We Are Experiential Creatures
- TJ Smith
- 5 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Try This
Pick up something close to you, anything around. Hold it there and focus in for a moment.
Notice its feel between your fingers.
Observe every side, close and far, blurred and sharp.
Bring it to your nose and take a whiff.
Dare I say taste it?! (’ll let you decide whether what you are holding invites a lick.)
Now set the object aside and think about each sense you engaged with. In the act of any of them, did a memory come to mind? It’s okay if one didn’t. But think about this as if it had.
Was there something that triggered a flashback?
Where did you go?
Was it a time when you were younger, a place you used to know, something else entirely?
The object itself, did it carry emotional weight, some thread tied to your life?
If that object pulled you somewhere, you’ve just touched the edge of something neuroscience calls embodied cognition.
Embodied Cognition
It is the idea that thinking isn’t just something your brain does on its own. Your body, your senses, and the world around you are all part of how you think. A moment you can feel, paired with emotion and reflection, sticks with you in a way that words on their own never quite manage.
In the most literal sense. We are shaped, moment by moment, by what we sense and feel as we move through the world. Our beliefs, our preferences, our values, even the people we become, are not built out of seconds spent on Earth. They’re built out of experiences our bodies remember, even when our minds don’t.
Your body already knows this, now your mind is beginning to as well.
And I think that’s worth paying attention to.
Back Up and Reverse it
Take this idea and turn it toward the work of brand, community, or place, and something more interesting opens up. If we really are shaped by what we sense and feel, then a message on a screen or an ad in a magazine is doing less than we think it’s doing.
What lands deeper is a curated moment.
Something that activate as many senses as possible.
Not in a commanding grab that overloads the system, rather in the carefully curated aim of imprinting positive memory.
This thinking makes a real difference when solving for a brand. A sensory experience can pull people further into the story, the mission, the place. It creates a stronger bridge between your brand and your audience. This deepened connectedness starts to form more trust and overall makes it easier to retain and gain your customers.
I’ll Give You an Example
Picture an outdoor nonprofit with a real problem. They’re not gaining the membership or visibility they want.
Their brand is fine.
Good logo.
Clean website.
Social posts going out on schedule.
But they’re not hitting their growth marks.
So instead of another ad spend, or patchwork email blast, you try something different. Take a leap into experience design.
How about you set up a booth at a farmer’s market. A simple ten by ten. Inside five cardboard boxes, each a different shape and color. Each one has an icon.
An ear.
A hand.
An eye.
A tongue.
A nose.
The hand box has a hole cut in the front. You ask visitors to reach inside.
What do they feel?
The rough bark of a tree, scraggly and worn, with a few soft leaves. You invite them to close their eyes. Maybe they remember climbing a tree as a kid, or sitting under one in a rainstorm.
The ear box has a small hole at listening height. Inside, the sound of a stream, birds, leaves moving in wind. Suddenly they’re back on a trail they walked years ago.
The eye box has a viewing window into a small, beautiful nature scene.
The nose box holds fresh sage, or the smell of the air right after rain.
The taste box is a simple reward, some mini granola bars, nicely packaged as a reward for being curious.
At the end, you ask one question. Did any of these take you somewhere?
The point of the experiment isn’t to convert a donor on the spot. It’s to create a moment that joins all the other moments that have shaped this person across their life. A small experience now might lead to a larger choice later. If the conversation continues, the organization can say: we protect the lands you remember, the streams, the trees, the air after the rain. Supporting us is supporting the continuation of all of it.
That’s One Here’s Another
A downtown with a strong Main Street, and a parallel street starting to grow its own restaurants and shops. The problem is with the adjacent street is foot traffic. People often don’t wander down a street they haven’t walked before, because the risk of walking over for nothing is could be a reality.
What if you activated the alleyways between?
An artistic installation connecting one ecosystem to another.
A mural that pulls the eye.
A small sound moment, a sequence of lights, a piece of placemaking that gives someone a reason to step in.
You’ve solved the navigation question without a single sign. You’ve given people an experience that itself is the wayfinding.
These aren’t entirely new ideas. The multi-sensory thing has been an interest I’ve dabbled in across a lot of projects. (I am sure some of you have, experienced these)
What’s new is the foundation underneath it. This belief, that we are experiential creatures, that our lives are built out of small moments stacked on top of each other. If that’s true, then the experiences we design, or fail to design, matter more than we usually give them credit for.
Something I Want to Note
I recognize that not everyone has the time or the safety to wander into a curated experience. A lot of folks are working two jobs, just getting through the day. If experience is what shapes us, the experiences worth designing aren’t only the ones in galleries and farmer’s markets. They live in the margins too. In the bus stop. In the grocery aisle. In the thirty seconds someone has between one thing and the next. Sensitive for people with sensory overload and not excluding those who do not have access to all of their senses.
Thinking in this way unfolds a whole new landscape to get creative in.
Last Thought
So here’s the question I’d leave you with. If we really are shaped by what we sense and feel, what are you giving your senses to? What are you letting through?
That object you picked up earlier. Pick it up again. Notice it once more before you put it down. After reading this has your perspective changed on how you experience the object?