Scentient

2015

Old familiar smells--your childhood home, an ex, your dad’s cooking--can bring you right back into a moment, and with it, all those forgotten feelings.

​Inspired by the strong connections between scent and emotional memories, our team set out to design for smell. How might we harness the power of scent-based memories to intentionally capture an experience and later revisit those feelings?

Scentient is a clothing accessory imbued with a specific scent. It can be worn in a variety of ways, and by breathing it often throughout a special occasion, one anchors their experience to the scent.

Based on our research into the mechanisms of scent memory, we chose to focus on design- ing for festivals. They’re fully immersive for multiple days and emotionally charged, and you know going in that it’ll be a time worth remembering.

The experience must be significant. The more emotional the feelings, the better.

The scent has to be distinct; it can't have prior associations.

It takes time. How much time depends on the first two factors, but nostalgia can't be created instantaneously.

Based on these understandings, we chose to focus on designing for festivals. They’re fully immersive for multiple days, they're emotionally charged, and people know going in that it’ll be a time worth remembering.

After a quick round of prototyping at a Stanford University music festival, we set our sights on Coachella, putting together nearly 30 high-res prototypes and packaging together to understand how users experienced the product.

We let the prototypes do the talking; all of our team members stayed behind while our scent-filled tins and buffs made their way through the mail to 26 users.

We gained two key insights from our Coachella prototypes.

First, the huge scale of music festivals can be really overwhelming and increases the need for people to connect with a smaller group. Scentient felt like a team uniform for a group of friends to identify with. Breathing through it gave them a shared purpose, something to rally around, like a secret only they were in on. And when one person took a hit, it triggered everyone else to do so, too, reinforcing the habit and scent.

Second, we realized Scentient wasn't so much about the memories as we had initially planned. While people were initially excited about the idea of capturing memories, once they got in the thick of things, they just started having fun with it. Scentient became a way to silently communicate to each other, "This is a great moment." And it did this without pulling you out of a moment the way a smartphone or camera can.

From these insights, we refined Scentient and its packaging around not only capturing memories, but feeling united as a tribe and staying present in the moment.

The buff is made from a stretch linen that is comfortable and easy to breathe through. The scent we chose epitomizes the off-the-grid feel of music festivals and Burning Man with hints of cedar, tonic, and leather--gender neutral, distinct, and refreshing to breathe.

And the tin is a long-term case, not just packaging. It contains a pre-scented buff, a recharge atomizer, and instructions for use:

Smell that?
​
That’s the scent of Burning Man ‘15, imbued in the contents of this tin. Breathe through the fabric all week. Take it in like you’d take a picture to capture the feelings, places, and moments of this experience.

​Your memories will be anchored to this scent forever.

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