

the user experience from both parents and child’s perspective. It integrates the

feedbacks from both parents and child to examine the experience of the family

as a whole2. The aim is to verify if they enjoy having it to promote the bonding

at family bath. The following section describes the experience of each family

in using Ludic Odour at their family bath. Questionnaires and interviews were

conducted to collect how the parents and child perceive the experience Ludic

Odour subjectively. Voice recording and MESH application screen recording

were used for understanding the bathing experience objectively.

4.1 The Method

4.1.1 Questionnaire for Parent

The questionnaire for parent side helps to reveal how the parents perceive the

experience as a whole and the effectiveness of Ludic Odour on family bonding

at bathing. This questionnaire includes two parts. The first part is to val-

idate the user experience of Ludic Odour, the second part is to validate the

olfaction-enhanced bathing experience. Firstly, the user experience part fol-

lows the approach of Marc Hassenzahl’s AttracDiff2 questionnaire3 to collect

how the parents perceive the pragmatic quality and hedonic quality towards

Ludic Odour. This AttracDiff2 questionnaire is widely used as the instrument

to assess the hedonic experience in Human Computer Interaction4. This ap-

proach evaluates the user experience through the questionnaire using bipolar

verbal scale anchors with twenty one 7 point items. The pragmatic quality

2. Li Li et al., “Perceived Bonding by Parents Living With HIV and Their AdolescentChildren,” Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2015,

3. Marc Hassenzahl, “The effect of perceived hedonic quality on product appealingness,”International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 13, no. 4 (2001): 481–99

4. Sarah Diefenbach, Nina Kolb, and Marc Hassenzahl, “The’hedonic’in human-computerinteraction: history, contributions, and future research directions,” in Proceedings of the 2014conference on Designing interactive systems (ACM, 2014), 305–14

122

4.1. The Method

helps to assess the perceived potential of Ludic Odour to support the func-

tional goal of bonding at family bathing, while the hedonic quality helps to

assess the perceived potential of Ludic Odour to support the pleasure in the

first encountered experience with smell for bonding at family bathing. This

helps to reveal the effectiveness of Ludic Odour bonding at bath and how the

parents perceived the experience as a whole. The twenty one items are: (Prag-

matic Quality) human - technical, simple - complicated, practical - impractical,

straightforward - cumbersome, predictable - unpredictable, clearly structured

- confusing, manageable - unruly; (Hedonic Quality) connective - isolating,

professional - unprofessional, stylish - tacky, premium - cheap, integrating -

alienating, brings me closer to people - separates me from people, presentable

- unpresentable, inventive - conventional, creative - unimaginative, bold - cau-

tious, innovative - conservative, captivating - dull, challenging - undemanding,

and novel - ordinary.

Secondly, it would adopt the Quality of Experience questionnaire of Yuan

et al. 5 for collecting how the parents perceive the olfaction enhanced experi-

ence. This method is originally used to verify how user perceive the quality of

experience of olfaction-enhanced multimedia. Though it shares some similari-

ties with the AttracDiff2 questionnaire, the QoE questionnaire focuses on the

olfaction experience on the multisensory context. Each question includes five

degrees: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, and Strongly Agree. It

helps to reveal how the parents perceive the olfactory intensities, the impact

of distraction and annoyance caused by the digital olfaction, the impact of

olfactory intensities on user enjoyment, the impact of digital olfaction effect

on the user perceived bonding experience in Ludic Odour.

5. Yuan et al., “User quality of experience of mulsemedia applications”

123

4.1. The Method

Figure 4.1: Questionnaire for Parent (Part 1)

124

4.1. The Method

Figure 4.2: Questionnaire for Parent (Part 2)

125

4.1. The Method

4.1.2 Questionnaire for Child

The questionnaire for the child helps to reveal how the child enjoys the ex-

perience of Ludic Odour at bathing. The approach of questionnaire adopts

the method of Fun Toolkit6. This method has been widely adopted in the re-

searches which measure the satisfaction and fun experience from the children

without complicated writing requirement. The children can easily complete

the questionnaire through the simple visual analogue scale. The Fun Toolkit

includes three tools to measure how the child experiences fun and their satis-

faction. One is Smileyometer. It measures through five point Likert Scale with

the smiling face from Awful to Brilliant. It helps to reveal how the child per-

ceives the holistic experience of Ludic Odour. The second tool is Fun Sorter.

It invites the children to sort out the order of their preference through com-

parison. The children can rate the ranking from Least to Most. It helps to

reveal how the child compares Ludic Odour with other ways of bathing. The

third tool is Again Again table. It requires the children choose Yes, Maybe, or

No for the experience. It helps to reveal the desirable of the child to continue

to use Ludic Odour.

6. Janet C Read, “Evaluating artefacts with children: age and technology effects in thereporting of expected and experienced fun,” in Proceedings of the 14th ACM internationalconference on Multimodal interaction (ACM, 2012), 241–48

126

4.1. The Method

Figure 4.3: Questionnaire for Child (Part 1)

127

4.1. The Method

Figure 4.4: Questionnaire for Child (Part 2)

128

4.1. The Method

4.1.3 Family Holistic Experience through ThinkingAloud & Contextual Inquiry Interview

The method of thinking aloud7 is adopted in the proof of concept in Ludic

Odour. It is important to observe objectively how the parents and child ex-

perience Ludic Odour. However, family bathing is the private time for both

parents and child. It is not appropriate for the researcher to present in the

bathroom during bathing. Also, considering the aged group of the child per-

sonas (aged three to six), they have grown up the awareness about the privacy

at bathroom. In order to let the child experience Ludic Odour like normal

daily bath, the in-situ observation would not be conducted thereby. Instead,

the method of thinking aloud was used in this situation. This approach has

been applied to the studies for understanding how the user goes through the

whole experience8. The parents are required to express the process of the

bathing verbally and how the child react and the parent think throughout the

bathing. The method of thinking aloud was recorded inside the bathroom

when the family was taking the bath. After the bathing, the researcher took

notes through the process and did the contextual inquiry interviews9 with the

participants to clarify the content of voice recording and the experience of

Ludic Odour behind it. The voice recording can record the parents thinking

aloud, also the environment sound during bathing. It helps to reveal the sit-

uation inside the bathroom such as the rinsing process and the conversation

between parent and child. Besides, the MESH application screen was recorded

when the family was taking the bath. It helps to reveal what the system is

actually going on when the parents and child are inside the bathroom.

7. C Lewis, “Using the thinking-aloud method in cognitive interface design, Report RC9265,” IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, 1982,

8. Jorick Vissers and David Geerts, “TUIkit: Evaluating physical and functional expe-riences of Tangible User Interface prototypes,” in Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACMConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2015), 1267–76

9. Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, “Contextual design,” interactions 6, no. 1 (1999):32–42

129

4.1. The Method

4.1.4 The Setting

The list of materials would be deployed in the participant family. It includes:

1. Bathing artefact (odourless white soap with MESH move tag inside)

2. Emission device (3D printed container with two bottles inside, connected

with MESH GPIO tag and batteries)

3. Two chosen scented liquid by family

4. iPad mini4 (with MESH application and voice recorder installed)

5. Questionnaire for Parent

6. Questionnaire for Child

Figure 4.5: The List of Materials

130

4.2. The Participant Families

4.2 The Participant Families

The families were recruited by acquaintance. Based on the pilot study, the

preschool child aged group from three to six has better involvement in the

olfactory experience of Ludic Odour. Also they can response how they perceive

the whole experience. Different patterns of family members were invited. It

included the family with boy, the family with girl and the family with sibling.

The purpose and the method of the study were given at the invitation. At

the end, three families responded to the invitation. Carson is the boy who

has participated in the pilot study. He is a four years old boy nearly five who

attends the second year (K2) in kindergarten. Rainey is the girl who is aged

at four who attends the first year (K1) in the kindergarten. Both Carson and

Rainey are the only child in their family. Owen and Cheung are the sibling.

The elder brother Owen is aged nearly six who just graduated from the third

year (K3) in the kindergarten, while the younger brother Cheung is a three

years old boy who is going to join the kindergarten in two months.

In Macao, the bathroom normally is in suited with toilet and sink alto-

gether in one room. According to the family bathing habits, some bathrooms

are equipped with bath tub while some use shower stalls instead. Some fam-

ilies has limited space in the bathroom. They would put the bathing basin

inside the shower stall before the bath and remove afterward. As each family

bathroom is different in scale and setting in Macao, it is necessary to under-

stand the environment of each bathroom and the family bathing habits before

the installation of the prototype. Therefore, after the family accepted the invi-

tation for the pilot study, they were asked to send a picture of their bathroom

which captured the setting of the family bath. This picture helped to reveal

the real environment of the family bath before the setup of Ludic Odour was

conducted.

131


4.2.1 Rainey, 4 Years-Old Girl

Rainey’s family has chosen the category of nature. The scents of grass and

lavender were used during the family bath. The experience description of the

voice recording is below.

Sunday, 17:30, Duration: 13 mins

Now starts to wash the hair, mom helps her to wear the hair wash cap.

(Water sound at the background)

Now the child sits inside the basin, mom uses the shower head to wash. She

first wet the hair, wash it...

(Loud sound of water)

Mom pumps the shampoo gel, and scrubbing the hair

(sound was low for a while...suddenly loud sound of water)

Rinsing now.

Girl said: mom, look, my hair is long...

Mom said: yes, your hair is very long now...

Now finish the hair washing...mom uses the towel dry the head. Mom gave

her the toy... (water sound)

Scrub on the body... (water sound)...making the bubble from soap now..

The smell comes out now.

Father said: tell her to shake...

Girl starts to shake...

More smell comes out out

Girl does not see the smell (as she is inside). she does not know what

happens...she gradually does not shake it heavily, only use it to scrub...it

takes some time to perceive the smell.

Now the girl starts singing.... she treats it as a microphone.

(Twistle twistle little star...)

Mom starts to wash the toe of child, those detail parts.

132


Girl starts to use the soap to scrub the arm...

Start to have smell now...the mist only a while...does not continue...

The mom and the girl starts to talk...

(Water sound fades out)

Girl uses the soap to scrub the bottom of feet

Father said: bath faster...too long

Girl drops down the toy. mom rinses...

The girl is ready to up. Now dry the body...

Girl is curious to touch the diffuser...

Girl starts to make some noises differently...mom started to laugh.

Recording finishes. The girl comes out from the bathroom.

Figure 4.6: Ludic Odour in Rainey’s Family

133


4.2.2 Carson, 5 Years-Old Boy

Carson’s family has chosen the category of fruit. The scents of orange and

mango were used during the family bath. The experience description of the

voice recording is below.

Sunday, 21:00, Duration: 6 mins

Now washing...

(Water sound) Boy laughs...and laughs...

One smell comes out...

Mom washes the face of the boy...

Now scrub already...

Boy said: I can smell orange...

Mom said: oh you can smell the orange...

Boy puts the soap on the water.

Boy said: waoh...

Boy keeps pushing the soap down under the water...

Boy said: why it floats?

Mom said: it’s empty inside, that’s why it floats...Scrub your body...

Boy said: (Sound of rinsing...) waoh...

Mom said: it’s finished...put down...come out...dad, please dry him up...

Figure 4.7: Ludic Odour in Carson’s Family

134


4.2.3 Owen and Cheung, 6 and 3 Years-Old Boy

Owen and Cheung are sibling. They has chosen the category of fruit and party.

The scents of strawberry and chocolate were used during the family bath. The

experience description of the voice recording is below:

Sunday, 17:00, Duration: 5 mins and 8 mins

Mom said: Who go first? Cheung comes first? (Originally plan is the younger

goes first)

Owen said: I wanna bath first.

(Water sound)

Start scrubbing.

Owen said: Hey It’s fun , younger brother.

Mom said: Let’s stand up. (continue to scrub)

Mom added: After the bath, we will go to...is it good?

scrub...sit down...

Owen said: I want to bath again tonight.

Owen said: Younger brother, I finish the bath...no head washing.

Mom said: Dry yourself.

(The elder son Owen came out from the bathroom, he lets his dad to dry

him.)

Mom added: Cheung, wait, I haven’t take the cloth, wait...

Mom said: okay it’s younger brother’s turn.

(Grandparents come back, granddad goes to kitchen directly, grandmother

stands in front of the bathroom. she is curious what it is. the mom tried to

explain to her what is going on.)

Grandmother said: does it smell?

Mom said: a little bit....

Grandmother said: interesting..

Owen added: we used the new soap tonight.

135

4.3. The Result of Questionnaire

Owen told his younger brother: you can use it yourself. you are big enough

now.

Mom asked the younger: is it comfortable?

scrubbing....

(Water sound)

Figure 4.8: Ludic Odour in Owen & Cheung’s Family

4.3 The Result of Questionnaire

The questionnaire were collected from three families and four children. The

result and the description were shown as below.

Child’s Perspective

The child’s perspective on Ludic Odour were described from four aspects,

which include the perceived experience, fun sorting, ease of use and desirable.

Regarding the perceived experience, four children rated it above the average

in terms of fun, easy, likeness and odour enjoyment. Especially the odour

enjoyment, four children rated it as the highest. It showed that the children

generally have a positive perceived experience on Ludic Odour. They found it

fun and likable, especially enjoying the olfactory experience of it even though

in some circumstances they could not perceive the odour very well. When

136

4.3. The Result of Questionnaire

compared with normal bathing experience and bathing with toys, two children

rated Ludic Odour was the most fun while another two rated it as the middle.

It showed that children enjoyed the fun of Ludic Odour similarly as they do

with the bath toys. It is something fun to enjoy compared with simply bathing.

In terms of ease of use, four children has different sorting among three options.

When considered about the age of the child, it showed that the child who is

the youngest rated the ease of use as the lowest. It may echo that the result of

pilot study that the young child aged under three found it not easy to handle

the interaction of Ludic Odour. Regarding the desirable sorting, the result

is similar to the fun sorting. The children showed desirable of Ludic Odour

over the average. In summary, children in these three families hold positive

feedback on Ludic Odour and perceived it as fun and enjoyable experience.

They all expressed that they would like to bath with Ludic Odour again.

Parent’s Perspective

The parent’s perspective on Ludic Odour were described from three aspects. It

includes the pragmatic quality, hedonic quality and olfaction enhanced expe-

rience. Regarding the pragmatic quality, the parents perceived the experience

of Ludic Odour as practical, straightforward, and clearly structured. Yet it

showed that Carson’s mother considered it as less manageable. Regarding he-

donic quality, parents perceived it as connective, closer, and novel. Rainey’s

mother considered it as less challenging. Carson’s mother considered it as less

integrating. Regarding the olfaction enhanced experience, parents considered

it as enjoyable. Yet it showed that they agreed that the experience distracting

them in certain extent.

137

4.4. Contextual Inquiry Interview

4.4 Contextual Inquiry Interview

Rainey’s Family

Rainey’s father explained that they chose the odours for bathing together. As

her mother like the nature, she first picked up the smell of lavender. Then it

was naturally for them to pick up the smell of grass in one set. The nature

is also what Rainey loves. When they were asked if they would consider the

other categories in Ludic Odour, Rainey’s father responded that it was weired

to bring something smells like food into bathroom environment. They would

like to have something smells more natural. The scents of flower and grass

seems to fit each other. That is the reason why they chose these two scents to

take into bathing.

Regarding the bathing, Rainey’s father reported that Rainey mainly fo-

cused on the bathing artefact soap in her hand. She did not notice there was

an emission device nearby. Rainey treated the bathing artefact as a toy. Dur-

ing the bathing, she even held it like a microphone to sing song. Rainey’s

mother added that she helped Rainey scrub on her body with the soap. Later

she gave it to Rainey to handle it. At first, she followed the instruction. Later

on, she played it in the way she liked. During the interview, Rainey’s mother

once asked Rainey if she remembered what it was shown on the soap. Rainey

replied it was the bear. Rainey’s father furthered that it would be good to

have instant response shown on the soap so that the child would know that she

was making something happen. Also, he said that there were some delays of

odour emission. When Rainey scrubbed on the body with the soap, the odour

emission lasted only for a short time to them. It may take time for Rainey to

smell it at her position inside the basin. As a result, Rainey’s father was the

one who noticed the odours difference.

138


In general, both Rainey’s mother and father considered that it was en-

joyable to have Ludic Odour at family bath. As Rainey grows up, it is not

appropriate to play the bath toy at the bathroom anymore. She should learn

to bath without toy. Ludic Odour could encourage Rainey do the bathing. It

would be great if there were more visual or audio cues when she was using the

bathing artefact soap to scrub on her body, so that she knows she is involved

in changing the odour emission in the environment.

Carson’s Family

Carson’s family has experienced the prototype of Ludic Odour in the pilot

study and the refined design. Carson’s mother found that Carson enjoyed

the experience of Ludic Odour through the soap in refined design rather than

simply the sensor itself in the pilot study. In the pilot study, Carson focus on

shaking the sensor into different orientation to trigger different odour emis-

sions. This disturbed her at bathing to certain extent. Yet this time, Carson

used the bathing artefact soap to scrub on his body and played with it at the

water. It helped her finished the bathing with him. During bathing, Carson

would find different ways to play with the bathing artefact. Carson’s mother

reported that this time the olfactory experience was perceived better than the

time in the pilot study as the emission device was put inside the bathtub area.

Carson was exciting when he finally could smell his favourite odour of orange.

Yet Carson’s mother said as the emission device pointed toward her back, she

could only smell the odour very slightly. Her son who was facing toward the

diffuser could smell more clearly.

Regarding the selection of scents, Carson’s mother explained that she de-

cided it with Carson altogether. When she looked at the list of category, she

firstly found Carson’s favourite - orange. She asked if Carson wanted to have

the odour of orange at bathing. Carson responded with excitement. Then she

picked up the odour of mango accordingly. She explained that last time in

139


the pilot study she picked up the odour of orange and chocolate for her son.

Though it was her son favourite, it smelled weird to her to have chocolate

odour when bathing her son. So this time when her son agreed with the odour

of orange, she would decide to choose a similar fruit odour along with the

odour of orange, which is the odour of mango.

After these two experiences with Ludic Odour, Carson’s mother expressed

that she could see the potential of it if it could provide different modules for

the family to choose. For example, the family can choose a certain odour

coming with a certain time and family members setting. And it would be

great if the bathing artefact could be more flexible to be adopted in different

family bathing habit. She explained that it is important for both parents and

child get involved in the process. It could make the experience unique for her

family.

Owen and Cheung’s Family

Owen and Cheung’s mother reported that the selection of scents were all made

by her two sons. At first, elder son Owen asked if there was any odour of apple

because he loves apple juice. His mother explained to him that there was no

apple and asked if he would like to take strawberry as it is one of his favourite

fruit as well. Owen agreed with it. Then his mother asked the younger son

Cheung what he likes to take into bath. Cheung responded that he loves to

have chocolate. Then the odour of chocolate was chosen.

Owen’s mother said that it was the first time for her, also for her sons, to

have different odour emissions at bathing. It was very interesting to her and

her sons. She can tell that her elder son was very exciting about it. Owen

can handle more well with Ludic Odour during bathing compared with the

younger brother Cheung. She explained that probably Cheung is still too

young to hold the soap. Cheung mainly relied on her to scrub on his body

with the bathing artefact. However, Owen knew how to handle it very quickly.

140


She also expressed that Owen can use the bathing artefact to scrub himself.

Sometimes he passed it to his mother to help him scrubbing his back.

Regarding the olfactory experience, Owen’s mother said that it was quite

enjoyable to see two sons enjoyed the experience of it. Though Cheung might

not know what is going on with the odour emission in the surrounding, he

simply enjoyed the olfactory atmosphere which his elder brother created earlier

at the bathroom. For the elder son Owen, he enjoyed having different odour

emissions at bathing. Though the odours of orange and chocolate were mixed

altogether at the end, he simply enjoyed the process of making fun of it.

Owen’s mother added that it would be great if there could be more interaction

between two brothers through Ludic Odour.

141

Chapter 5

Conclusion

Ludic Odour is designed for creating first encountered experience with smell for

promoting family bonding between parents and child at bathing. It provides

the categories of scents related to family daily life including the scents of

nature, fruit, party and living. Parents and child can select their scents from

the categories according to their family activities and preferences. The chosen

scents can be brought into their family bathing through Ludic Odour. By

using the bathing artefact soap to scrub on the body, the child can trigger

different odour emissions from the emission device during bathing. Based on

the strength and the duration of scrubbing, the sequence and the duration of

odour emission would be different.

The proof of concept is shown that both parents and child enjoyed the

first encountered experience with smell for family bonding at bathing through

Ludic Odour. The parents and child bond together through getting involved

in the selection of scents and create their own olfactory experience together

at bathing. According to the literature in family bonding, this positive early

encountered experience with smell between parents and child at bathing pro-

motes the family bonding enduring for life time. Ludic Odour provides a way

to design digital artefact with smell for parents and children to promote family

bonding at bathing.

142

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Appendix A

Model Analysis of Fieldwork

Model analysis provides an integrated view that helps to design the concept of

Ludic Odour. It is originally applied on communication design for workplace by

Beyer et al.1 Here, I would adopt the model analysis method on the fieldwork

data of Chu, Lei and Chan three families. The five models include flow model,

sequence model, artefact model, physical model and cultural model.

In the flow model, this study would focus on how family interaction is

conducted between the father, the mother and the child. The flow model would

help to show how family members coordinate and communicate in the family

time. The responsibilities in the flow model shows how father and mother take

different roles in family routines. The artefacts shows how family members

interact with each other with the physical objects in the home environment.

Their actions represents how family interaction is carried out.

In the sequence model, this study would show the sequence of all the family

members individually yet in parallel. It is because all the family members are

closely shared the space and time in daily routine. The sequence of their

actions thoroughly influence each other. Rather than showing the steps of

works, the sequence model from the perspective of family living shows the

1. Beyer and Holtzblatt, Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems

154

order of their interaction. It reveals the intent behind each family members

and what matters to them. The arrows in the model shows what triggers the

actions of each family members.

In the artefact model, this study would focus on the main artefacts observed

during the fieldworks. As there are many artefacts were come across during the

family routine, I would mainly focus on the artefacts which draw the parents

and the involved altogether at the same time. It represents that this artefact

is not only an artefact to accomplish a certain family routine, but an artefact

helps to link up the parents and child together.

In the physical model, this study would show the broad structure of the

home environment by illustrating the floor plan observed in the fieldwork. Yet

the focus would be lied on the area where the physical movement of each family

members happened during the home visit. The physical model shows how the

families organise the things around them in the home environment to support

their interaction and family activity on daily basis.

In the cultural model, the family value and the approach of family bonding

would be revealed. This helps to show the influencers of the family interac-

tion tangible. The bidirectional arrow represents the influences exist in both

directions. These five model analysis above helps to reveal how parents and

child interact from different perspectives.

In addition to the five model analysis, the mental model of parents and

child would be illustrated in this chapter as well. Kim Goodwin2, the author of

“Designing for the Digital Age”, suggested to use mental model to understand

how the users relate the acts in their mind. It helps to design a system which

matches their mind to use in the real context. Therefore, it is necessary to

2. Goodwin, Designing for the digital age: How to create human-centered products andservices

155

A.1. Model Analysis in Chu’s Family

understand the mental model of parents and child regarding family interaction.

This mental model is helpful to design the concept of Ludic Odour that it would

be easy for family members to get on hands to create their olfactory experience

in daily routine.

The fieldwork observation data of each family would be analysed through

the five models and the mental model accordingly. These models represent the

fieldwork of each family individually. In order to show the common pattern

across different families, the consolidated models would be illustrated as well.

Here, I would mainly consolidate the cultural models and the mental models

in these three families. The consolidated cultural model helps to reveal the

common influences, while the consolidated mental model helps to capture the

mental model of the father, the mother and the child across the families.

A.1 Model Analysis in Chu’s Family

Flow Model in Chu’s Family

Mr. Chu and Mrs. Chu shared different responsibilities in the family. Mrs.

Chu is mainly in charge of daughters homework, while Mr. Chu is responsible

for the mock test review. They assigned the to-do-lists to two daughters with

awards. The to-do-list for the elder daughter is learning-oriented while the one

for younger daughter is behaviour-oriented. Besides, Mr. Chu and Mrs. Chu

make photo albums to share family members with daughters (Figure A.1).

156


Figure A.1: Flow model in Chu’s family

157


Sequence Model in Chu’s Family

The sequence model (Figure A.2) showed that younger daughter Kay used to

be the one who triggered the action. Mrs. Chu would follow her subsequently.

Their action sequences would influence other family members coordinately.

For example, when Kay and Mrs. Chu were looking at the family album, elder

daughter Katie was attracted to come over to see the album even she was

talking over phone with her friend. And while Mr. Chu enjoyed his relax time

by watching T.V. by himself, elder daughter Katie would walk to living room

to stay with her father and watched together. When Kay, who was playing

her toy food in girls’ room, found her sister went out to the living room to

stay with her father, she would pick up the toy food to the living room and

continued to play with her father and sister.

Figure A.2: Sequence model in Chu’s family

158


Artefact Model in Chu’s Family

This artefact model (Figure A.3) shows the structure of the family album.

Many group photos were found in the album, for example, one was Kay with

her mother, another one was Kay with the her parents and sister. Besides,

Katie’s friend was also found in the photo. One picture showed that Katie

and her friend stood nearby the new-born Kay’s bed. Another picture showed

that they celebrated Katie’s birthday together. The artefact model of the

photo album shows that Chu’s family emphasis on the relationship with family

members and friends. The photos are not only about the memories happened

within the family, but also the memories with other families and children.

Figure A.3: Artefact model in Chu’s family

159


Physical Model in Chu’s Family

The physical model (Figure A.4) shows that the family activities after din-

ner were mainly occurred in the living room and two bedrooms. Their ac-

tivities and physical locations influence each other. Mrs. Chu would follow

the younger daughter, while the elder daughter would go to where her father

stayed. The two sisters would join together to play as well. When everyone

left the girls’ room, the younger daughter would go out to the living room to

join other family members. Their physical location was close to each other.

Figure A.4: Physical model in Chu’s family

160


Cultural Model in Chu’s Family

The culture model (Figure A.5) shows that Mr. Chu and Mrs. Chu shared

similar expectation to two daughters. They guide and encourage the girls

through to-do-list with awards. They set up a clear target to them according

to their growth stage and character. For elder daughter, they more focus on

her study. For younger daughter, they care more on her behaviour. Elder

daughter is more independent and desire to develop her own friendship with

her friends, while younger daughter more attached to her parents. Mother

is responsible for daily care and homework checking, while father is more on

conversation and helping on study. Besides, they emphasis on the relationship

with other families and daughters’ friends.

Figure A.5: Cultural model in Chu’s family

161


Mental Model in Chu’s Family

The mental model (Figure A.6) shows that each family members has their

own concerns. The elder daughter learn to develop her relationship within a

family and a society. She learns to study, makes friendship, plays with her

sister, stays with parents, etc. The younger daughter enjoys her life within

the family. She learns to build up her relationship with her past by looking

at her photos at infant stage. Mrs. Chu keeps the work-family life balance by

communicating with the maid to make sure the daily housework to be finished

smoothly, also separate the time to spend with two daughters for their study

and fun playing.

Figure A.6: Mental model in Chu’s family

162

A.2. Model Analysis in Lei’s Family

A.2 Model Analysis in Lei’s Family

Flow Model in Lei’s Family

In the flow model (Figure A.7), it is shown that Mr. Lei and Mrs. Lei like to

use different artefacts to play with their son Gabriel, like puzzle, drum, etc.

Even a piece of paper could be rolled up as one of the toys in their hands.

These artefacts are all related to Gabriel’s interest on music instrument. Mr.

Lei and Mrs. Lei shared similar responsibilities in the family and get involved

in the family bonding time after dinner altogether. They give encouragement,

help and correction to their son throughout the time. Mrs. Lei uses storybook

to tell story while Mr. Lei uses ball to have body interaction.

Sequence Model in Lei’s Family

The sequence model (Figure A.8) shows that Gabriel switched from one toy to

another toy quite frequently. His intent was changing from time to time and

cannot focus on one activity for long. He is easily to be distracted if he saw

something which reminded him another toy. He would go to get another toy

immediately. Furthermore, the sequence model also shows that each family

members influence each other. When one of the family members initialled

the play, the rest would follow subsequently. They are not physically being

together, but also mentally being together by getting involved into the play

time together.

163


Figure A.7: Flow model in Lei’s family

164


Figure A.8: Sequence model in Lei’s family

165


Artefact Model in Lei’s Family

This artefact model (Figure A.9) shows that Lei’s family is good at taking

any artefacts at home and turn them into the play toys in their hands. For

example, Gabriel used his drumstick to hit on the sofa to pretend hitting

it on the drum. They rolled a piece of and turned it into different music

instrument. Lei’s family not only changed the method of play, but also played

with imagination. They made best use with the artefacts they have at home.

Besides, Mrs. Lei would buy wooden toys for Gabriel instead of plastic ones,

like the wooden drumstick.

Figure A.9: Artefact model in Lei’s family

166


Physical Model in Lei’s Family

The physical model (Figure A.10) in Lei’s family shows that their family ac-

tivity mainly is taken place in the living room. And they stayed close to each

other physically. Father and mother joined the child to play after they finished

their task on hands. The television set was off during the play time. Besides,

the toys are mainly placed in the living room and the boy’s room. It is also the

area where the parent spent their time with their son at daily family bonding

time.

Figure A.10: Physical model in Lei’s family

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Cultural Model in Lei’s Family

The culture model (Figure A.11) in Lei’s family shows that Mr. Lei and

Mrs. Lei both value their family bonding time by spending time together

after dinner. Yet they not only stay with their sons, they try to develop their

son through his interests on music. Meanwhile, they would correct him when

he does wrong during the time. Their son enjoy hanging around with his

parents. Mrs. Lei has to balance the life between work and family, also the

communication with the maid. Lei’s family also try to make out of time to

let their son have a bonding time with his grandparents. Beside, they would

arrange playgroup for him to develop his social skills at preschool stage. They

love to guide the son to learn in the nature. They have a little garden at

rooftop and bring the son to the park. Mr. Lei love to do cooking as their

family bonding time as well.

Figure A.11: Cultural model in Lei’s family

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Mental Model in Lei’s Family

The mental model (Figure A.12) shows that Lei’s family focus on the bonding

time through playing and learning altogether. Mr. Lei and Mrs. Lei attempted

to guide their son throughout the play time, meanwhile correct him when

needed. Gabriel also enjoys to learn and explore the new things when his

parents stayed around him.

Figure A.12: Mental model in Lei’s family

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A.3. Model Analysis in Chan’s Family

A.3 Model Analysis in Chan’s Family

Flow Model in Chan’s Family

In the flow model (Figure A.13), it is shown that Mr. Chan is mainly respon-

sible for washing his son Jay while Mrs. Chan is to chat with Jay to distract

him and give him encouragement while he is having hair wash. There are

many artefacts being used during bathing and hair washing. However, some

of the artefacts are washing tools in father’s hands but turning into a toy in

the boy’s hands.

Figure A.13: Flow model in Chan’s family

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Sequence Model in Chan’s Family

The sequence model (Figure A.14) shows that Mr. Chan is the one who is

mainly in charge of son’s washing. Mrs. Chan would stay nearby to chat with

the son and distracts him when father does the hair washing. Jay, the son,

keeps playing around when father do washing. He would move his body along

with his father’s movement.

Figure A.14: Sequence model in Chan’s family

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Artefact Model in Chan’s Family

The artefact model (Figure A.15) shows that all the artefacts are placed near

the bathing basin. The son grabbed the bath toys into the basin by himself

once his father started washing. The rinsing cup is put inside the bathing

basin. Mr. Chan used it to wash Jay’s body. Jay sometimes would grab it

as a toy to play around or stopped his father from hair washing. The towel is

the same. Mr. Chan used it to wash Jay’s face. Yet Jay would grab and play

with it.

Figure A.15: Artefact model in Chan’s family

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Physical Model in Chan’s Family

The physical model (Figure A.16) shows that the parents and child stay close

to each other physically at the bathroom. Even though it’s mainly the father

and the son who do the washing, the mother would stay nearby. And all the

artefacts were placed nearby, like shampoo, bath toys, towel, clean clothes,

etc. The father would pick up some toys and put into the basin. Yet there

are other bath toys placed near the bathing basin. They are in the reachable

distance for the child to choose the toys he likes during bathing.

Figure A.16: Physical model in Chan’s family

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Cultural Model in Chan’s Family

The culture model (Figure A.17) shows that Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chan divided

their duty in daily housework. For example, in bathing, Mr. Chan is mainly

responsible to wash the son, while Mrs. Chan helps to distract the son and

encourages him when father is doing the hair washing. Jay enjoyed the bathing

time with his parents also with his toys. Yet when it comes to the hair washing,

which he dislike most and being afraid of, he would resist to follow his father’s

instruction. Grandparents and maid would help to do the housework and care

for the grandson while Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chan are not at home. Both of

them want to get off from work on time in order to spend more time with the

son.

Figure A.17: Cultural model in Chan’s family

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Cultural Model in Chan’s Family

The mental model (Figure A.18) shows that Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chan have

to balance the daily duty with family bonding time. Also they have to manage

to finish the daily routine, like bathing, while at the same time have to handle

their son’s different emotions along the way. Mr. Chan focus on finishing the

daily washing in action, while Mrs. Chan more focus on chatting with the son

to help her husband finishing the task easier and quicker. She has to comfort

and encourage the son during bath time. Jay simply enjoyed the bathing time

while his parents and his bath toys are around him until he noticed that he

has to take the hair wash. Though he tried different ways to stop his father, he

was reminded by his mother telling him how to overcome this fear by putting

his hands over the eyes to avoid the water gets into his eyes.

Figure A.18: Mental model in Chan’s family

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A.4. Consolidated Models

A.4 Consolidated Models

According to Beyer and Holtzblatt, consolidated model could show the com-

mon structure and pattern across the individuals. It helps to design a system

that supports current context with new implementation. In the following

section, this study would illustrate the consolidated cultural model and con-

solidated mental model. These two models help to reveal what the design

direction Ludic Odour should take afterward. In the consolidated cultural

model, it shows the common aspects of culture across the families. It reveals

what they care about, how they think about family interaction, and what

constraints and influencers are behind. In the consolidated mental model, it

shows the common aspects how the families relate the acts in their mind.

Consolidated Cultural Model

In this consolidated cultural model (Figure A.19), it shows that working par-

ents have to cope with different constraints and influences from the family,

company and society. They have to enhance family bond while balancing with

the requirements from their companies. Sometimes they have to go to business

trip and have overtime work during weekend. It reduces the time they could

spend at home with their child. Besides, the mother has to communicate with

the maid to assure that the daily housework is finished smoothly. Meanwhile,

they have to show care to the grandparents side and keep the relationship with

other families. In spite of it, the cultural model reveals that the parents value

the family time even under these constraints. They want to accompany with

the child while also having enough rest to finish the housework and the duty

from company.

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Figure A.19: Consolidated Cultural Model

Consolidated Mental Model

Figure A.20: Consolidated Mental Model

In this consolidated mental model (Figure A.20), it shows that the parents

would organise family events to create family memories. They would keep the

artefacts related to the memorable moment of the family members. The daily

artefacts become the mementos linking the present and the past in the family.

When the parents see the memento, it reminded them about the memorable

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moment or a special event of the family. They would tell the children the

stories behind. Besides, parents and child have intimate family time during

daily bath. Throughout the bath, the parent use the washing artefacts such

as cup and water to wash the child’s body, these artefacts became the toys in

the child’s perspective.

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