Such personal insights will provide the basis for the concept and design of a product-service system which will focus on the long-term effects and needs of rehabilitation, once treatment at the clinic ends.
The smell workshops, with their focus on the subjective, anecdotal and emotional aspects of personal life stories, highlight design’ s concern with the human scale. Paired with an incremental approach, design can provide valuable insights through first-hand, experiential data from people. During the first two sessions, we focused on blind smelling tests, where patients received the fragrances in white containers without a descriptive label. We quickly noticed that these exercises stimulated patients firstly to talk about what they were smelling, as well as to exchange personal experiences amongst themselves. So far, the workshops have offered several new experiences for the staff and the patients, as both became acquainted with the properties of scents. The patients explored the world through their nose and the staff considered the notion that scents may have personal and therapeutic utility and value. Using scents as a way to explore personal associations and memories can provide useful information for
subsequent therapy sessions. The outcomes and stories derived from such exercises will also add information to the quantitative studies from previous G-motiv initiatives, and will encourage designers, healthcare providers and patients to exchange information.
blind smelling tests stimulate patients to exchange personal experiences
Susana Cámara Leret— 1982 info @ susanacamaraleret. com
. Research Associate at Design Academy Eindhoven. s. c. l. www. susanacamaraleret. com. Member CRISP project G-Motiv
Crisp Magazine # 1
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