Smell & Paste: Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Olfactory Experiences

Figure 1: An overview of prototyping with Smell & Paste (lo-fi) versus current practices (hi-fi). Smell & Paste: Our technique leverages low-fidelity materials to make low-fidelity prototyping of smell experiences approachable and fast for novices and experts alike.

Here, a designer (a) tests their drafted odor sequence for a virtual reality experience. They decide to tweak the sequence, so they (b) open the cassette with the loaded smell tape. They (c) modify the odor interaction by cutting and pasting off-the-shelf scratch-and-sniff stickers onto the tape. Within minutes, (d) they test the changes by advancing the cassette with its driver, and the cassette's comb scratches the tape to release the stickers' smells. This allows for a quick and easily approachable prototyping workflow. In contrast, current practice: Today, experts jump directly to high-fidelity development. They must often (1) handle fragrance chemicals directly and (2) are required to build and program a delivery system before they can (3) test their experience. Each step in current practice is time-consuming: a single iteration can take hours, days, orin some extremes -months.