For my undergraduate's final dissertation I decided to investigate on the sense of smell. This is the abstract for 'Smell and Design, an investigation on olfactory perception':
Smell describes the action that makes a thing perceivable to the organ of the nose but also implying and suggesting emotions and primal reactions. However, we do not know enough about what connects us to certain smells and how they might be used as agents of design to enhance the world.
My undergraduate's dissertation begins by exploring the theme of smell in, and as, a design setting. The literature depicts a range of attributes, from the cognitive to the perceptual field, which forms the olfactory sense. I then undertake primary research in the form of an online survey (N=50) to better understand people’s plurality of perceptions and experiences surrounding smell. Insights from the survey are gathered and related back to the literature, and the dissertation ends with a discussion of how our sense of smell can be strongly and seriously considered as an agent of design.