Sensory Reperception

rethink assumptions using the 5 senses

CLIENT: Toyota

ROLE: Project Lead

This workshop explored ways to rethink assumptions, using the 5 senses, as a way of hacking the process of creating perception. It explores the possibility of perceiving differently by altering our brain's sensational and attention processes of perception.

Our brain evolved to take what is meaningless and make it meaningful, that is the process of making perception. And everything we make meaning of is grounded in our history of assumptions.

Focusing on observation and experiencing with the sense of touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing I encouraged participants to reinterpret their understanding of the environment, becoming aware of new things in the existing same information, by altering their sensory perception.

Experiencing things differently, and playfully diving into uncertainty

The participants can identify their assumptions and challenge them based on the new ways of perceiving the information.

Your perception can change entirely, if you’re open to it, even when the reality in front of you does not

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WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES

Started with a lecture about sensation and perception

The participants were introduced to methods and examples of playful experiences for designing a sensory future.

How are perceptions created:

Our experiment of altering perception:

Altering signal detection

We used tools to help enhance and/or alter the way the inputs are sensed. The way our senses detect stimuli
Example: Using Miracle Berry Tablets (sour foods subsequently consumed to taste sweet) to enhance the sweetness of the lemon how different is your perception of the fruit? Did you discover new things you haven't ever noticed about it before?

Altering attention filtering

We explored sensory reperception by asking the participants to focus on only one sense.
Each bag contains specific items to help alter their specific sense and also document the exploration. If and how you perceive things, depends on your sensory thresholds.

Groups were split by senses (Touch, smell, sight, taste, hearing) and sent to explore the city of San Francisco, focusing on the sense they were assigned.

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Field exploration

The teams explored the city focussing on perceiving and documenting their assigned sense

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Create a report and present

Participants had a chance to design presentation of their findings

We all gathered at a park and provided mediums for teams to report their findings

Presenting their findings

Practicing ambiguity to perceive situations has great potential to improve communication and connection.

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application in daily work

Understanding perceiving things in multiple ways

After the activity the teams regrouped at the office to brainstorm ways of applying re-perception, creating methodologies for their own contexts and needs.

Through team collaboration, they were able to come up with very interesting concepts and use cases. Example: Perceiving the sounds while working/collaborating, the voices may bring layers of information that we weren't aware of before, creating a more empathetic dynamic, and improving the ability to deal with dualities at work.

Knowing less than when we started
Not knowing might be more interesting than knowing

Reflection

Our perceived experience of the sensory information in the world is very contextual, and biased from our prior experiences. What if we could reduce those biases? What new information we could discover? Our concept of materials, tools, and processes is widening to accommodate new kinds of sensory experiences. Activities like this can help designers create new sensory experiences.

I worked with the amazing Yasaman Sheri to develop and co-host this workshop.