Papers by Mei-Kei LAI
Asian CHI 2021 Special Publication, 2021
This paper describes an experimental design project Ludic Odor which explores the possibilities o... more This paper describes an experimental design project Ludic Odor which explores the possibilities of designing interactive olfactory experience for parents and children in daily family routines. We propose to bring the affective and evocative aspects of smell to the interaction through digital olfaction. It associates the child’s early encounter olfactory experience with the family bonding moments. Here, we take bathing as the instance of daily family routine which is shared intimately between parents and children through the sense of smell. Ludic Odor is designed based on the ethnography research method through fieldwork, thick description, and mental models of contextual design. The feasibility of this concept is discussed through the proof-of-concept at the family bathing in the real bathroom setting in Macao. The design components of Ludic Odor include the categories of scents associated with daily family life, the selection of scents by parents and children, the bathing artefact along with bather behavior, the emission device setting in bathroom and the interactive olfactory experience through the system connection. This paper discusses the opportunities for the future study in the areas of interactive olfactory experience design for parents and children at daily family routines.
ARTECH 2021: 10th International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts, 2021
The need of supporting meditation through digital technology has been increased especially after ... more The need of supporting meditation through digital technology has been increased especially after COVID-19. By combining the olfactory experience provided by the ambient incense connected with virtual reality technology, we propose to bring the aesthetic and affective aspects of smell to the users for meditation in the digital era. TranScent aims to provide users a hybrid composition of sensory experiences that transcends the spatial and temporal characteristics in their surroundings. It lets the users meditate with the incense burnt in the real world while immersing in the audiovisual virtual environment. Rather than emphasizing on the mobility in fast pace, it focuses on giving users the stillness atmosphere for meditation practice through olfactory art with virtual reality.
Interactions, 2019
SenseCenser is a device for burning incense. It senses when incense chips are placed into it and ... more SenseCenser is a device for burning incense. It senses when incense chips are placed into it and the volume of incense smoke that is produced as the chips burn. Data captured from the integrated sensors can be connected to various applications, such as lighting equipment, sound systems, displays showing moving images, and more specific installations in particular rituals. We designed SenseCenser to investigate the potential role and place of interactive technologies in supporting Japanese funeral and memorialization rituals, as well as how it could be applied to other incense practices in different cultural contexts and settings.
The sense of smell is closely related with people across time and space. The aesthetic, affective... more The sense of smell is closely related with people across time and space. The aesthetic, affective and evocative aspects of smell are widely portrayed in art practices. Olfactory art has its unique expression that other modalities hardly have. Yet this aesthetic medium seems to be underestimated when it comes to the digital age. Current digital olfaction researches mainly focus on meeting tasks and solving problems. The aesthetic experience and the meaning behind are seldom discussed. This paper proposes a potential area where the people from digital art and digital olfaction can contribute together. This paper firstly gives an overview about the affective and evocative impacts of scent on people across time and space, reviewing how scent is treated as the aesthetic medium in the art form, then examining current usages of olfactory display, and lastly discussing the opportunities lying ahead. It provides the way to appreciate the world aesthetically through this affective and evocative medium.
Conjunction & Integration - the 6th Design Education Forum, 2018
With the emergence of phenomenon-based learning, this paper proposed adopting sensory ethnography... more With the emergence of phenomenon-based learning, this paper proposed adopting sensory ethnography with contextual inquiry as the methodology for design students to learn through real world experience. Phenomenon-based learning emphasizes that students study the real world phenomenon in a holistic perspective across the boundaries between subjects and skills. Meanwhile, Human-Computer Interaction community also raises the need of doing research "in-the-wild". It encourages the students to understand user experience phenomena in the real world situation. Here, sensory ethnography with contextual design provides a rich understanding of user experience in the fieldwork. This paper took this approach into human-computer interaction education by encouraging the design students to observe and feel the surroundings through sensory ethnography. By doing the contextual inquiry with model analysis in the fieldwork, the students designed the interactive experience for their target users accordingly. This paper took the case study in the design programme in Macao to discuss the opportunities behind.
ARTECH2017: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Digital Arts, 2017
Scent has a long history of being treated as the medium for art. Its aesthetic, affective and evo... more Scent has a long history of being treated as the medium for art. Its aesthetic, affective and evocative aspects enrich the art experience. Yet when it comes to the digital era, it seems to become the minority among the artworks. As digital olfaction is getting advanced in recent years, could it open up the opportunity to consider scent as the interface of tomorrow for digital art? This paper reviews how scent was treated as art in the past, examines its recent role in digital media, and discusses the possibilities it lays ahead for digital art in the future.
The Scent of Digital Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Available from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3106548.3106616
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320070457_The_Scent_of_Digital_Art_Yesterday_Today_and_Tomorrow [accessed May 24 2018].
22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA2016, 2016
"Flip the Book – Flip the Memories" is a multimodal interactive artwork exhibited in Sir Robert H... more "Flip the Book – Flip the Memories" is a multimodal interactive artwork exhibited in Sir Robert Ho Tung Library, which is part of Macao World Heritage site. This artwork integrates smell with audio visual together into reading experience. When the reader turns the page of the physical book, it would trigger different videos projected on the book. Meanwhile, specific scents would be released from the side according to the videos. The video footages are collected from local video photographers, which have preciously captured the images of the old days in Macao. This artwork uses smell as an ambient medium to connect the present with the past. It aims to lead the readers to recall their memories from the past, also to think about the present while being surrounded by the environment of cultural heritage. By combining physical book with multimodal interaction, this artwork brings the cultural heritage visitors tangible and intangible experience altogether. This paper would take "Flip the Book – Flip the Memories" as the case study to discuss the opportunities and the challenges behind while bringing new media into cultural heritage, especially the role of olfaction in multimodal interaction.
Paper Download:
[http://www.isea-archives.org/docs/2016/proceedings/ISEA2016_proceedings.pdf]
The 6th Design & Emotion Conference – Dare to Desire, 2008
The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of scents in interaction design. Scent-output is not... more The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of scents in interaction design. Scent-output is not an innovative idea in the digital world. From Sensorama (Heilig 1962) to iSmells (DigiScents 2000), people attempt to provide olfactory sensation to enhance user emotional experiences. However, most of them only caught the attention from the media at the beginning, but hardly lasted long in their era. Is it a dream or a gimmick? Do people enjoy having smells with computers? To what extend and in which context can computer-controlled scent output be designed properly? Problems arising from the nature of odour, olfactory technology, and context usages are discussed. Gameplay is used as the template to analysis the challenges and feasibility of using scents to elicit emotions in interactive media. This paper suggests that the problems above could be turned into the features of gameplay. An olfactory game is presented to illustrate the idea.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual International Conference on the Design of Communication - SIGDOC '15, 2015
This paper describes the experience of experimental artwork "Universal Scent Blackbox", which enc... more This paper describes the experience of experimental artwork "Universal Scent Blackbox", which encourages visitors interaction through creating olfactory experience in art museum. Smell is used as the evocative interface between the artwork and the visitors. When a visitor passed by a certain area, it would trigger the odor emission in another area for the other visitors. The visitors on another side could trigger the odor emission back as well. Throughout the experience, visitors can freely explore the scents around the area of the artwork. In addition, the visitors can express their memories of smell through writing onto origami boxes which contribute as a part of the city model of the artwork. The artwork consisted of all the visitors' memories expression and communication at the end of exhibition. The aim of this paper is neither technology investigation nor user experience evaluation. Instead it is an open-end exploration which questions the role of olfactory interface in art museum context and provokes the insights about olfactory interaction design in Human-Computer Interaction. The artwork becomes the inspirational probe to explore the possibilities of olfactory interface with the users when designing for communication. The benefits and drawbacks of the chosen approach towards olfactory interaction design would be discussed. I would also address the lessons learned behind throughout the process.
People and Computers XX — Engage, 2007
The paper describes an artistic project which produced some valuable findings in relation to olfa... more The paper describes an artistic project which produced some valuable findings in relation to olfactory interactive design. It records a process of discovery in a largely unfamiliar area of interaction. The paper describes how the many difficulties which people have in discriminating, recalling and identifying smells were used as the substance of engaging gameplay. Both theoretical and practical issues are discussed, including the role of olfaction in creating a sense of complete realism, and its use to create affect and to promote engagement. Issues of specifying and controlling odour are discussed, as are problems arising from the nature of olfactory perception. A digital olfactory game is described and evaluated. The paper may seem to undermine the whole idea of using the olfactory channel, and leaves it an open question how useful olfaction may eventually prove. It is admitted that significant problems await the design of olfactory experiences.
Conference Presentations by Mei-Kei LAI
Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 2019
Olfactory experience has become a popular topic in TEI community as its novelty in inviting new t... more Olfactory experience has become a popular topic in TEI community as its novelty in inviting new type of storytelling and new dimension of medium in embodied interaction. This studio focuses on the experiential approach of designing interactive olfactory experience in real world contexts. We will show two case studies on how to adapt contextual inquiry into designing olfactory interactions. We will also demo prototypes and introduce a set of basic digital tools for creating olfactory interactions. Based on the tools and demo, the participants will work in groups to design olfactory experience for their proposed contexts and applications. The aim of the studio is to establish a community in discussion of a new perspective in designing and evaluating interactive olfactory experience in real contexts and applications.
the 3rd Digital Olfaction Society World Congress, Tokyo Japan, 2016
In this study, an olfactory installation was presented in a public library in Macao. It took the ... more In this study, an olfactory installation was presented in a public library in Macao. It took the form of artwork to invite the visitors of the library to experience the work. It integrated smells with audio visuals together into the reading experience. Through watching the old footages of the city and experienced the smells with it, the visitors started to talk about their own memories regarding the city Macao. This work makes the visitors experience the cultural content more lively in a library.
The Evocative Role of Olfactory Display... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320185218_The_Evocative_Role_of_Olfactory_Display_in_a_Library_Context [accessed May 24 2018].
DESIGNING INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS (DIS), 2018
SenseCenser is a device that senses the act of placing incense chips into it and, subsequently, t... more SenseCenser is a device that senses the act of placing incense chips into it and, subsequently, the volume of incense smoke produced as the chips burn. These values can be connected to various applications, such as lighting equipment, sound systems, showing (moving) images, and more specific installations at particular rituals (e.g., a funeral ceremony). We designed SenseCenser to investigate the potential role and place of interactive technologies in supporting for Japanese funeral and memorialization rituals. This paper introduces its technical architecture and also how it will be demonstrated at the DIS2018 conference.
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Papers by Mei-Kei LAI
The Scent of Digital Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Available from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3106548.3106616
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320070457_The_Scent_of_Digital_Art_Yesterday_Today_and_Tomorrow [accessed May 24 2018].
Paper Download:
[http://www.isea-archives.org/docs/2016/proceedings/ISEA2016_proceedings.pdf]
Conference Presentations by Mei-Kei LAI
The Evocative Role of Olfactory Display... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320185218_The_Evocative_Role_of_Olfactory_Display_in_a_Library_Context [accessed May 24 2018].
The Scent of Digital Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Available from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3106548.3106616
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320070457_The_Scent_of_Digital_Art_Yesterday_Today_and_Tomorrow [accessed May 24 2018].
Paper Download:
[http://www.isea-archives.org/docs/2016/proceedings/ISEA2016_proceedings.pdf]
The Evocative Role of Olfactory Display... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320185218_The_Evocative_Role_of_Olfactory_Display_in_a_Library_Context [accessed May 24 2018].