Your senses send a burst of information about a new place to your brain each time you walk into it. How does the room appear? What noises does it make? How does it smell? Is the weather dry or humid, hot or cold? Because we are full-body sensors, we are always aware of our surroundings and can better understand the areas we visit.

In any particular place, these same inputs also affect our behaviour, emotions, and overall well-being. People experience and respond to space in a variety of ways, both consciously and unconsciously, subtle and evident, according to multisensory design. The workplace may finally catch up to the retail, entertainment, and hospitality sectors, which have long embraced multimodal features in their spaces.

This is an excellent thing because a lot of us spend so much time at work that little things like the temperature, the quality of the sound we hear, or even how easy it is for us to get around the building can have a significant long-term impact on our mental and physical health, as well as how content and productive we are at work.

Five Senses to Design a Multi-sensory Office Experience

Sight

Although sight is typically regarded as the fundamental sense of architecture and space, it consists of a wide range of aspects that go well beyond aesthetics.

For example, visual access to daylight and natural environments supports the maintenance of regular circadian rhythms, which are linked to mental, behavioural, and physical health; additionally, sunlight exposure allows our bodies to produce vitamin D, which supports immune function, lowers inflammation, and supports bone health. Having natural light available is essential for a multisensory workspace that is healthful.

The performance, happiness, comfort, and health of occupants can all be significantly impacted by the colours of surfaces and objects. Warm-toned, organic materials like wood promote favourable biophilic effects. Clear sight lines between coworkers and preventing a feeling of being crowded in the office also support healthy, productive work environments.

Smell

You've undoubtedly heard that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory; for this reason, retail and hospitality settings have long employed unique scents to provide patrons with multisensory experiences they will never forget.

Pleasant smells can also help build a strong, positive association between a room and its occupants in the workplace, making it feel less impersonal and more personal. It makes sense that the bathroom is a crucial area that benefits from olfactory care.

Taste

While it may not be the first sense that springs to mind when considering workplace design, food and beverages do have a significant impact on fostering a sense of community at work. For example, serving excellent coffee communicates to your employees that you value their needs and recognise that many people find caffeine to be a requirement at work!

On the other hand, joyful hours transform the workplace into a social setting where people come to talk about things other than work. One of the most important aspects of attending to residents' well-being is making sure they have access to enjoyable, healthful food and drink.

It's a well-known fact that sharing food and beverages with others makes individuals happier. Offering facilities and events that centre around the custom of meals and refreshments is a fantastic approach to drawing in and keeping talent. It also encourages cross-cultural connections and the sharing of personal experiences—that is, to stop talking about work for once.

Sound

Sound is arguably the most discussed sensory experience at work, second only to sight, and most of the discourse about it is about complaints. Although sound in the workplace can be stimulating or calming, it's more often connected to distraction and noise. These days, the trend of furnishing workplaces with harsher, more reflecting materials and open office layouts might make those issues worse.

Studies on the impact of low frequencies (often interpreted as vibrations) from many contemporary office devices indicate that even these minuscule sounds might have detrimental effects on the nervous system and lead to sleep disturbances.

Both the advantages and disadvantages of sound in the workplace can be managed in a few different ways. Putting on vocal-free music in common areas if you're trying to focus, for example, can help distinguish your business from others. Giving employees personal control over their work environment can be achieved by letting them choose the music that plays in particular areas.

Utilising sound-masking tools and materials can assist separate focused, heads-down areas from communal or collaborative ones and enhance concentration and secrecy when necessary when it comes to distracting noises.

Touch

In the context of workplace design, "touch" refers to both the objects we physically interact with and the surfaces, edges, and surroundings that are in our field of vision but that we may only picture touching or occupying. This implies that you could use your sense of touch to anticipate how it would feel to sit down in a hard chair or a soft couch, or you could use it to see someone across the room and gauge how they would feel.

Even when you feel the humidity in a room or respond to its temperature or airflow, your sense of touch is at work. A more tranquil environment might result from using natural materials (fabric rather than plastic) for furniture and décor whenever feasible.

Overly warm offices can exacerbate the symptoms of "sick building syndrome," which has a detrimental effect on people's productivity, well-being, and willingness to work there. Building engineers created temperature standards in the middle of the 20th century to estimate air flows, but they assumed that most employees were males wearing three-piece suits.

These criteria are quickly becoming obsolete in today's workplaces! It is crucial to make sure that we are designing with the current inhabitants' touch and all other senses in mind.

Conclusion

Although we are aware of these wonderful, frequently straightforward strategies for stimulating people's senses and promoting their well-being, the mechanics and consequences of how our bodies and minds interact with and respond to the outer environment are significantly more intricate.

More investigation into this subject may lead to the discovery of what some have dubbed our mirror neurons, the wellspring of empathy. These ignite both when we act ourselves and when we merely watch someone else carry out the identical action.

The workplace ramifications of this technique seem endless, particularly when considering multisensory design. Do you want to design your own office, click here to learn about office on rent in Ahmedabad.