Whiff
Whiff is a research project that investigates “Which scents can be used to raise awareness to have a physically active workstyle?” Our team investigated that by creating several prototypes and performing user tests. My role in this project was working on user testing, research, and constructing the final prototype that will be produced in a few weeks.
Our entire lives are built around sitting; in public transport, relaxing at home as well as in offices. Prolonged sitting has catastrophic consequences for the physical and mental health. With our research, we want to find a way to raise awareness in the office about the time people spend sedentary, using scents. Whiff, an ambient desktop device, releases a scent to raise awareness to go for a WorkWalk, switch from a sitting to standing position or take a break, guiding office workers to a path of healthier posture habits. We conducted two studies, first a lab study (N=14) to explore the effect of different scents and second, a field study (N=4) to learn how people react and interact with Whiff. With our work we study a relatively unexplored topic, supporting design interventions aiming at improving the physical activity patterns of office workers using scent.
This research needed two prototypes to be made:
These two devices had to communicate with each other, so two options were present 1) use a wire to transfer the data from one device to another or 2) use wireless communication. Although wireless communication might be more instable, it was the obvious choice since the chair had to be able to move around and not cause discomfort to the user while doing the user study. We used two Particle Photons together with a wireless hotspot device to connect the two parts of the design.
The sensing chair was made by installing two sensors. A pressure sensor attached to the seat, which would measure the applied pressure and therefore your sitting position and a flex sensor, which would be attached to the user’s back to monitor his back’s position. Basically, it’s a resistor that changes value when it’s bent. The sensors are connected to a Particle Photon and powered via a LiPo battery to ensure manoeuvrability
Many jobs require us to sit for a long time and this is detrimental for our health. In this paper we wanted to investigate the research question: Which scents can be used to raise awareness to have a physically active workstyle? We researched it by firstly conducting a user study on different smells and what their associations were. We explored which scents are generally associated with taking action. Alongside we designed Whiff as an olfactory research-through design artifact. With Whiff we then explored ways how office workers would react on the deployment of a certain scent.
As a result, we found that scents were experienced differently per person, but that there were some trends visible that suggest that office workers associate certain smells with taking action. Taking action was generally associated with nature scents. These findings can be used in further applications in the topic of using scents to remind someone of physical activity. The results of the second user test suggests that it is harder to trigger an office worker to a physical activity with scents, but that it may be doable to raise awareness on the topic with nature scents. This should, however, be further researched. Bigger and more appropriate studies will have to be conducted to give more reliable answers on this topic. Doing this is also relevant due to the fact that we are getting more and more jobs that require us to sit behind a desk. As a result, office vitality will become increasingly important and the demand for design interventions such as the Whiff will probably increase. However, scent is still an underexplored medium and could therefore play a greater role in this with the right help from researchers and designers.
This research project forms part of a bigger research project by Hans Brombacher, Steven Vos & Steven Houben - "Scent as a Sensory Modality for Data Physicalisation for Office Well-being" which was accepted to the CHI 2023 Late-Breaking Work (LBW) track.
