Smell, Memory and Games

 Exploring  the  potential  of  the  sense  of    

smell  in  memory  games    

Maxime  Barnier          

Master  thesis  project  -­‐  Interaction  Design  Master  at  K3    Malmö  University  -­‐  Sweden  2015  

                 

Supervisor:  Simon  Niedenthal  Examiner:  Jonas  Löwgren  

Examination:  2nd  June,  2015  

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Table of contents

Abstract  ....................................................................................................................  4  

1.Introduction  ...........................................................................................................  5  

2.  Research  focus  ......................................................................................................  6  

3.  Literature  overview  and  related  works  ..................................................................  8  

3.1  An  Understanding  of  smell  and  scents  in  our  society  ........................................  8  

How  the  sense  of  smell  works  .....................................................................................  9  

The  classification  of  smell  ..........................................................................................  10  

The  power  of  smell  ....................................................................................................  12  

3.2  The  human  memory  .......................................................................................  13  

Long-­‐term  store  and  Chunking  ..................................................................................  15  

Training  the  memory  of  smells  ..................................................................................  16  

3.4  Learning  with  games  ......................................................................................  16  

Game  and  Gamification  .............................................................................................  16  

Tangible  product  ........................................................................................................  19  

3.5  Smell  in  game  design  .....................................................................................  21  

4.  Methodology  .......................................................................................................  25  

4.1  Research  through  design  ................................................................................  25  

4.2  A  Game  design  approach  ...............................................................................  25  

5.  Process  and  results  ..............................................................................................  27  

5.1  Defining  an  olfactory  game  sharpening  the  memory  ......................................  27  

Guess  my  face  ............................................................................................................  27  

Gameplay  ...................................................................................................................  28  

5.2  Experiments  ...................................................................................................  32  

Prototype  1  ................................................................................................................  32  

Prototype  2  ................................................................................................................  39  

5.4  Experiment  critique  and  design  openings  .......................................................  47  

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7.  Reflect  .................................................................................................................  49  

Conclusions  ................................................................................................................  49  

Discussion  ..................................................................................................................  50  

Further  works  .............................................................................................................  51  

Acknowledgments  ...................................................................................................  52  

References  ..............................................................................................................  53  

 

   

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Abstract    This  study  is  focused  on  the  impact  of  smell  on  the  memory  in  the  context  of  games.  The  aim  is  to  understand  what  the  effects  of  smell  on  human’s  memorization  and  learning  process  are.  The  research  topic  is  explored  through  creating  a  memory  game  designed  specifically  for  the  study:  “Guess  My  Face”.    In  this  game,  the  players  have  to  memorize  pictures  of  faces  parts  using  their  specific  scents.  The  game’s  goal  is  to  manage  to  compose  a  random  face  provided  by  the  game  with  the  face  parts  that  the  players  learned.  However,  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  players  do  not  see  the  face  parts  pictures  during  the  game  and  so,  have  to  rely  on  their  sense  of  smell  alone.    The  game  intends  to  contribute  to  the  research  area  in  different  ways.  First,  it  provides  a  technological  solution  for  involving  the  inclusion  of  smell  in  games  by  using  smell  boxes  connected  to  the  computer.    Second,  the  playtestings  of  the  game  highlight  issues  that  a  game  designer  has  to  take  account  by  involving  smell:  balancing  the  strengths  of  the  scents,  participants  experiencing  dizziness  after  smelling  a  lot  of  different  scents,  the  amount  of  time  that  smells  remain  in  the  air,  the  fact  that  coffee  can  be  used  to  neutralize  scents.  Finally,  the  game  contributes  to  the  exploration  of  the  way  that  smell  triggers  memories  and  how  it  could  help  for  enhancing  learning.      Through  the  iterations  of  testing,  the  study  reveals  that  smell  is  a  sense  that  people  do  not  often  rely  on  for  memorizing  and  they  prefer  visual  memory.  Moreover,  we  learn  that  players  memorize  pictures  more  easily  when  scent  is  involved,  as  they  use  several  cognitive  strategies  or  reflexes:  characterizing  the  scents  with  adjectives  or  identifying  their  origin  (fruits,  woods),  involving  emotions  (disgust,  strangeness),  and  relying  on  personal  experience  (creating  a  link  between  a  scent  and  picture  thanks  to  the  memory  of  a  person/object/event).  This  cognitive  behaviour  shows  that  smell  has  the  potential  to  enhance  memory  by  creating  meaningful  knowledge  and  making  the  assimilation  of  information  easier,  an  arena  that  has  been  dealt  with  by  George  Miller  in  his  ’chunking  theory’  (Thompson  et  al.,  2005).  

         

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1.Introduction      Since  I  started  to  work  in  interaction  design,  I  intended  to  understand  and  explore  the  game  design  arena.  This  choice  is  based  on  the  idea  that  games  could  be  an  efficient  way  to  motivate  people  arouse  their  interest  in  a  particular  subject  or  activity  that  they  usually  would  not  deal  with.    For  example,  my  last  master  project  was  focused  on  gamification  and  the  learning  process  for  children  with  Down’s  syndrome.  I  analyzed  the  ways  games  could  be  adapted  for  this  purpose.  For  this  study,  I  wanted  to  go  a  step  further  by  dealing  with  game  design  in  more  detail  and  exploring  its  limits.  Working  with  the  sense  of  smell  was  a  proposition  of  Simon  Niedenthal,  a  researcher  in  the  area  of  smell  and  games  at  Malmö  University.  I  chose  to  explore  this  topic,  as  it  was  an  opportunity  for  me  to  deal  with  games  from  a  different  perspective.  However,  I  saw  that  current  trend  in  the  digital  area  is  to  use  smell  for  immersion  enhancing.  A  lot  of  products  and  concepts  started  to  come  out,  such  as  diffusion  devices  for  laptops.  Moreover,  most  of  the  previous  work  involving  smell  in  digital  media  has  dealt  with  immersion  enhancement  and,  unfortunately,  proposed  experiences  that  did  not  work  or  caused  too  many  issues  (Niedenthal,  2012).  As  such,  I  understood  that  smell  remains  opened  for  studies  and  could  even  open  up  potentials  other  than  immersion.  I  remembered  that  smell  has  the  particularity  to  bring  back  people’s  memories.  I  saw  this  as  a  potential  enhancement  of  games  which  uses  memory  and  by  extension,  in  my  own  work,  another  way  to  help  the  learning  process  within  games.      This  study  aims  to  create  a  game  that  explores  the  potential  of  scents  in  human  memory.  As  such,  I  would  like  to  contribute  for  several  domains.  The  first  one  is  the  game  design  area,  as  the  project  could  contribute  to  a  personal  investigation  of  combining  smell  and  games  through  rules,  challenges,  etcetera.  Secondly,  the  potential  effects  of  smell  on  memory  could  contribute  to  psychological  knowledge  and  could  open  up  on  new  ways  of  learning.  Finally,  the  domain  of  interaction  design  could  be  enriched  by  the  technology  developed  during  the  project  (combining  smell  and  digital  devices)  and  moreover,  the  project  could  contribute  to  the  creation  of  new  interaction  design  projects  involving  the  effect  of  smells  on  memory.                    

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2.  Research  focus    In  the  field  of  interaction  design,  olfaction  is  a  topic  still  open  for  studies.  The  idea  of  combining  scents  and  technologies  appeared  in  the  middle  of  the  20th  century  with  projects  such  as  Aromarama1,  which  intended  to  add  an  olfactory  immersion  in  a  theatre.  However,  the  potential  of  such  a  combination  remains  blurry  and  researchers  continue  to  build  prototypes  looking  into  the  topic2.    The  gaming  industry  is  currently  evolving  thanks  to  new  technologies  which  improve  players’  experiences  through  the  means  of  immersion.  A  noteworthy  example  is  the  Oculus  Rift,  which  simulates  real  human  vision  in  video-­‐games,  and  is  currently  developing  the  means  to  extend  its  immersion  potential  to  olfactics  with  the  FeelReal  add-­‐on  (see  Figure1).    

   Figure1.  FeelReal  prototype,  an  Oculus  Rift  add-­‐on  providing  seven  different  smells  for  game  immersion  (Ocean,  Jungle,  Fire,  Grass,  Powder,  Flowers,  Metal),  as  well  as  cool  or  hot  blasts  of  air.    However,  it  seems  that  smell  in  games  could  provide  more  than  just  the  potential  of  immersion.  Smell  has  other  impacts  on  human  behavior  that  could  expand  on  original  gameplays,  or  even  train  cognitive  processes  through  gamified  applications  or  more  serious  games.      Smell  and  the  memorization  of  past  experience  have  a  close  connection,  as  illustrated  by  Jean-­‐Pierre  Royet  et  al.  (2013)  in  their  study  of  the  impact  of  expertise  in  olfaction:        «  […]  the  development  of  cerebral  imaging  techniques  has  enabled  the  identification  of  brain  areas  and  neural  networks  involved  in  odor  processing,  revealing  functional  and  structural  modifications  as  a  function  of  experience.  »  

                                                                                                               1  Henry Hart (2014). Innovations in Cinema: "AromaRama" - National Board of Review. 2015. Available at: http://www.nationalboardofreview.org/2014/01/innovations-cinema-aromarama/ [Accessed 16 March 2015]. 2  http://www.digital-olfaction.com/news-about-digital-olfaction/among-presentations-at-dos-2nd-world-congress-2014  

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 In  the  novel  ‘In  Search  of  Lost  Time’  (Proust,  1913),  the  author  uses  madeleine  cakes  as  a  vehicle  to  illustrate  the  ability  of  smell  to  trigger  past  memories.  In  the  same  way,  using  smell  in  games  could  be  a  way  to  handle  memorization  processes  and  perhaps  to  train  the  memorization  of  specific  information.    Such  a  study  could  contribute  on  different  levels.  Firstly,  as  smell  remains  a  sense  with  unknown  potential,  exploring  the  impact  of  olfactory  interaction  on  memory  could  help  researches  to  go  deeper  in  the  understanding  of  the  relation  between  smell  and  cognitive  processes.  Secondly,  as  it  seems  that  the  brain  shows  improved  potential  for  elasticity  if  we  train  our  memory  (Belleville  et  al.  2010)  providing  an  example  of  memory  training  through  games  could  open  up  the  creation  of  tools  for  aiding  the  treatment  of  memory  disorders,  such  as  Alzheimer’s  Disease.    Specifically,  this  study  will  explore  the  effects  of  scent  on  human  memory  and  cognitive  processes  in  order  to  create  a  specific  olfactory  memory  game.    The  method  will  follow  a  game  design  approach  as  the  research  will  be  fed  thanks  to  playtestings  of  game  prototypes.  These  playtestings  will  highlight  issues  and  feedback  about  the  game  experience  and  the  manner  in  which  smell  interacts  with  the  players’  memorization  mechanics.  This  information  will  then  open  up  on  game  improvements  and  new  iterations  of  play  testing.    Research  question:      How  can  a  game  be  enriched  by  the  effect  of  smell  interaction  on  human  memorization  mechanics?      The  study  will  first  outline  current  understanding  of  the  sense  of  smell,  and  will  then  focus  on  theories  of  human  memory  in  order  to  understand  more  precisely  how  smell  has  an  impact  on  human  cognitive  processes  for  memorization.  Moreover,  as  the  research  aim  is  to  create  a  memory  game,  we  will  talk  about  designing  games  and  game  knowledge  that  could  improve  the  final  product.                  

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3.  Literature  overview  and  related  works    

3.1  An  Understanding  of  smell  and  scents  in  our  society    Humans  do  not  rely  often  on  their  smell.  This  is  understandable  as  3.5%  of  the  information  about  our  environment  comes  from  our  sense  of  smell,  as  opposed  to  83%  from  sight  and  11%  from  hearing  (Gould  and  Roffrey-­‐Barentsen,  2014).  Smell  can  provide  effective  information  for  detecting  danger  (for  example,  smoke  or  gas)  or  checking  food  quality  (rotten  meat,  soured  milk),  but  society  has  moved  away  from  using  this  sense  as  the  primary  alert  for  this  kind  of  danger  through  such  measures  as  expiration  dates  on  food  packaging  and  installing  fire  alarms  in  buildings.    In  the  ‘Foul  and  the  Fragrant’  (Corbin,  1986),  the  author  criticizes  how  the  society  came  to  deodorize  the  environment  through  the  suppression  of  odours  in  public  places  and  how  that  process  made  people  intolerant  to  new  scents.  One  of  the  sources  in  the  book  refers  to  epidemics,  such  as  Cholera  in  1832  France,  which  to  led  people  avoiding  crowds,  public  smells  and  sources  of  disease,  and  supported  keeping  to  private,  clean  areas,  i.e.  houses.  The  idea  of  keeping  away  scents  was  sustained  by  the  bourgeoisie  social  class  who  intended  to  maintain  the  “Purity  rule.”  This  law  involved  using  fragrance  and  fresh  clothes  in  order  to  get  rid  of  natural  body  scents  and  secretions  referring  to  human’s  bestial  origin.  Today,  the  tradition  continues  through  the  expansion  of  the  advertisement  and  manufacture  of  deodorisation  products  for  use  in  the  home  and  personal-­‐hygiene.      However,  even  if  humans  being  try  as  much  as  possible  to  limit  their  sense  of  smell,  it  remains  the  most  important  sense  for  other  animals.  Animals  use  this  powerful  sense  for  detecting  prey  and  food,  as  well  as  for  understanding  their  surrounding  area  and  some  species  have  a  more  developed  sense  of  smell  than  others  (Van  Brakel  et  al.,  2014).  The  dog’s  nose,  for  example,  is  sensitive  enough  to  smell  and  identify  some  forms  of  cancer  in  other  species.  Likewise,  the  bee  has  a  very  acute  sense  of  smell,  which  is  sensitive  enough  to  identify  the  bacteria  from  human  breath.  Mosquitoes  use  their  sense  of  smell  to  detect  chemicals  to  evaluate  the  stress  level  and  the  presence  of  disease  in  potential  prey,  allowing  them  to  choose  the  most  desirable  blood.      As  we  have  seen,  the  human  sense  of  smell,  as  well  as  its  role  in  our  culture,  is  comparatively  limited.  Nevertheless,  a  powerful  potential  remains  in  that  the  sense  of  smell  can  trigger  memories  in  human’s  cognitive  process.          

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How  the  sense  of  smell  works    If  we  want  to  understand  the  origin  of  smells,  we  need  to  zoom  in  to  the  atomic  level.  Indeed,  through  the  eyes  of  biologists,  smelly  elements  are  actually  simple  chemical  components  made  from  specific  atoms.  It  seems  it  is  possible  to  count  on  one  hand  the  atoms  that  contribute  to  smells  detectable  by  humans:  nitrogen,  sulphur,  oxygen,  carbon  and  hydrogen.  Different  combinations  of  these  elements  create  the  entire  olfactory  spectrum  that  we  experience  in  our  world.  Although  the  identification  of  these  “smell  molecules”  seems  to  be  clear  and  understood  in  the  scientific  community,  the  specific  way  that  these  molecules  are  interpreted  by  the  human  brain  is  not  fully  understood.  Two  different  theories  exist  which  attempt  to  define  it,  the  first  is  focused  on  molecule  shapes  being  detected  by  our  olfactory  sensors,  and  the  other  deals  with  the  wavelengths  of  the  atoms.  According  to  Luca  Turin  (2005),  biophysicist  in  the  science  of  smell,  experiments  have  evidenced  that  smell  molecules  are  specific  depending  on  the  vibrations  they  induce  in  our  olfactory  sensors.  In  that  way,  the  smell  molecules  send  neuron  messages  by  triggering  electron  transfers  thanks  to  their  particular  vibrations.    From  a  biological  perspective,  the  area  responsible  for  smell  detection  and  identification  is  situated  above  the  nasal  cavity.  This  small  system  is  comprised  of  olfactory  nerve  fibres  that  are  stimulated  by  smelly  components  and  detect  around  350  signals.  The  stimulation  of  these  nerves  enable  the  identification  of  thousands  of  odours.  The  signals  gathered  in  the  olfactory  bulb  are  sent  to  the  brain  via  the  nerves  and  interpreted  in  order  to  identify  a  specific  smell  (see  Figure  2).    

   

Figure  2.  Representation  of  the  human  olfactory  system,  University  of  Delaware.    

It  is  important  to  highlight  the  role  of  pheromones  as  they  contribute  an  important  behavioural  impact  on  life  beings,  and  are  an  essential  means  of  communication  for  

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animals.  Pheromones  do  not  have  to  be  mingled  with  scents  and  have  different  characteristics  compared  to  that  of  scents.  This  idea  is  supported  by  the  fact  that  pheromone  sensors  are  separated  from  the  olfactory  bulb,  even  if  they  exist  in  the  same  area  of  the  nose  (Van  Brakel  et  al.,  2014).  Pheromones  are  used  by  animals  mostly  to  find  a  mate  in  order  to  reproduce.  Ants  rely  on  pheromones  to  communicate  with  each  other  and  find  food.  However,  for  human  beings  the  effect  of  pheromones  is  still  a  controversial  subject,  even  if  some  maintain  that  they  have  an  impact  on  behaviour.  As  an  example,  an  experiment  showed  that  employees  became  cheerful,  happier  and  more  social  when  love  pheromones  were  secretly  spread  in  their  office.  Although  pheromones  remain  a  topic  of  interest  and  are  still  open  to  exploration,  they  will  not  be  studied  throughout  this  project,  as  they  do  not  act  on  emotions  and  memorization,  but  rather  on  behaviour.    

The  classification  of  smell    There  is  a  complexity  around  the  analysis  and  classification  smell.  Indeed,  there  is  no  efficient  ways  to  describe  a  smell.  As  Jospeh  Kay  (2004)  explains  in  his  study  of  scent  in  HCI  (Human  Center  Interface):    

“The  difficulty  is  that  we  have  no  good  abstract  or  higher-­‐level  categories,  other  than  the  smells  

themselves.  What  does  mint  taste  like?  Well...mint.”  (Kay,  2004)    In  addition,  smells  are  subjective  and  this  interferes  with  any  attempts  to  make  a  smell  classification  system  as  everyone  has  their  own  opinions  and  tastes  regarding  scents.  For  example,  a  scent  described  as  “floral”  could  not  be  identified  as  such  if  someone  perceives  it  as  unpleasant.  In  that  way,  it  seems  that  the  scientific  area  still  struggles  to  create  a  reproducible  and  rigorous  classification  scheme  for  smells  (Kay,  2004).      The  domain  of  perfumery,  however,  creates  its  own  classifications  based  on  human’s  perception  of  smells.  One  of  the  most  known  smell  graphs  comes  from  Michael  Edwards  (see  Figure  3).  Most  perfumes  today  are  based  on  this  representation  as  it  provides  a  clear  vocabulary  and  logic  for  identifying  and  describing  scents.  

 

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Figure  3.  The  Fragrance  wheel  developed  by  Michael  Edwards  in  1983.  This  representation  is  a  modern  one  as  the  schema  comes  from  “Fragrances  of  the  world”  published  in  2010.  

 For  Laura  Dona  (2009),  who  works  as  a  fragrance  coach  by  formulating  the  language  of  scent  for  customer  services,  smell  is  not  as  relative  as  people  think.  She  presents  the  work  of  Zarzo  and  Stanson  that,  for  her,  found  an  efficient  solution  for  developing  a  common  scent  classification.  Based  on  the  previous  classification  theories  of  Paul  Jellinek  (Smell  mapping  created  in  1951)  and  the  database  of  Boelens-­‐Haring  (list  of  scents  compounds),  they  created  a  two  dimensional  sensory  map  of  odor  descriptors  (see  Figure  4).  

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Figure  4.  Two  dimensional  sensory  map  of  odors  descriptors  by  Zarzo  and  Stanson.    

But  this  representation  remains  complicated  for  laypeople,  and  while  the  mapping  provides  a  clear  and  detailed  development  of  scent  compounds,  the  simplicity  of  Michael  Edwards’  wheel  delivers  a  simple  method  for  classifying  scents.    

The  power  of  smell    Previously,  we  saw  that  smell  for  humans  is  limited  and  minimized  in  society  compared  to  the  other  senses.  However,  the  loss  of  smell  could  have  serious  consequences  on  human’s  health  and  psychology.  In  fact,  without  smell,  humans  could  experience  a  great  change  in  quality  of  life  quality  and  behaviour.  A  study  has  shown  that  patients  with  olfactory  impairment  can  experience  social  isolation  and  anhedonia  (the  inability  to  experience  pleasure).      From  a  biological  perspective,  smell  has  an  impact  on  our  eating  behaviour  as  it  triggers  the  craving  of  a  specific  food  depending  on  which  nutrients  an  individual  may  be  lacking.  This  particularity  extends  to  the  stimulation  of  appetite  for  similar  food:  after  exposure  to  a  specific  odour,  such  as  banana,  we  develop  an  appetite  for  the  food  in  question  and  related  sweet  products,  for  example,  a  chocolate  brownie.    

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What  is  of  interest  in  this  study  is  the  potential  of  smell  to  trigger  memories.  This  particular  experience  is  often  illustrated  through  the  example  of  Proust’s  madeleine  cakes.  In  his  book  ‘In  Search  of  Lost  Time’  (1931)  the  author  talks  about  how  the  smell  of  cake  dipped  in  tea  brings  back  strong  memories  from  his  childhood.  Madeleine  episode  became  a  touchstone  for  smell-­‐memory  studies  and  inspired  poets  as  well  as  psychologists.  Indeed,  psychologists  saw  in  Proust’s  novel  a  concept  to  explore  in  order  to  understand  the  effect  of  scent  on  human  memory.  However,  through  the  analysis  of  psychologist  Avery  Gilbert  (2008),  it  seems  that  what  Proust  describes  is  not  what  most  people  experience  when  memories  are  triggered  in  their  minds  thanks  to  particulars  scents.  Gilbert  describes  the  fact  that,  in  the  process  of  reminiscing  through  scents,  the  emotional  experience  is  automatic  unlike  Proust’s  experience  of  him  himself  triggering  the  memories.  Moreover,  Avery  Gilbert  highlights  that  Proust’s  experience  deals  first  with  pleasure  and  emotions,  and  second  with  experiences,  pictures,  sounds  and  mood.  Through  this  analysis,  Avery  Gilbert  concludes  on  the  fact  that  the  scientific  community  used  to  base  their  research  on  a  complex  neuronal  process  that  does  not  seem  to  be  the  one  that  people  commonly  experience  by  smelling  scents.    Scientists  explain  that  smell  can  trigger  pictures,  people,  sounds  and  moods  in  our  minds  because  of  the  proximity  between  the  brain  area  responsible  of  the  olfaction  and  the  area  dealing  with  emotions  (Thompson  et  al.,  2005).  Another  aspect  shows  that  olfaction  is  connected  with  memory:  a  study  has  shown  that  the  loss  of  smell  precedes  the  onset  of  Alzheimer’s  disease  and  other  forms  of  dementia  (Belleville  et  al.,  2011).    Since  the  relation  between  smell  and  memory  appears  to  be  linked,  we  will  continue  on  an  understanding  of  human  memory  and  its  cognitive  mechanisms.    

3.2  The  human  memory      For  Thompson  et  al.  (2005),  memory  is  the  origin  of  consciousness  since  without  memory,  beings  can’t  have  minds.  The  development  of  the  memory  seems  to  be  at  the  very  origin  of  the  evolution  of  complex  forms  of  life,  as  it  remains  at  the  genetic  level.  For  example,  some  animals’  reflexes  and  behaviours  appear  to  be  assimilated  at  their  birth.  This  understanding  involves  the  fact  that  memory  is  not  limited  to  the  memorization  of  simple  information  (pictures,  sounds),  but  that  it  involves  more  complex  processes  and  capacities.  According  to  Thompson  et  al.,  memory  is  divided  into  several  kinds  of  memory  which  deal  with  specific  memorization  mechanisms  and  occur  in  different  parts  of  the  brain  (see  Figure  5).    

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   Figure  5.  Schema  of  the  different  types  or  forms  of  memory  and  the  respective  brain  structure  involved  

(Memory:  The  key  of  Consciousness,  2005)    On  the  one  hand,  we  talk  about  declarative  or  explicit  memories.  This  memory  is  the  one  that  we  are  conscious  of,  that  we  can  access  just  as  easily  as  opening  drawers  from  labelled  shelves.  This  explicit  memory  is  composed  by  semantic  memories:  the  total  knowledge  of  semantic  sets  (words,  numbers,  names)  and  episodic  memory,  dealing  with  memorizing  events  and  experiences  (What  did  you  eat  for  breakfast?  Which  music  did  you  listen  yesterday?).  According  to  Thompson  et  al.  (2005),  declarative  memory  is  made  up  of  short-­‐term  or  “working”  memory.  This  particular  memory  is  the  one  that  we  often  use  to  remember  tiny  pieces  of  information  such  as  addresses,  phone  numbers  etcetera,  and  it  remains  for  just  few  seconds.  The  authors  highlight  that  this  memory  is  responsible  for  consciousness  or  awareness  and  even  general  intelligence.    On  the  other  hand  is  Implicit,  or  Non-­‐declarative,  memory  dealing  with  knowledge  and  information  that  we  are  not  directly  aware  of.  As  an  example,  Thompson  et  al.  (2005)  talks  about  people  who  could  refer  to  information  that  they  heard  during  unconscious  phases  (Priming  learning).  Moreover,  this  kind  of  memory  seems  to  be  responsible  for  learning  to  walk  and  talk.  In  that  domain,  Pavlov’s  work  on  conditioning  comes  into  play.  Conditioning  was  focused  on  behavioural  changes  induced  by  stimuli:  The  experiments  from  this  research  area  showed  that  a  subject  could  “learn”  a  specific  behaviour  by  being  stimulated  by  the  same  stimulus  that  triggered  the  behaviour  in  question.    Conditioning  is  dividing  in  several  kinds  of  learning:  the  habituation  (becoming  insensitive  to  a  repeated  stimulus),  associative  learning  (acting  in  response  to  a  

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stimulus),  emotional  learning  (the  stimulus  involves  emotions),  instrumental  learning  (acting  before  the  stimulus  occurs),  priming  (presented  above)  and  probability  and  category  learning  (get  the  right  stimulus  pattern  the  more  you  are  stimulated).  These  aspects  shows  how  declarative  memory  deals  with  unconscious  memories  and  knowledge:  we  are  not  aware  of  these  behaviours  and  reflexes,  but  our  nerves  become  more  and  more  familiar  with  these  stimuli.  Further  proof  that  this  non-­‐declarative  memory  process  is  innate  for  living  beings  can  be  found  in  that  scientists  discovered  that  foetuses  became  less  and  less  sensitive  to  loud  noises  the  more  they  were  stimulated.    The  memory  involved  in  this  study  refers  mostly  to  declarative  memory  and,  more  specifically,  to  “working  memory”.    

Long-­‐term  store  and  Chunking    Working  memory  has  two  aspects:  short-­‐  and  long-­‐term  storage.  The  short-­‐term  store  refers  to  data  that  we  keep  for  few  seconds  or  minutes.    In  our  study,  we  are  going  to  focus  on  the  understanding  of  long-­‐term  storage.  The  most  common  way  to  memorize  is  through  repeating  information.  This  process,  called  “maintenance  rehearsal”  is  limited,  as  a  single  distraction  could  erase  the  retained  information.  However,  studies  show  that  there  are  other  methodologies  that  help  in  the  memorization  of  information  long-­‐term.  George  Miller,  a  specialist  in  cognitive  psychology  devised  the  chunking  memory,  also  translated  as  “psychological  or  perceptual  unit”  from  Thompson  et  al.  (2005).  This  theory  explains  that  we  memorize  through  chunks  of  information  (units  of  information).  In  the  example  presented  by  Thompson  et  al.  (2005),  there  are  twelve  chunks  (12  letters).  However,  as  the  order  creates  simple  words,  the  chunk  is  reduced  to  3  (see  Figure  6).  The  logic  is  the  smaller  a  chunk  is,  the  easier  it  is  to  memorize.    

   

Figure  6.  The  original  test  involved  twelve  different  letters.  In  this  case,  the  letters  form  three  distinctive  words  that  make  the  letters  memorization  easier.  

 The  process  to  reduce  the  chunk  remains  in  our  ability  to  recode  information  into  something  familiar  and  meaningful.  The  example  from  the  Thompson’s  book  (2005)  presents  an  amateur  runner  that  memorized  about  70  digits  by  linking  the  number  pattern  with  times  made  in  world  record  running.  

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Based  on  the  theory  of  chunks,  the  ability  to  memorize  depends  on  the  depth  of  processing,  or  in  other  words,  how  many  layers  of  logic  are  needed  to  reach  the  information  to  memorize.  In  that  way,  chunking  is  a  way  to  learn  which  draws  upon  the  knowledge  we  have  already  assimilated.    

Training  the  memory  of  smells    According  to  cognitive  science,  working  memory  is  trainable  and  could  improve  several  cognitive  skills  depending  on  specific  exercises  (Morrison  &  Chein,  2010).  In  this  way,  it  seems  that  mental  tasks  such  as  multitasking,  attention  or  the  speed  of  mental  processing  could  be  trained  and  improved.  The  long-­‐term  store  seems  open  for  training  the  acquisition  of  specifics,  chunking  or  mnemonic  process  like,  for  example,  memorising  smells.    Thompson  et  al.  (2005)  explain  that  a  short-­‐term  sensory  memory  for  smell  exists,  but  has  the  same  default  compared  to  the  visual  one  as  it  can  preserve  information  for  brief  periods,  and  could  be  subject  to  a  lot  of  interferences.  However,  using  the  chunking  process  could  be  a  way  to  assimilate  smells:  as  scent  can  be  described  with  knowledge  of  basic  adjectives  (wood,  floral,  oriental,  fresh)  the  process  seems  easy.  However,  according  to  Joseph  Kay,  using  adjectives  for  describing  smells  is  not  that  effective.  A  better  option  would  be  to  assimilate  scent  with  known  object  or  person  (leather,  tomato,  roses).    There  exists  another  way  to  memorize  smell,  but  it  involves  prior-­‐knowledge  of  a  basic  smell  classification  system.  This  process  involves  identifying  smell  components,  but  this  strategy  is  very  limited  because,  as  Andrew  Livermore  and  David  G.Laing  (1998)  explain  in  their  study,  most  people  can  identify  around  3  or  4  different  scents  from  a  mixture,  even  if  it  is  made  of  just  a  few  molecules.  This  is  the  associative  process.  If  this  limit  is  reached  we  will  experience  the  mixture  as  a  whole  scent  (associative  process).      Through  this  analysis,  training  the  memorization  of  smell  seems  to  rely  first  on  training  the  assimilation  of  the  scents  with  objects  and  elements  known  and  second,  on  extending  its  own  vocabulary  for  classifying  the  scents.    

3.4  Learning  with  games  

Game  and  Gamification    Before  getting  deeper  into  the  understanding  of  gamification,  we  are  going  to  focus  on  the  basic  definition  of  “what  is  a  game?”  For  Caillois  (2001),  the  answer  is  clear  and  involves  six  parameters:  free,  separate,  uncertain,  unproductive,  governed  by  rules,  and  make-­‐believe.  

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A  game  is  free  as  it  is  not  mandatory,  the  player  has  the  choice  to  get  involve  or  not  within  the  game.  A  game  is  separate  with  limits  of  space  and  time  that  were  defined  in  advance.  ‘Uncertain’  refers  to  the  fact  that  the  outcomes  of  games  are  not  previously  known  or  defined.  A  game  is  unproductive  as  no  good  is  created  within  the  game.  Rules  are  set  and  practicable  only  within  the  game.  And  finally,  a  game  puts  the  players  in  a  fake  reality  as  opposed  to  real  life.    Additionally,  Caillois  (2001)  defined  different  categories  of  game:  Agôn  (competitive  games),  Alea  (games  of  chance),  Mimicry  (mimic  games),  and  Ilinx  (games  involving  sensations  such  as  fear,  dizziness,  etcetera).  Moreover,  Caillois  (2001)  makes  a  distinction  between  two  different  kinds  of  “play”.  While  one  (Ludus)  refers  to  ruled  and  measured  activities,  the  other  (Paidia)  allows  the  player  to  create  and  improvise.  Combined  with  the  four  categories,  Paidia  and  Ludus  play  offer  a  large  range  of  games,  defined  in  Caillois’s  table  (see  Figure  7).  This  definition  of  play  has  been  a  basis  in  the  game  design  arena  as  it  enables  the  categorisation  of  practically  all  games.    

   

Figure  7.  Caillois’  categories  of  play  table.  (Caillois,  2001)    This  classification  is  used  by  Katie  Salen  (2004).  Compared  to  Caillois’  table,  the  authors  make  a  distinction  between  play  and  games,  and  present  their  relation  to  each  other.  There  are  two  ways  of  thinking:  game  is  part  of  game  or  play  is  part  of  game.  However  a  general  thought  underlines  the  definition  of  each  term:  On  one  hand,  “Play”  refers  to  every  kind  of  playful  activity  more  or  less  organized  and  mostly  open  to  “free”  actions  exploration.  On  the  other  hand,  games  refers  to  playful  activities  with  clear  and  explicit  rules.  Specifically,  the  author  shares  a  clear  definition  of  game:    «  A  game  is  a  system  in  which  players  engage  in  an  artificial  conflict,  defined  by  rules,  

that  results  in  a  quantifiable  outcome.  »    

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Conversely,  Katie  Salen  (2004)  describes  toys  as  a  kind  of  play  that  does  not  have  rules  or  specific  goals.  From  this  understanding,  the  author  highlight  one  particular  kind  of  game:  puzzles.  For  them,  puzzle  games  are  special  in  the  way  that  there  is  a  single  solution  for  succeeding  within  the  game  system.    With  the  development  of  the  Internet  and  the  rise  of  video  games,  the  beginning  of  the  20th  century  welcomed  a  new  form  of  playing.  Games  started  to  be  integrated  in  our  daily  life  by  way  of  gamification.  Gamification  was  known  has  a  manner  to  motivate  and  arouse  the  interest  of  people  for  non-­‐ludic  activities.    From  the  perspective  of  Sebastian  Deterding  (2011),  gamification  can  be  defined  through  two  parameters,  “game”-­‐“play”(understood  as  “ludus”  and  “paidia”  from  Caillois’s  definition)  and  “whole”-­‐“part”  (see  Figure  8).  By  such,  Deterding  explains  that  what  makes  gamification  different  from  toys,  serious  game,  and  games  is  its  focus  on  game  design  elements  rather  than  a  whole  game.    

   

Figure  8.  Gamification  definition  schema  (Deterding,  2011)      

More  precisely,  gamification  uses  components  or  elements  from  games  that  arouse  interest  and  motivation.  Some  examples  of  these  elements  are  known  as  leader  boards,  profile  statuses,  ranks  and  badges.  But  the  list  remains  blurry  as  people  from  

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different  domains  (games,  marketing)  define  their  own  “motivating  game  elements”  depending  on  their  own  marketing  strategies  (Priesbatsch,  2010).    According  to  Sean  A.  Munson  et  al.  (2014),  the  efficiency  of  gamification  comes  from  its  power  to  change  tedious  activities  into  meaningful  and  motivating  experiences.  By  using  the  example  of  health  care,  the  author  defines  the  potential  of  the  gamification  for  making  people  change  their  behaviour.  Munson  et  al.  (2014)  base  their  research  on  behavioural  theories  and  explains  that  gamification  has  the  role  of  triggering  the  right  psychological  lever  in  order  to  make  people  motivated.    For  Munson  et  al.  (2014),  there  are  three  different  ways  for  health  tracking:  personal  informatics,  games  and  gamification.  Personal  informatics  is  defined  as  a  tool  that  collects  and  interprets  data  from  one  person  (step  counter,  sleep  tracker,  etcetera).  In  that  case,  the  concept  is  simply  providing  information  to  the  user.  On  the  other  hand,  games  are  presented  as  engaging  fantasies  that  motivate  the  player  through  its  task  by  providing  goals  and  fast  feedback  on  the  accomplished  task  to  succeed  in  these  goals.  The  challenges  that  games  provide  through  their  goals  make  failure  fun.  The  motivation  power  of  games  is  also  highlighted  in  the  idea  that  they  could  make  activities  really  immersive  thanks  to  well-­‐written  stories.  In  that  way,  emotions  in  games  have  an  actual  impact  on  the  player’s  motivation.  Moreover,  games  could  display  statuses  that  make  the  evolution  of  the  player  progressing  in  the  game  visible.  This  opens  the  possibilities  of  ranking  and  competition  that,  in  turn,  make  the  activity  even  more  challenging  and  motivating.  This  also  explains  that  sharing  and  competition  make  the  activity  more  social,  and  make  the  player  think  that  they  are  part  of  a  community  with  players  who  support  each  other.  From  this  understanding  of  games,  the  author  explains  that  gamification  is  situated  between  personal  informatics  and  games.  In  other  words,  gamification  could  have  the  role  of  providing  actual  information  from  the  “real  world”  while  providing  a  singular  playful  experience  that  motivates  the  player  to  gather  and  play  with  this  data.  This  opens  the  possibilities  of  how  many  mechanics  gamification  could  keep  from  games  in  order  to  provide  the  motivation  required  for  the  players.    As  we  saw,  gamification  provides  an  interesting  aspect  of  games  regarding  a  potential  to  arouse  interest  and  motivate  the  players  to  do  tasks  and  activities.  In  this  way,  elements  from  gamification  seem  to  be  accurate  for  the  development  of  this  thesis  project,  as  it  involves  an  assimilation  of  scents  from  the  player.    

Tangible  product    Embody  interaction  is  a  concept  described  by  Paul  Dourish  (2001)  and  defined  as:    “[…]a  manipulation,  creation,  sharing  of  meaning  through  engaged  interaction  with  artefacts”  

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 In  other  words,  embody  interaction  refers  to  how  digitalized  systems  integrate  our  physical  and  social  environment.  In  our  case,  embody  interaction  could  be  understood  as  the  potential  of  using  tangible  object  for  digital  game.    As  Dourish  (2001)  explains  through  the  example  of  MIT  Media  Lab’s  project  “Tangible  Bits”  (see  Figure  9),  there  is  a  trend  that  intends  to  digitalise  tangible  tool  we  commonly  use.  The  watch  is  one  of  the  examples,  as  the  time  is  now  displayed  on  most  applications.  However,  it  explains  that  even  if  digital  and  physical  media  seems  to  be  informationally  the  same  (they  provide  the  same  information)  the  manner  of  how  we  interact  with  them  is  different:  they  are  not  interactionally  equivalent.  That  is  to  say,  extracting  digital  elements  and  making  them  tangible  is  actually  meaningful  as  it  provides  another  experience.  

 

   

Figure  9.  “Tangible  Bits”  explores  the  relation  between  Tangible  and  Graphical  elements  from  a  user-­‐interface  and  how  these  two  domains  are  linked.  The  project  proposes  three  prototypes:  metaDESK,  transBOARD  and  the  ambiantROOM.  (Dourish,  2001)    From  a  game  design  perspective,  the  idea  to  combine  digital  and  tangible  elements  is  an  emerging  concept  supported  by  the  development  of  mobile  devices.  Indeed,  these  technologies,  combined  with  our  surrounding  objects,  offer  a  new  panel  of  interactions  for  games.  The  Volumique  Editions  explore  this  potential  through  a  large  panel  of  projects  combining  tablets,  smartphones,  books  and  board  games  (see  Figure  10).    

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Figure  10.  “Les  éditions  Volumiques”  is  a  group  exploring  the  potential  of  combining  books  and  tangible  objects  with  mobile  devices.  Their  aim  is  to  give  a  second  life  to  non-­‐digital  objects  such  as  books  that  still  provide  interesting  interaction  potentials.    One  of  the  interesting  points  to  deal  with  in  relation  to  a  tangible  object  is  its  impact  on  the  learning  process.  Studies  show  that  incorporating  a  tangible  object  in  teaching  material  for  children  could  help  them  to  learn  15%  more  efficiently  (Fumard,  2014).  However  according  to  Paul  Marshal  (2007),  tangible  interfaces  in  the  learning  process  does  not  seem  that  efficient,  as  the  possibilities  of  learning  enhancement  are  different  from  one  project  to  another.  As  such,  a  tangible  object  should  be  carefully  designed  to  fit  in  with  the  learning  goals  (Marshal,  2007).    As  this  study’s  game  will  involve  learning  and  recognizing  smells,  the  interaction  within  the  game  could  improve  the  learning  process  of  the  player,  thanks  to  concrete  objects.    

3.5  Smell  in  game  design      In  this  section,  we  will  define  an  understanding  of  games  that  involve  smell  and  identify  the  way  in  which  scents  are  involved.  This  will  allow  us  to  underline  the  games  that  could  deal  with  this  study  aim.  

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 The  use  of  smells  in  board  games  aims  mostly  at  children,  with  the  purpose  of  allowing  them  to  discover  and  explore  the  scents.  For  adults  the  same  purpose  exists,  but  it  presents  another  facet  as  it  contributes  refining  the  player’s  smell  acuity.  Such  games  involve,  for  example,  identifying  the  components  of  a  wine  (see  Figure  11).  In  these  cases,  the  player’s  main  goal  is  to  guess  one  or  several  scents  from  the  game  materials  and  create  a  “personal  library”  of  scents  from  exploratory  learning.    

   

Figure  11.  “Le  nez  du  vin”  is  a  board  game  aiming  for  a  discovery  of  wine  compounds  and  the  development  of  smell  acuity  for  identifying  them.  (Editions  Jean  Lenoir)  

 The  designer  Max  Vandewiele  goes  further  in  the  guessing  process.  His  “Smell  factory”  game  project  involves  the  players  ‘scent  hunting,’  where  identification  is  the  key  for  succeeding  (see  Figure  12).  Indeed,  in  this  game  the  player  has  to  identify  specific  smells  from  mixtures.  By  such,  the  game  explores  the  associative  and  dissociative  process  highlighted  by  Andrew  Livermore  and  David  G.Laing  G.Laing  (1998).    

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Figure  12.  “Smell  factory”  by  Max  Vandewiele    The  “Spice  chess”  of  Takako  Saito  explores  sensory  interaction  with  the  chess  pieces  (see  Figure  13).  In  this  version  of  chess,  the  pieces  do  not  have  a  shape  and  the  player  can  only  recognize  each  piece’s  role  (queen,  rook,  pawn,  etcetera)  by  smelling  the  boxes.  Here,  Takako  Saito  triggers  an  identification  process  by  using  smells.  The  players  can  only  rely  on  their  sense  of  smell  while  playing  and  have  to  smell  the  box  to  have  an  understanding  of  the  game  state  for  developing  their  strategies.  From  this  perspective,  “Spice  chess”  deals  with  memorization  because  of  the  cognitive  process  involved  (e.g.  players  know  that  piece  X  is  the  pawn  because  it  smells  like  ginger).  With  deeper  analysis,  this  game  could  contribute  interesting  knowledge  to  the  understanding  memorization  triggered  by  smells.      

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Figure  13.  “Spice  chess”  by  Takako  Saito  (1964-­‐65)    The  development  of  technologies  such  as  Oculus  Rift  and  the  rise  of  video  games  introduced  the  sense  of  smell  into  games  in  order  to  improve  their  immersive  potential.  Different  plug-­‐in  technologies  have  appeared  recently  which  trigger  scents  according  to  the  game  content  displayed  on  the  screen  (see  Figure  14).  This  is  a  hot  topic  as  different  companies  intend  to  propose  their  own  scent  diffuser  technology.  However,  their  efficiency  and  immersive  potential  have  not  been  clearly  proved  so  far.  

 

   

Figure  14.  On  the  left,  GameSkunk  developed  by  Sensory  acumen  (2011),  on  the  right,  ScentScape  developed  by  Scent  Science  (2011).  Both  are  technologies  which  plug  into  a  computer  or  console  and  

spray  scents  specific  to  the  game  or  video  being  played.    From  this  brief  analysis  of  smell  involved  in  games,  we  can  see  that  memorization  appears  mostly  in  exploratory  games  like  “Le  Nez  du  vin”  in  which  the  player  learns  the  wine  compound  and  Takako  Saito’s  “Spice  chess”.  As  such,  the  gaming  arena  is  still  holds  much  to  explore  where  scent  and  memory  processes  are  involved.    

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4.  Methodology  

4.1  Research  through  design    As  this  study  involves  designing  a  game,  which  explores  specific  domains,  the  project’s  methodology  will  be  based  on  a  combination  of  research  and  design.      Recently,   HCI   (Human-­‐Computer   Interaction)   researchers   studied   the   potential   of  using   design   in   the   research   area   by   formulating   research   through   design   (RtD)  (Zimmerman  et  al.,  2007).   In  the  case  of   Interaction  design,  Zimmerman  et  al.   (2007)  identified   three   main   values   (or   aims)   that   the   discipline   brings   to   the   research  process.  The  first  deals  with  reducing  constraints  in  the  research  process,  meaning  that  design  does  not  take  account  of  boundaries  that  the  context  of  research  in  HCI  has  set  (economic  or   technological   constraints,   for  example).   The   second  point   refers   to   the  potential  of  design  to  bring   ideas   from  art  and  design   in  order  to  produce  functional  and  aesthetical  products.  Finally,  design  uses  empathy  to  shape  its  research  outcomes,  or  thinking  about  how  to  design  efficiently  for  specific  users.  For  Jonas  Löwgren  (2013),  the   essence   of   design   in   research   is   to   create   artifacts.   An   artifact,   from   an   RtD  perspective,   is   a   concretely  designed  outcome  of   the   research  process   that  provides  specific  knowledge  from  the  topic  studied  (Gaver,  2012).    During  this  research,  RtD  will  be  treated  as  a  strict  methodology  that  would  involve  creating  artifact  such  as  storyboards,  sketches  and  games  prototypes  each  times  that  there  is  a  specific  question,  topic,  idea  to  explore.  Each  one  will  be  carefully  described  with  annotated  portfolios:  sharing  my  design  aims  and  contributing  to  a  specific  knowledge  of  my  research  (Löwgren,  2013).    

4.2  A  Game  design  approach    For  Tracey  Fullerton  (2004),  game  design  methodology  involves  an  iterative  process  divided  into  specific  phases:  generating  ideas,  formalizing  ideas,  testing  ideas  and  evaluating  the  results.  If  there  is  a  problem  with  the  design,  the  idea  makes  another  loop  in  this  iterative  process  (see  Figure  15).    

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Figure  15.  Iterative  process  applicable  for  game  design  perspectives  (Fullerton,  2008)    

My  methodology  is  inspired  by  this  process  as  I  will  generate  ideas  through  storyboards,  formalize  my  ideas  with  the  materials  needed  (crafting,  coding)  and  test  the  game  through  playtesting.  However,  the  reiteration  will  not  be  triggered  by  design  problems  alone,  but  rather  if  a  question  or  an  interesting  potential  dealing  with  memory  and  smell  highlighted  through  the  play  testing  would  need  more  exploration.      My  role  as  a  designer  will  be  to  design  a  game  artifact  for  specific  players.  The  MDA  approach  explains  that  this  design  process  involves  three  layers:  Methods  (setting  the  game  rules),  Dynamism  (creating  the  game  system)  and  Aesthetics  (designing  what  makes  a  game  “fun”  or  describes  the  emotional  response  of  the  player)  (Kim,  2015).  The  process  suggests  that  I  will  create  the  game  artifact  by  consideration  of  the  methodology,  whereas  the  player  will  experience  the  game  primarily  through  the  game  artifact  aesthetics  (see  Figure  16).    

   

Figure  16.  the  MDA  approach  (Robin  Hunicke,)    However,  as  I  need  to  understand  the  pIayer’s  experience  while  playing  the  game  artifact,    in  order  to  improve  the  game  I  will  have  an  empathic  approach  that  will  involve  designing  the  game  from  the  perspective  of  both  the  designer  and  the  player  (see  Figure  17).    

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Figure  17.  The  empathic  perspective  in  the  MDA  approach    To  sum  up,  the  project  will  be  based  on  the  game  design  iterative  process  while  gathering  knowledge  from  other  domains  that  could  feed  and  improve  the  final  prototype.  By  such,  the  next  section  will  follow  game  design  methodology  by  dealing  with  the  analysis  of  game  probes  through  playtesting,  the  potential  improvement  that  the  analysis  highlighted,  and  the  redesign  of  the  game  artifact  from  the  technical  and  theoretical  perspective  as  well  as  the  aesthetical  perspective.  

5.  Process  and  results  

5.1  Defining  an  olfactory  game  sharpening  the  memory  

Guess  my  face    “Guess  my  face”  is  a  game  concept  created  in  collaboration  with  Jonas  Olofsson,  professor  in  psychology  at  the  University  of  Stockholm.  The  collaboration  helped  to  make  the  game  fit  with  potential  research  questions  about  smell  and  memory  training.  Although  the  scientific  purpose  of  the  game  is  not  one  of  the  priorities  of  this  thesis  project,  gathering  knowledge  and  ideas  from  current  research  domains  could  make  “Guess  my  face”  interesting  and  meaningful  for  further  experiments  and  uses  in  the  area  of  memory  or  scents.    As  an  introduction,  the  game  intended  to  combine  smells  and  a  well-­‐known  memory  game  (see  Figure  18),  as  it  had  already  dealt  with  memory  training.  From  that,  the  game  concept  was  enriched  by  suggestions  of  additional  gameplays  that  could  be  relevant  for  identifying  information  about  the  relationship  between  smell  and  memory.  Additionally,  the  game  was  designed  as  it  could  be  of  help  to  Olofsson’s  research  about  memory  and  psychology  and  as  such,  it  is  adaptable  for  research  purposes  (protocols).    

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   Figure  18.  Example  of  a  memory  game  made  by  Brooke  Reynholds.  The  memory  game  involves  finding  card  pairs  by  flipping  them  randomly.  The  player  can  flip  only  cards  two  by  two  and  turns  them  back  if  their  patterns  do  not  match.  The  game  requires  the  memorization  of  the  location  of  the  cards  previously  

flipped  in  order  to  complete  the  game  using  as  few  moves  as  possible.  

 

Gameplay      “Guess  my  face”  main  gameplay  is  to  guess  drawn  faces  using  different  scents  which  match  with  specific  face  parts  (for  example,  eyes,  heads,  mouths).  Each  one  of  those  face  parts  has  a  specific  scent.  The  players  have  to  choose  the  right  smells  in  order  to  compose  the  right  face  randomly  created  within  the  game.  Because  the  players  will  not  have  the  opportunity  to  see  the  face  parts  that  match  with  each  scent  during  the  game,  they  will  have  to  rely  only  on  their  sense  of  smell  and  so,  memorize  which  scent  refers  to  which  face  part.    The  game  is  playable  on  a  computer  thanks  to  a  tangible  technology  that  recognizes  “smell  boxes”,  the  containers  gathering  all  the  smells  involved  in  the  games.  These  boxes  are  divided  into  four  classes  according  to  the  face  parts  available  in  the  game:  face  shapes,  eyes,  mouths  and  noses  (see  Figure  19).  Dividing  the  scents  into  different  classifications  is  a  way  to  make  the  memorization  of  the  face  parts  easier  and  leaves  the  game  prototype  open  to  potential  improvement  based  on  the  combination  of  scents  (for  example,  guessing  a  face  through  the  mixture  of  one  smell  from  each  class).  Communication  between  the  smell  boxes  and  the  computer  enables  the  matching  face  parts  to  be  displayed  on  the  screen  (see  Figure  20).  This  technology  is  the  only  way  for  the  players  to  know  which  picture  goes  with  which  scent.  By  such,  this  action  is  one  of  the  main  interactions  of  the  game  and  should  be  one  of  the  priorities  for  designing  the  

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game  experience.  So  far,  the  recognition  technology  is  not  developed,  nevertheless  it  will  be  developed  through  the  different  iterations.    

   Figure  19.  The  smell  boxes  are  divided  into  different  classifications  (face  parts).  A  generic  pictogram  or  

colour  could  be  used  to  distinguish  each  category.      

   Figure  20.  The  smell  boxes  match  with  specific  face  parts  that  can  be  only  be  displayed  on  the  computer  

screen.  This  works  thanks  to  a  connection  between  the  boxes  and  the  computer.      The  game  process  can  be  divided  into  three  stages:  the  discovery  and  creative  phase,  the  guessing  phase,  and  the  results  phase.  During  the  discovery  and  creative  phase,  the  players  can  use  as  many  boxes  as  they  want  in  order  to  discern  the  different  scents  and  their  matching  face  parts.  At  this  stage,  nothing  is  scored  is  and  the  idea  is  to  make  the  player  explore,  create  and  become  familiar  with  the  game  components.  When  the  players  feel  ready,  the  game  skips  to  the  guessing  phase  which  is  the  core  of  the  game.  At  this  point,  the  game  randomizes  a  face  by  mingling  face  parts  from  each  class  (face  shapes,  eyes,  noses,  mouths).  After  the  face  is  shown  on  the  computer  screen,  the  players  will  have  to  reproduce  it  with  the  smell  boxes.  In  this  phase,  the  

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players  can’t  see  the  matching  pictures  directly,  so  their  choices  are  only  based  on  smelling  the  smell  boxes  and  guessing  the  right  ones  (see  Figure  21).  The  result  of  the  boxes’  combinations  will  appear  on  the  screen  when  one  box  from  each  category  is  connected  to  the  computer.  By  such,  the  game’s  program  can  compose  an  entire  face  from  the  smell  boxes.  The  game  will  count  how  many  mistakes  the  players  made  and  the  score  will  be  based  on  the  number  of  attempts  the  players  needed  to  create  the  right  face  (see  Figure  22).    

   Figure  21.  The  player  smells  the  boxes  to  choose  which  ones  match  with  the  face  parts  involved  in  the  face  displayed  on  the  computer  screen.  Once  the  choice  is  made,  the  player  puts  the  boxes  close  to  the  

computer  to  connect  them  to  the  game  program.      

   

Figure  22.  The  combination  of  four  boxes  from  each  category  creates  a  face.      

The  game  can  be  adapted  for  multiplayer  in  two  different  ways.  The  first  one  involves  adding  other  players  in  the  same  game  process  described  above.  In  this  option,  the  idea  is  to  add  more  smell  boxes  so  the  players  have  to  combine  their  memories  and  guess  the  face  with  team  work  (see  Figure  23).    

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Figure  23.  The  players  collaborate  to  memorize  and  choose  the  right  smell  boxes.      On  the  other  hand,  it  could  be  interesting  to  make  the  game  more  challenging  by  adding  a  competitive  element.  In  the  next  version,  two  players  challenge  each  other  through  their  computers  by  using  their  own  smell  box  set.  Each  player  creates  personal  faces  that  their  opponent  will  have  to  reproduce.  After  each  player  sends  their  creation  to  their  opponent  (see  Figure  24),  the  players  start  to  guess  which  smell  boxes  are  needed  in  order  to  compose  the  face  displayed  on  their  screen  (see  Figure  25).  When  both  have  chosen  the  boxes  that  they  expected  to  be  the  right  ones,  the  game  shows  the  players’  results  and  reveals  who  made  the  least  mistakes  on  the  faces’  composition  (see  Figure  26).  The  player  who  made  fewer  mistakes  wins.  

   

Figure  24.  The  players  create  their  face  with  their  smell  box  and  send  it  to  their  opponent.      

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Figure  25.  The  players  try  to  compose  the  face  sent  by  their  opponent.      

   

Figure  26.  the  game’s  result  is  displayed  on  both  screens,    the  player  made  the  least  mistakes  wins.  

 From  a  methodological  point  of  view,  this  game  concept  works  as  a  basis  for  the  next  iterations,  meaning  that  the  gameplay  and  the  content  of  the  game  could  change  after  the  playtests  according  to  the  issues  highlighted.  However,  the  main  structure  of  the  game  (guessing  pictures  with  smells)  will  be  respected  as  it  deals  with  processes  which  are  meaningful  for  psychological  experiments  as  well  as  exploring  this  study’s  question.    

5.2  Experiments  

Prototype  1  

Protocol  and  Game    The  aim  of  this  first  prototype  was  to  test  the  game  as  quickly  as  possible  in  order  to  highlight  the  first  issues  that  could  interfere  within  the  game.    

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Moreover,  this  prototype  could  help  me  to  identify  technical  problems  as  smell  can  provide  complex  issues.  Additionally,  despite  the  prototype  of  “Guess  my  face”  seeming  clear  and  structured,  the  use  of  smell  and  memory  is  still  delicate  and  needed  to  be  tested  in  order  to  identify  the  actual  effects  on  the  players  and  the  gameplay.  Furthermore,  I  wanted  to  know  how  the  memorization  process  would  work,  and  if  it  would  be  easy  for  the  players  to  remember  scents  and  pictures.    From  a  previous  experiment,  I  understood  that  scents  could  interfere  in  the  player’s  memorization  process.  In  that  way,  focusing  the  experiment  on  the  impact  of  smell  on  the  cognitive  process  of  the  players  could  be  an  interesting  way  to  improve  the  game.    Specifically,  the  prototype’s  aim  can  be  summarized  as  follows:  

- Understand  how  the  players  experienced  smell  through  the  game  and  if  smell  had  an  impact  on  players’  memorization  process  

- Identifying  the  players’  memorization  strategies  during  the  game  in  order  to  understand  the  role  of  the  smell  in  their  cognitive  process  

- Identifying  if  the  game  was  challenging  enough  to  keep  the  player  in  the  game’s  flow.  

- Checking  if  the  game  rules  are  clear  enough  for  the  player  and  do  not  need  additional  explanation    

- Checking  the  game’s  difficulty  in  order  to  set  balanced  goals      In  order  to  keep  the  prototype  simple,  no  electronic  devices  or  components  were  used  for  this  prototype.  A  game  master  (myself)  was  in  charge  of  setting  up  the  game,  explaining  the  rules  and  making  sure  that  the  game  proceeded  correctly.  The  prototype  was  designed  for  one  player  and  involved  handcrafted  materials.      These  materials  composed  of  a  set  of  smell  cards  representing  smell  boxes  from  “Guess  my  face”  concept.  In  this  game  prototype,  the  faces  were  divided  into  four  from  the  top  to  the  bottom:  head,  eyes  and  chin.  Three  faces  were  used  to  create  the  cards  set  (see  Figure  27).        

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Figure  27.  The  original  faces  used  to  create  the  smell  cards  set.    

These  face  parts  were  drawn  on  one  side  of  the  cards,  while  the  other  side  remained  black.  Each  of  these  cards  had  particular  scents  which  were  randomly  chosen  and  spread  on  the  black  side.  Some  of  the  scents  were  similar,  but  matched  with  a  different  face  part  (e.g.  “Rose  Absolute  Bulgaria”  and  “Rose  Absolute  10%  Marocco”  were  selected  for  a  chin,  and  another  scent  for  a  mouth).  By  such,  this  could  help  the  player  to  understand  similarities  from  the  different  scents,  but  not  from  the  same  picture  (see  Figure  28).  Although  the  idea  was  to  divide  the  face  parts  (heads,  eyes,  mouths,  chins)  according  to  scent  families  (floral,  woody,  etcetera)  the  concept  did  not  continue  in  that  way  because  of  limitations  on  the  scents  available.  However,  this  idea  remains  interesting  for  further  game  improvement  (learning  Michael  Edwards’s  wheel).    

   

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Figure  28.  The  smell  cards  as  they  were  divided  for  the  game.  The  other  side  of  each  card  was  entirely  black  and  the  scents  were  spread  on  the  left  side.  On  this  picture,  some  scent  spots  are  visible  because  

the  fragrance  drops  passed  through  the  cards.    

One  set  of  these  cards  was  available  for  the  player  while  another  one  without  smell  was  used  by  the  game  master.    Based  on  “Guess  my  face”,  this  game  prototype  keeps  the  idea  of  composing  faces  by  memorizing  their  specific  smells.  The  game  was  divided  into  three  rounds  with  three  different  randomized  faces  created  by  the  game  master  with  his  own  card  set.  During  each  round,  the  players  had  three  tries  to  choose  the  correct  face  parts  to  compose  the  face  in  question.  The  aim  for  the  players  was  to  make  as  few  mistakes  as  possible.    

User  testing    At  the  start,  the  players  had  to  remember  the  pictures  and  their  respective  smells  on  the  card’s  other  side.  The  cards  were  displayed  such  a  way  that  the  players  could  understand  the  class  of  each  card:  the  head  parts  were  on  the  top,  the  eyes  underneath  and  so  on.  This  helped  to  understand  where  each  kind  of  face  part  was  when  the  game  master  shuffled  the  cards.    At  this  point,  the  players  were  informed  about  the  game  rules  (three  rounds,  three  tries)  and  the  game’s  goal  (creating  the  game  master’s  face  by  using  the  smell  cards  thanks  to  their  scents).  The  players  were  free  to  spend  as  much  time  as  they  wanted  to  familiarize  themselves  with  the  smells  and  their  pictures.  Once  the  players  felt  ready,  the  game  master  flipped  the  card  face  down  (so  the  players  could  just  see  the  black  side)  and  shuffled  them  without  shuffling  the  categories  (head  cards  remains  on  the  top,  the  eyes  underneath,  etcetera).  The  Game  master  chose  four  cards  from  his  deck  to  compose  a  face  and  displayed  it  to  the  player.  During  that  phase,  the  players  had  plenty  of  time  to  smell  the  cards  and  to  find  the  right  face  parts.  The  idea  was  not  to  interfere  in  their  strategies  and  memorization.    After  the  players  chose  a  card,  they  had  to  put  next  to  the  game  master’s  model,  on  the  same  level  as  each  face  part  (see  Figure  29).      

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   Figure  29.  A  player  smelling  the  cards  and  choosing  the  ones  he  thinks  match  with  the  game’s  master  

face  according  to  the  pictures  underneath.  

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 When  the  player  chose  four  cards,  the  game  master  flipped  the  cards  and  checked  if  the  faces  matched.  At  this  point,  the  player’s  mistakes  were  counted  on  a  scale  from  0  to  4.  For  example,  if  a  player  managed  to  compose  the  face  in  one  try,  s/he  would  have  4/4,  if  not  he/she  would  have  less  depending  on  how  much  errors  s/he  made.    When  players  made  a  mistake,  the  wrong  cards  returned  to  the  game  while  the  right  ones  stayed  close  to  the  face’s  model.  When  a  face  was  entirely  guessed,  the  game  went  to  the  next  round.  After  each  round,  the  players  were  aware  of  their  improvement  and  could  react  as  such,  in  order  to  make  less  mistakes  in  the  next  round.  The  game  ended  when  the  third  round  was  over.  The  players  had  to  answer  to  specific  questions  about  their  playtesting.    Four  people  were  involved  during  this  test.  Dominique  and  Kathrin  were  young  adults,  familiar  with  playing  games  on  technologies  such  as  smartphones  and  laptops.  The  two  others  testers  were  more  mature  with  different  experiences  of  technologies  and  playing.    Although  Mrs  V.  (Pseudonyms  are  here  for  privacy  purposes)  used  to  frequently  play  on  her  tablet,  Mr  K.  used  his  laptop  mostly  for  work  and  was  not  used  to  play  often.  This  diversity  helped  to  highlight  common  issues  and  gave  an  overview  of  the  game  experience  through  different  points  of  view.    

Results    First,  the  common  belief  before  that  the  players  started  the  game  was  thinking  that  the  experience  would  be  very  hard.  For  them,  memorizing  twelve  scents  was  impossible,  especially  if  they  had  to  memorize  pictures  through  the  medium  of  scent.  However,  it  appears  that  for  some,  the  more  they  played,  the  more  confident  they  became  about  their  card  choices.    As  the  game  was  based  on  a  classic  memory  game,  most  of  the  players  intended  to  memorize  the  pictures  thanks  to  “mind  mapping”  the  smell  cards  (e.g.  small  eyes  on  the  top-­‐left,  big  chin  on  the  bottom-­‐right).  However,  the  players  quickly  put  this  strategy  aside  as  the  cards  were  shuffled  after  each  round.  From  there,  players  developed  other  ways  to  memorize  the  position  of  each  specific  picture  thanks  to  their  respective  smells.    For  Kathrin,  identifying  the  origin  of  the  actual  source  of  the  scents  (patchouli,  jasmine)  helped  her  to  associate  smell  with  its  matching  picture.  During  the  game,  Kathrin  guessed  that  one  of  the  cards  had  smell  of  chocolate.  The  result  seemed  that  she  could  manage  to  differentiate  this  card  from  the  others  easily.    Another  memorization  technique  was  highlighted  during  Mr  K’s  test.  This  tester  was  not  really  experienced  in  games  and  not  familiar  at  all  with  guessing  smells.  For  him,  it  was  impossible  to  recognize  the  cards’  scent  in  the  first  place.  However,  after  few  tries,  he  managed  to  identify  particular  cards  thanks  to  the  emotions  or  characteristics  that  

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smell  evoked  (smelly,  sweet,  etcetera).  With  this  strategy,  the  player  did  not  think  about  the  pictures  underneath,  but  mostly  tried  to  identify  each  card  by  understanding  their  “smell”  differences.    Mrs  V.  went  deeper  in  this  logic  by  associating  the  pictures  and  the  emotions/characteristics  their  smell  provided.  For  example,  she  identified  the  card  with  the  hairy  head  because  she  disliked  the  smell  it  related  to.  For  her,  the  smell  reminded  her  of  dirty  hairs  that  she  had  already  seen  (and  smelled)  before.  This  personal  experience  helped  her  to  make  the  association.    From  a  game  design  perspective,  the  players  found  the  test  really  challenging,  mostly  because  of  the  use  of  smells.  Moreover,  other  details  during  the  test  session  show  that  the  game  also  had  an  impact  on  the  people  around  the  testers,  curious  about  the  activity.  During  the  game,  players  held  smell  cards  out  to  their  friends  or  people  around  in  order  to  share  their  experience  and  their  struggle  to  identify  the  smells.  This  point  drew  upon  the  idea  that  the  game  has  a  good  potential  for  social  and  multiplayer  purposes.  The  moment  when  the  players’  results  were  displayed  was  important  as  it  made  the  players’  doubt  choices.  Seeing  the  result  made  the  player  experience  an  array  of  emotions  (disappointment,  satisfaction),  making  the  game  more  enjoyable  and  challenging.  However,  the  memorization  phase,  when  players  could  see  the  pictures  and  smell  the  cards,  is  still  not  adequately  challenging  even  if  it  works  well  as  an  introduction  to  the  game  and  the  scents.  The  problem  is  that  that  phase  provides  a  less  gamified  activity,  as  it  only  involves  exploration  and  discovery.  By  such,  this  could  be  related  to  a  learning  process,  not  uninteresting  but  less  enjoyable  compared  to  the  rest  of  the  game.    Finally,  from  a  technical  point  of  view,  players  complained  about  how  the  game  became  hard  and  harder  the  more  they  played.  According  to  them,  this  was  mainly  because  of  experience  too  much  information  from  smelling  the  cards.  The  third  and  final  round  was  the  most  difficult  for  all  the  testers  as  the  smells  all  began  to  smell  the  same  to  them.  Moreover,  most  of  the  testers  felt  dizzy  at  the  end  of  the  game.  This  could  be  maybe  explained  by  the  fact  that  really  strong  and  concentrated  smells  were  used  to  deodorize  the  cards.    

Discussion/Improvements    From  the  results  and  feedback  highlighted,  we  can  identify  several  points  that  could  improve  the  game  experience  for  future  iterations.  These  improvements  could  be  done  through  better  use  of  the  scents,  as  well  as  modifications  within  the  game  (rules/interactions/atmosphere).    

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By  dealing  with  scents,  we  understood  that  using  concentrate  scents  had  an  actual  impact  on  the  players’  behaviour  (tiredness,  dizziness).    A  good  solution  could  be  to  use  scents  that  are  more  familiar,  or  pleasant  to  smell,  such  as  the  one  used  in  tea.  However,  from  a  previous  experiment  using  tea  bags,  the  scents  seemed  to  have  different  strength.  This  shows  that  balancing  the  amount  of  smell  components  should  be  taken  in  account  for  the  next  prototype.    Emotions  such  as  disgust  are  personal  from  a  player  to  another.  They  can’t  be  controlled  and  are  actually  part  of  the  gameplay  as  they  help  players  to  remember  a  particular  smell.  However,  it  could  be  relevant  to  try  to  put  all  the  scents  on  the  same  “emotional  triggering  level”(e.g  not  using  a  really  stinky  scent  among  sweets  ones).    If  we  focus  on  the  game  experience,  I  identified  an  intense  moment  when  the  game  master  revealed  the  face  that  the  players  composed  with  the  smell  cards.  It  could  be  interesting  for  the  improvement  of  the  play  experience  to  intensify  the  tension  by  adding  visual  prompts  and  sounds.  Secondly,  the  start  of  the  game  seems  to  bore  the  players.  Indeed,  the  game  starts  with  the  explanation  of  rules  and  familiarizing  the  players  with  the  scents  and  pictures.  This  is  not  entertaining  for  someone  discovering  the  game  for  the  first  time.  By  such,  the  discovery  and  creative  phase  needs  to  be  designed  as  a  playful  experience  rather  than  just  a  learning  process  alone.  Finally,  players  enjoyed  sharing  their  experience  with  other  people  during  the  test.  Opening  the  game  for  multiplayer  purposes  seems  to  be  interesting  for  further  improvements.    

Prototype  2  

Protocol  and  Game    The  second  prototype  intended  to  match  the  proposition  of  the  game  presented  thought  the  initial  storyboard  of  “Guess  my  face”.  A  technology  was  developed  in  order  for  the  computer  to  detect  the  boxes  and  a  program  allowed  the  randomization  of  the  faces,  as  well  as  guiding  the  player  through  the  game.  This  application  intended  to  make  “Guess  my  face”  playable  without  an  outsider  explaining  the  rules.  

 The  prototype  was  made  up  of  twelve  respective  boxes  divided  into  the  four  “classes”  used  in  the  previous  prototype  (heads,  eyes,  mouths,  chins).  A  pictogram  for  each  class  was  created  so  the  players  would  know  which  box  they  had  to  choose  in  order  to  compose  an  entire  face  (see  Figure  30).        

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Figure  30.  Pictograms  created  to  classify  the  smell  boxes,  from  left  to  right:  head,  eye,  mouth  and  chin.    Each  box  had  specific  scents  from  tea  bags.  Because  the  smells  were  very  different,  I  tried  to  balance  them  by  changing  the  number  of  bags  inside  the  boxes.  An  extra  box  providing  a  coffee  scent  was  added  to  the  game  in  order  to  neutralize  the  players’  sense  of  smell  (see  Figure  31).    

   

Figure  31.  All  the  boxes  involved  in  the  game.      

A  base  with  four  slots  for  each  class  was  designed  to  make  the  boxes  recognizable  within  the  game  program  (see  Figure  32).  The  player  could  create  an  entire  face  by  putting  four  boxes  from  each  class  on  the  base  (heads,  eyes,  mouths,  chins).  The  classes  were  identified  by  the  pictograms  displayed  on  the  smell  boxes  and  the  base.    

     

Figure  32.  The  technology  developed  to  recognize  the  smell  boxes.  The  base  has  four  slots  that  contains  the  four  classes  of  smell  boxes.    

 

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The  game  was  designed  linearly;  it  started  with  a  “practice  screen”  where  the  player  could  check  the  pictures  on  the  boxes.  After  the  player  clicked  the  “ready”  button,  the  game  could  start.  Like  the  last  prototype,  the  game  was  divided  into  three  rounds  where  the  player  had  to  guess  a  randomized  face.  Players  received  a  rank  after  guessing  the  three  randomized  faces.  These  different  ranks  were  created  for  providing  personal  feedback  to  the  players  without  clearly  rating  his/her  amount  of  mistakes.  The  idea  was  to  show  the  players’  improvements  without  demotivating  them  as  the  game  was  already  seen  as  hard  during  previous  iterations.                                                  

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Screens  of  “guess  my  face”.  In  order:  main  screen,  game  screen  and  result  screen.    

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User  testing    At  the  beginning,  my  aim  was  to  let  the  testers  play  alone.  I  wanted  to  become  familiar  with  the  game  components  (boxes/smells/program).  Rapidly  I  understood  that  the  game  rules  were  unclear  and  that  the  players  were  confused  about  what  to  do  with  the  components,  so  I  decided  to  accompany  the  players  in  the  game  process  by  explaining  the  rules  and  helping  them  to  understand  how  the  application  works.  When  the  players  were  familiar  with  the  process  and  knew  what  to  do,  I  let  them  play  alone.  Once  they  understood  the  game,  they  were  really  independent,  which  allowed  me  to  be  free  to  make  observations  and  analyse  their  behaviour.    Five  people  played  the  game  and  each  one  played  differently.  For  example,  Samantha  created  clusters  of  boxes  accordingly  to  the  face  she  thought  to  be  the  original.  Verena  played  in  a  different  way  by  keeping  the  original  position  of  the  boxes  during  the  whole  game.  When  she  completed  one  round,  she  put  them  in  the  exactly  same  place.    

 

   

Play  testers  of  “Guess  my  face”  familiarizing  themselves  with  the  game  and  its  components  

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Results    Memory  and  smell  issues    This  final  test  provided  different  kinds  of  feedback.  Unfortunately,  most  of  the  players  did  not  use  smell  as  a  reference  to  memorize  the  pictures.  Compared  to  the  last  prototype,  I  shuffle  the  different  classes  (heads,  eyes,  mouths,  chins)  after  each  round.  This  is  the  reason  why  they  managed  to  remember  the  facial  parts  by  changing  the  placement  of  the  different  boxes.    The  game  was  still  experienced  as  very  hard  at  the  beginning  when  I  presented  it  as  an  olfactory  memory  game.  Dealing  with  twelve  boxes  was  too  much  for  the  players,  but  with  the  “visual  mapping  strategy”  described  above,  the  players  found  the  game  easy.      There  was,  however,  a  curious  exception.  One  of  the  players  (Verena)  was  carefully  focused  on  the  smells  and  intended  to  incorporate  the  scents  into  her  memory  process.    Contrary  to  the  previous  difficulties  highlighted,  the  player  did  not  rely  only  on  the  “visual  mapping  strategy”  that  other  players  automatically  applied.  In  that  way,  this  player  (almost)  experienced  the  game  as  it  was  originally  designed.  The  feedback  from  her  was  totally  different.  She  thought  that  twelve  boxes  gave  the  right  level  of  difficulty.    Technical  issues    The  user-­‐friendly  design  that  I  developed  for  the  game  was  supposed  to  help  players.  However,  the  game  scenario  and  information  displayed  on  the  screen  was  not  clear  enough.  The  players  mostly  struggled  to:  

- Understand  that  the  computer  detects  the  boxes  - Each  box  had  to  be  on  specific  “detection”  zone  (head/eyes).  - Each  box  had  a  specific  scent  and  matched  with  a  specific  picture.  - The  fact  that  they  will  have  to  memorize  the  matching  pictures  from  the  smell  

boxes  in  order  to  compose  a  randomized  face  However,  from  observations,  the  materials  were  easy  to  manipulate  and  worked  well  for  being  detected  by  the  computer.  And,  after  I  explained  the  rules,  the  players  seemed  to  be  really  into  the  game:  one  of  them  even  wanted  to  play  more.    Concerning  the  scents,  there  remained  a  difficulty  for  players  to  differentiate  them  because  of  their  strength.  Changing  the  amount  of  tea  bags  had  no  impact  on  how  the  smells  were  experienced.                  

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Even  if  the  test  provided  different  feedbacks,  the  main  idea  is  that  the  game  seems  to  works  as  it  was  intended  to  be  played  (by  only  using  the  smells  and  no  other  kind  of  memorization  such  as  the  box’s  placement).  However,  players  didn’t  use  the  scents  and  this  changed  the  main  purpose  of  the  game.    Further  tests    In  response  to  the  fact  that  players  did  not  use  the  smells  for  memorizing  the  face  part  pictures,  I  decided  to  do  the  same  experiment  while  mixing  the  boxes  for  every  round  of  the  game,  as  I  did  during  the  first  prototype.  The  idea  behind  shuffling  the  boxes  was  to  reset  the  “mapping  memory”  that  the  players  could  develop  after  smelling  each  boxes,  seeing  the  matching  picture  and  putting  them  in  the  same  place.    By  using  such  a  process,  the  players  found  the  game  impossible  and  frustrating.  They  explained  that  they  could  not  rely  on  the  box’s  position  anymore  and  that  memorizing  twelve  scents  was  implausible.  

 Since  I  suspected  that  the  difficulty  persisted  because  of  the  amount  of  smell  boxes,  I  decided  to  repeat  the  same  game  using  less  boxes  (6  in  total  including  3  mouths  and  3  chins),  still  shuffling  the  boxes  before  each  round.  Both  players  were  involved  in  this  test  and  they  helped  each  other  in  approving  or  refuting  the  choice  of  specific  boxes.  The  test  was  convincing,  as  the  players  felt  that  the  game  easier  and  funnier  when  relying  only  on  memorizing  scents.                                    

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The  two  testers  playing  “Guess  my  face”  together.  This  time,  the  boxes  were  mingled  each  round  so  the  players  couldn’t  rely  on  the  boxes’  place.  The  players  helped  each  other  since  the  memorization  was  only  

focused  on  the  smells.  

Improvements/Discussion    One  of  the  main  issues  identified  through  the  last  test  is  the  fact  that  visual  memorization  prevails  over  smell  memorization.  More  specifically,  memorizing  a  pattern  of  pictures  is  easier  by  thinking  about  their  spatial  position  rather  than  thinking  about  a  relation  to  a  smell.  This  is  the  reason  why  most  of  the  players  ignored  their  olfactory  memory  and  preferred  to  organize  the  boxes  so  they  can  keep  guessing  at  the  matching  pictures.  The  solution  for  this  could  be  to  have  a  bag  for  mixing  the  boxes,  as  is  often  used  with  dice.  The  game  would  stop  and  warn  the  players  to  mix  up  the  game  each  time  a  round  is  over.    Mixing  the  boxes  seems  highly  efficient  for  making  the  players  focus  their  memorization  purely  on  the  smells.  However,  as  this  mean  that  the  difficulty  increases  significantly,  the  game  should  propose  different  levels.  The  solution  approved  by  the  players  could  be  to  reduce  the  amount  of  boxes  and  so,  proposing  only  specific  facial  

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parts  (eyes  and  mouths,  for  example)  and  changing  the  difficulty  in  accordance  with  the  number  of  pictures  and  boxes  involved  within  the  game.      Concerning  the  fact  that  player  could  not  understand  the  game  without  my  help,  the  program  needs  a  clear  tutorial  that  explains  the  rules  and  actions  for  progressing  in  the  game  step  by  step.  Finally,  the  only  solution  to  fix  the  unbalanced  strengths  between  smells  is  to  change  the  weak  ones  to  new  scents  of  equal  strength  to  the  others.    

5.4  Experiment  critique  and  design  openings    The  previous  iterations  highlighted  an  interesting  relation  between  smell  and  memory.      Smell  by  itself  doesn’t  help  to  memorize  information  or,  if  we  want  to  make  assimilate  information  thanks  to  a  smell,  the  first  impression  of  a  person  will  be  that  the  smell  interferes  in  his/her  memorization  process.  However,  other  cognitive  processes  seem  to  explain  some  interesting  roles  of  smell  within  the  memorisation  process.    When  players  explained  the  way  they  tried  to  memorize  the  scents,  most  of  them  shared  that  they  assimilated  the  smells  by  describing  them  with  adjectives  (dirty,  smelly)  or  objects  (bubble  gum,  rose).  It  seems  characterizing  smells  helped  the  players  to  memorize  the  matching  picture.  From  another  perspective,  when  players  experienced  particular  emotions  by  smelling  a  scent  (really  stinky,  nice  and  sweet),  players  were  more  able  to  recognize  the  matching  pictures.  A  final  strategy  used  by  the  players  was  to  create  a  link  between  the  smells  and  their  matching  pictures,  resulting  with  comments  such  as:  “I  know  this  one,  this  is  the  stinky  head!”  or  “Where  are  the  sweet  eyes?”    Although  these  processes  seem  different,  they  rely  on  the  same  cognitive  process:  making  the  scents  and  pictures  meaningful,  together  or  separately.  This  leads  to  the  chunking  process  theory:  instead  of  learning  a  smell  and  a  picture  separately  (2  chunks),  players  link  them  using  personal  knowledge  (words,  emotions,  experience)  reducing  the  information  to  one  chunk.    By  such,  smell  could  help  to  memorize  a  picture  in  the  same  way  that  a  sentence  could  help  to  memorize  a  list  of  letters  (see  chunking  theory  example).  By  interpreting  a  meaning  from  smell,  the  scent  is  assimilated  and  become  a  reference  for  linking  it  to  the  specific  picture.    A  way  to  improve  that  process  could  be  to  enrich  the  vocabulary  and  knowledge  pertaining  to  scents.  Indeed,  identifying  a  smell  or  naming  it  could  help  to  make  it  meaningful.    “Guess  my  face”  has  a  potential  in  smell  enhancement  as  it  makes  people  rely  solely  on  their  sense  of  smell  and,  by  extension,  makes  them  explore  the  way  they  memorize  

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information  thanks  to  smell.  As  such  the  game  could  be  improved  in  order  to  make  people  more  aware  about  this  cognitive  process  and  train  it  in  a  more  explorative  way.    “How  do  I  Smell?”  could  be  an  extension  of  “Guess  my  face”.  In  this  section  of  the  game,  the  players  can  create  their  own  faces  using  the  smell  boxes.  The  idea  is  that  they  can  name  their  creations  according  to  the  scents  from  the  smell  boxes  used  for  crafting  the  face.  In  this  way,  the  player  could  explore  their  specific  process  of  deriving  meaning  from  the  scents.  Examples  could  be  “weird  sweet  guy”  or  even  “stinky  Joe”,  the  main  idea  is  that  the  players  can  experience  the  scent  and  explore  the  way  they  memorize  them  without  the  aspect  of  a  challenge  (see  Figure  33).  From  Katie  Salen’s  (2004)  definition,  this  part  is  in  line  with  the  use  of  a  toy,  as  it  does  not  have  a  specific  goal.    

   Figure  33.  The  player  can  create  several  faces  with  a  personal  mixtures  of  scents.  Once  created,  a  face  

has  to  be  described  with  a  specific  name  that  deals  with  the  scent  combination.    If  we  extend  the  idea  for  multiplayers,  the  crafted  faces  could  be  sent  to  friends.  Consequently,  their  role  could  be  to  smell  the  scent  mixture  from  the  face  sent  and  even  train  their  capacity  to  identify  smell  individually  as  suggested  by  Andrew  Livermore  and  David  G.  Laing  (1998)  in  their  research  on  the  dissociative  process  (see  Figure  34).    

   Figure  34.  A  player  sends  the  face  they  created  to  another  player  who  discovers  the  smells  involved  in  

the  creation  of  the  face.    

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Finally,  the  game  could  focus  on  learning  smell  and  training  the  acuity  of  detecting  specific  scents.  The  game  “Le  Nez  du  vin”  could  also  be  taken  into  account,  as  it  could  be  interesting  to  use  wine  components  and,  in  turn,  make  people  more  skilled  in  identifying  wines  thanks  to  “Guess  my  face”.    

7.  Reflect    

Conclusions    This  study  aimed  to  understand  the  potential  of  smell  in  human  memorization  processes  and  explored  how  this  potential  could  be  used  in  games.  The  study  proposed  a  technical  way  to  combine  smell  and  digital  games  and  presented  “Guess  My  Face,”  a  tangible  and  digital  memory  game  based  on  the  sense  of  smell.  The  study  focused  on  how  smell  could  enhance  or  train  the  memory.  This  relationship  could  come  from  the  idea  that  emotions  can  be  triggered  by  particular  smells,  as  shown  in  the  example  of  Proust’s  madeleine  cakes,  and  which,  by  extension,  could  probably  help  in  memorizing  smells.  The  game  “Guess  My  Face”  was  created  as  a  way  of  exploring  this  relation.  Feedback  from  the  playtestings  of  the  game  contributed  to  the  specific  knowledge  of  this  study.    We  started  by  sharing  an  understanding  of  the  sense  of  smell  in  today’s  society  and  found  that  the  sense  of  smell  is  minimized  in  our  society.  The  biological  analysis  of  the  olfactory  system  shows  that  area  of  the  brain  dealing  with  emotions  is  close  to  the  one  responsible  for  scents,  and  thus  could  be  behind  the  Proust’s  madeleine  phenomenon.  We  continued  with  the  analysis  of  human  memory  and  focused  on  different  ways  of  memorizing  information.  The  chunking  process  was  presented  as  a  manner  to  assimilate  several  parts  of  knowledge  by  making  them  meaningful  (Thompson  et  al.,  2005).  We  finished  with  the  theoretical  exploration  of  games  and  gamification,  as  they  show  an  efficient  way  to  help  people  to  learn  and  being  interested  in  a  topic  they  were  not  originally  involved  with  or  motivated  by.  Finally,  an  analysis  of  games  involving  smells  shows  how  the  game  area  used  the  sense  of  smell  within  the  game  processes  (guessing  game,  immersion,  exploration…).  This  highlighted  that  using  smell  in  memory  was  not  one  of  the  priorities  of  the  game  arena  as  yet,  and  the  concept  is  therefore  open  for  explorations.  The  second  part  was  focused  on  the  development  of  the  game  “Guess  My  Face”.  In  this  game,  the  player  has  to  memorize  pictures  (drawing  of  face  parts)  thanks  to  their  specifics  scents.  The  game  was  composed  of  “smell  boxes”  (boxes  with  scents  inside)  which,  when  connected  to  the  laptop,  reveal  their  matching  face  parts.  The  challenge  lay  in  composing  an  entire  randomized  face  by  relying  only  on  the  sense  of  smell.  The  game  intended  to  answer  the  study’s  question  thanks  to  observations  and  experience  feedback  from  players.  The  issues  highlighted  by  the  playtestings  contributed  to  the  game’s  improvement  in  order  to  go  deeper  in  the  understanding  of  smell  and  memory.  

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 Several  iterations  of  playtesting  and  game  improvements  helped  to  highlight  interesting  issues  about  smell  related  to  memory  and  game  experience.  First,  the  task  of  memorizing  pictures  through  their  scents  was  challenging  for  the  players.  At  the  beginning,  the  players’  motivation  decreased.  It  seems  that  the  sense  of  smell  is  hard  to  handle  when  it  deals  with  memorization.  We  learnt  that  tangible  objects  in  memory  games  could  interfere  with  the  game  process:  Players  saw  that  they  could  rely  on  visual  mapping  thanks  to  the  smell  boxes  and  get  rid  of  the  smell  memorization.  However,  when  the  memorization  process  involves  only  the  smell,  people  have  different  ways  to  assimilate  them.  The  most  common  strategy  was  to  describe  the  smells  with  adjectives,  or  even  guessing  the  actual  scent  (chocolate,  rose).  The  second  way  was  that  players  recognized  scents  thanks  to  the  emotions  they  experienced  when  smelling  them  (stinky,  sweet).  And  the  last  way  was  linking  the  scent  and  pictures  by  reference  to  personal  experience:  some  combination  of  smell-­‐face  referred  to  actual  people  for  some  players.    Although  these  points  are  different,  we  understood  that  they  could  be  related  to  the  chunking  process  presented  by  George  Miller  (Thompson  et  al.,  2005).  Indeed,  all  these  strategies  involve  creating  a  meaning  from  the  scents  thanks  to  personal  knowledge.  As  a  result,  smell  does  not  act  directly  on  memory  for  assimilating  information,  but  rather  has  a  role  of  a  trigger,  a  complementary  way  of  creating  logic  and  meaning  from  this  knowledge  in  order  to  learn.  Thus,  “Guess  My  Face”  proposes  a  way  to  explore  scents  and  refines  the  players’  sense  of  smell  whilst  improving  their  personal  ability  to  memorise  smells.    

Discussion    An  issue  in  the  design  of  “Guess  my  face”  was  a  limitation  on  the  range  of  available  scents.  For  the  first  prototype,  I  had  the  chance  to  use  extracts  of  concentrated  scents  since  my  supervisor  had  already  gathered  samples  of  them.  Although  the  samples  were  astonishingly  diverse,  it  was  difficult  to  create  a  specific  pattern  amongst  the  smell-­‐materials  used  in  the  game.  For  example,  it  would  be  interesting  to  see  how  the  players  could  differentiate  scents  from  the  same  family  (woods),  or  even  if  the  game  would  actually  help  to  memorize  smells  with  more  subtle  differences.  Because  of  such  limitations,  “Guess  my  face”  had  to  deal  with  more  ‘common’  scents  (tea,  spices);  the  idea  being  that  they  be  as  distinguishable  as  possible.        Regarding  the  methodology  used,  the  different  iterations  of  playtesting  revealed  to  be  an  efficient  way  to  highlight  the  issues  which  arose  from  the  use  of  smell  (dizziness  from  the  players  after  smelling  scents,  unbalanced  strength  between  the  scents)  and  the  issues  interfering  with  the  game  process  as  it  was  initially  designed  (visual  mapping  of  the  scents  and  their  matching  pictures  thanks  to  the  smell  boxes).  This  approach  was  essential  since  smell  constitutes  the  core  of  the  game.  Compared  to  games  using  

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smell  for  immersive  purposes,  the  scents  in  “Guess  my  Face”  were  not  optional  and  the  iterative  process  contributed  to  a  step-­‐by-­‐step  exploration  of  the  integration  of  smell  in  a  game  process.  As  such,  the  project  proposes  a  way  to  use  smell  for  games  and  open  the  possibilities  of  new  game  mechanics  and  experiences  involving  scents  and  memory.    However,  this  feedback  regarding  the  impact  of  smell  and  memory  would  be  more  specific  or  detailed  if  the  tests  carefully  tracked  the  same  players  all  along  the  different  iterations  of  playtesting.  By  being  focused  on  the  same  testers  for  each  game  prototype,  the  idea  would  be  to  start  by  stating  the  memorisation  strategies  of  each  player  and  continuing  on  to  analysing  the  evolution  of  these  strategies  after  each  playtesting.  This  methodology  would  help  to  identify  which  changes  within  the  game  have  an  impact  on  the  cognitive  process  of  the  players.  This  could  made  be  possible  by  submitting  a  questionnaire  to  the  testers  in  order  to  highlight  the  evolution  of  the  feedback  as  the  prototypes  progressed.    Regarding  the  prototype,  the  objects  used  for  “Guess  my  Face”  were  intended  to  be  as  neutral  as  possible  so  the  players  would  not  be  able  to  differentiate  each  smell  box  thanks  to  visual  hints  (scratches,  spots,  etc…).  However,  after  some  playtesting,  the  elements  started  to  become  worn  out.  It  seems  that  players  did  not  consider  this  wear  and  tear  as  an  aid  to  memorizing  the  smell  boxes,  but  this  could  be  an  issue  in  the  long  term.    

Further  works    The  final  game  has  a  genuine  learning  potential,  as  it  helps  to  enhance  people’s  memorization  process.  It  could  be  interesting  for  further  work  to  identify  if  smell  has  the  same  impact  with  other  kind  of  knowledge  different  from  pictures,  such  as  texts.    Another  path  that  the  project  could  follow  deals  with  the  player’s  game  experience.  From  the  last  prototypes  we  saw  that  players  struggled  to  continue  the  game  as  it  was  hard  for  them  to  memorize  pictures  thanks  to  smells.  My  solution  was  to  reduce  the  amount  of  knowledge  they  had  to  remember  (the  amount  of  smell  boxes  in  the  game).  However,  games  involving  scents  does  not  appear  to  be  as  motivating  as  games  based  on  other  senses  (sight  and  sound).  As  such,  it  could  be  interesting  to  explore  in  which  ways  olfactory  games  could  be  easily  playable  like  the  other  games  while  being  adaptable  for  different  kind  of  uses  and  skills.  

     

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Acknowledgments    I  would  like  to  thank  all  my  floor  mates  who  participated  in  this  project.  They  contributed  greatly  to  the  project  by  providing  constructive  feedback  about  my  game.  I  would  especially  thank  Lucy  Booth  for  helping  me  with  my  English  grammar  questions.    Foremost,  I  thank  my  supervisor  Simon  Niedenthal  who  gave  me  the  opportunity  to  work  on  this  topic.  I  would  also  like  to  thank  him  for  his  advice  and  for  caring  about  me  and  my  work.    I  would  finally  like  to  thank  my  entire  family,  who  followed  me  during  the  project  process  by  supporting  me  during  my  times  of  doubt.                                                

       

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