Seeing Trust – Smelling Trust: Communicating emotions in a Design Process

This paper is about a visually designed object that communicates the emotion of “trust” in a perfume- making process. Analyzing the design of the object it raises the issue of how to represent and communicate an emotion visually. This question has previously been discussed in the context of mood boards used in design processes. The analysis of the empirical case however reveals that this designed object significantly differs from conventional mood boards in terms of the designed elements, the degree of elaboration, authorship, target users, changeability and the function in the design process. As a visual concept the designed object communicates a personal interpretation of trust to the different stakeholders in the design process. Yet, the concept cannot simply be de-coded. Instead, the complex design of the object involves the user in meaningful sense-making activities. Thus, the case from artistic perfumery shows how the design of new communication objects enables cross-disciplinary design processes for emotion related products.