Beyond the Nose
Turning invisible scent experiences into tangible, navigable interactions
What if fragrance could be felt, heard, and tasted — not just smelled?
Perfume is a multi-sensory product, but retail evaluation relies on a single sense.
preview
Scent is invisible.
Hear it instead.
A scent fades from the strip.
A memory remains.
problem
Multi-Sensory Product,
Single-Sensory Evaluation
The perfume is emotional, spatial, and memory-driven product. But in-store evaluation relies almost entirely on olfactory sampling.
This creates:
Isolated smell sampling
Emotion-based but unstructured comparison
Weak memory anchoring
Immersive environments without guided evaluation logic
How might fragrance retail be designed for people who can't rely on smell alone?
PHase 01_exploration
Investigating
Hedonic Experience
in Retail Context
Research Methods
Survey (80 millennial fragrance consumers)
Secondary research on Multi-Sensory Design
What I explored:
Do users even value multi-sensory retail?
Where does current fragrance retail fall short?
How do other industries structure sensory experience?
Early Findings
Multi-sensory potential —
but lacked structural clarity.
- 70% believe multi-sensory enhances experience.
- Interior design strongly shapes perception.
- Taste pairing is emotionally attractive.
- Users struggle to compare scents meaningfully.
Exploratory Multi-Sensory Process
Afternoon Perfume Bar
This phase explored multi-sensory potential through a spatial concept.
Rose garden as emotional anchor
Taste pairing reinforcing scent associations
Visual immersion shaping perception
Validating
What Emerged From
Validating the Framework
Research Methods
Focus Group Discussions
Expert Interviews (retail / spatial design professionals)
“After testing 3–4 scents, everything blends together.”
- During focus group discussion
“The space feels immersive, but it doesn’t guide me.”
- During focus group discussion
“I choose perfumes based on mood, but I can't explain why.”
- During focus group discussion
“Fragrance retail still relies heavily on display logic rather than experiential structure.”
- Fragrance Branding Designer Interview
“Immersive environments are trending — but without a designed sensory sequence, they remain aesthetic rather than evaluative.”
- Interior Designer Interview
Core Insight
The problem was not smell.
The problem was lack of structure.
While the experience was immersive,
it lacked a structure that could scale beyond a single space.
Fragrance evaluation lacked:
-
Anchoring logic
-
Guided sequencing
-
Sensory translation system
-
Memory reinforcement mechanisms
Turning Point
This revealed the need for a structured and repeatable system.
PHase 02_iteration & SYSTEMIZATION
From Spatial Concept
to Experience System
Phase 1 showed what is possible
Phase 2 focuses on building that structure.
Reframe Design Question
How might fragrance retail be intentionally designed as a structured hedonic multi-sensory experience system?
SCENT-SORY System
Structured multi-sensory experience system for fragrance evaluation
4 interdependent layers:
01. Emotional Anchor Layer
02. Sensory Translation Engine
03. Structured Evaluation Flow
04. Memory Reinforcement Loop
How the System
Activates in Retail
Brand Selection
The framework needed a host. Jo Malone was the natural fit.
Jo Malone already communicates scent through taste and memory. The language of translation was already there. The brand tone is refined and experiential.
System In Practice — Applying SCENT-SORY
Experience Orchestration Layer
These interfaces do not function as standalone products. They visualize how multi-sensory layers are orchestrated within the space. This demonstrates system activation within physical context.
REFLECTION
Designing a System
for Experience
This project started as a spatial design question — and ended as a systems design problem. The real insight wasn't about design. Fragrance retail wasn't missing imagination. It was missing structure. Immersion without logic doesn't transfer. That realization redirected everything.
Let’s turn hidden patterns
into clearer experiences.
hyok911@gmail.com
San Francisco, CA
© 2026 by Hyokyung Ma.