The Future of Learning Multisensory Experiences: Visual, Audio, Smell and Taste Senses

This paper describes an investigative study about the sense of smell, taste, hearing and vision to assist process of learning. This will serve to start the design and construction of a multisensory human-computer interface for different educational applications. The most important part is understanding the ways in which learners’ senses process learning and memorize information and in which relation these activities are. Though sensory systems and interfaces have developed significantly over the last few decades, there are still unfulfilled challenges in understanding multisensory experiences in Human Computer Interaction. The researchers generally rely on vision and listening, some of them focus on touch, but the taste and smell senses remain uninvestigated. Understanding the ways in which human’s senses influence the process, learning effects and memorizing information may be important to e-learning system and its higher functionalities. In order to analyze these questions, we carried out several usability studies with students to see if visual or audio experiences, different smells or tastes can assist and support memorizing information. Obtained results have shown improvement of learning abilities when using different smells, tastes and virtual reality facilities.