Designing for the Five Senses- By Andre Camara

We all know about our five major senses! Sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. While we take these for granted most of the times, it is remarkable to see what the loss of one single sense can do to a living being. Jim Morrison once said, “the body is the soul’s prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open.” While we can argue that someone like Morrison might have had a deeper intent to those words, it is the pure essence of the statement, which is in fact so true to its word. It takes all five senses being completely active to truly experience a situation.

That being said, humans have mainly five senses, which are used to understand themselves and the world around them. The visual sense has mostly developed over the other senses for most of us. Moreover, this is noticed in most aspects of our day to day lives, especially in design-oriented fields. Architecture and design predominantly use the sense of sight to create an impact on the viewer. However, in this piece, I am going to go on to explain how it is imperative that all five senses need to be engaged fully or partially to truly experience the context.