Information Olfactation: Harnessing Scent to Convey Data

Abstract

Olfactory feedback for analytical tasks is a virtually unexplored area in spite of the advantages it offers for information recall, feature identification, and location detection. Here we introduce the concept of information olfactation as the fragrant sibling of information visualization, and discuss how scent can be used to convey data. Building on a review of the human olfactory system and mirroring common visualization practice, we propose olfactory marks, the substrate in which they exist, and their olfactory channels that are available to designers. To exemplify this idea, we present VISCENT: A six-scent stereo olfactory display capable of conveying olfactory glyphs of varying temperature and direction, as well as a corresponding software system that integrates the display with a traditional visualization display. Finally, we present three applications that make use of the viScent system: A 2D graph visualization, a 2D line and point chart, and an immersive analytics graph visualization in 3D virtual reality. We close the paper with a review of possible extensions of viScent and applications of information olfactation for general visualization beyond the examples in this paper.

Grand Challenges in Immersive Analytics

“…While multi-sensory data representation in Immersive Analytics has been previously discussed [91], there is a need to also consider multi-sensory output as feedback for input. Of the 5 senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste), electronic devices usually are able to provide for sight and sound, though recent advances may facilitate other senses [103,110,133]. Mobile devices and immersive controllers have some limited capabilities for touch feedback.…”

Accessible Visualization: Design Space, Opportunities, and Challenges

“…A challenge is that the assistive technologies are general‐purpose, and it requires engineering and design effort to make visualizations work with these technologies. Recent studies investigate novel technologies, including a dynamic physical bar chart [TJW ∗ 16], data ediblization, and an olfactory device [PBE19, BPAE20], although not discussed in the accessibility context.…”

A Survey on Immersive Visualization

“…此外, 多人共同使用沉浸式设备为合 作式任务提供新的模式 [58] ; 基于个人数据(如旅游 日志、社交媒体)的个人可视化需求也为沉浸式可 视化融入日常生活提供了契机 [35,59] [21][22] 以及三维空间中边与轨迹 的设计 [12,[23][24] , 用户感知数据的方式有限. 触觉 [14] 、 嗅觉 [27] [42] 、使用有 形用户界面增加选择精度 [40] , 以及设计新颖手势 减轻疲劳 [44] . 然而, 这些交互方式往往仅限于某 [8] .…”