Multisensory Experiences in HCI

The use of vision and audition for interaction dominated the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) for decades, despite the fact that nature has provided us with many more senses for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. Recently, HCI researchers have started trying to capitalize on touch, taste, and smell when designing interactive tasks, especially in gaming, multimedia, and art environments. Here we provide a snapshot of our research into touch, taste, and smell, which we’re carrying out at the Sussex Computer Human Interaction (SCHI—pronounced “sky”) Lab at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK.