Multisensory nature exposure in the workplace: Exploring the restorative benefits of smell experiences

What the study found

A multisensory biophilic workplace condition improved stress, mood and cognitive outcomes relative to a non-biophilic condition; olfactory pleasantness contributed to restoration.

Limitations

Small sample; bundled multisensory intervention prevents clean isolation of each cue; VR.

Neurodesign interpretation

Olfaction is powerful because it is associative. That makes it a high-opportunity and high-risk design channel: a pleasant scent for one person can carry an unwanted memory for another.

Possible design implications

Treat scent as a contextual cue that should be congruent, subtle and optional rather than as an ambient-branding default.

Why it stays in the corpus

Retain as a rare architecture-relevant olfactory study.

Study design

Pretest-posttest experiment

Population

32 adult participants

Setting

Multisensory VR workplace simulation

Field

Multisensory design, biophilia

Mechanism

Olfactory pleasantness, stress restoration, cognition

Spatial variable

Visual, auditory and olfactory nature cues

Keywords

olfaction, multisensory, workplace, biophilia, stress