I stand at the crossroads of design and creativity. I am not a natural synesthete, but it's my job to form new interaction patterns, metaphors, and ways of design thinking. When I approach design synesthetically, even associationally, it opens up wider design opportunities and modes of thought for me. And this led me to Synesign, the intersection of synesthesia + design.

1. Syne+sign!
THE INTERSECTION OF SYNAESTHESIA & DESIGN
Speaker’s Notes:
First, a simple experiment…Everyone close your eyes.
Can you imagine what the le@er A looks like in your mind?
can you hear the sound A makes in your head?
Can you imagine how A feels in your hand?
Can you smell A?
If you can’t, you just need to open your eye

2. Speaker’s Notes:
Synaesthesia literally means “union of the senses.”
Basically, when two or more senses are conjoined.
For example, when a person hears music and sees
color, taste a piece of chicken and feels a shape, or
smells words.
.

3. “ABILITY TO PERCEIVE
UNCOMMON MULTI‐SENSORY GESTALTS
IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT”
Speaker’s Notes:
NeuroscienVsts believe we all have synesthesia when
we are born, but as we learn more about the world,
our senses separate. For a lucky few, this never
happens. Synesthesia has been described as the
“ability to perceive uncommon mulVsensory gestalts in
the physical environment.”
Pa.ern finding in a way we never thought possible.
.

4. Speaker’s Notes:
At one Vme it was believed to occur mostly in leX
handed women and as few as 1 in 200,000 people;
now it’s believed to happen to anyone and as many as
1 in 20 people
.
That means 16 of you might have synesthesia.
.

5. Speaker’s Notes:
Imagine, for a moment, being blind. You can guess ‐
but can’t know ‐ how the visual world looks
Yet, sight is completely natural to most of us.
Now, imagine the sight I’m talking about is synesthesia
– we are now the ones who are blind. Synesthesia
is no less real or natural, but it’s as hard to
understand.

6. Speaker’s Notes:
Why is synesthesia important?
It is believed to be the basis for metaphor, for
creaVvity and for recognizing many of the pa@erns
around us. Consider this example: which of these
shapes is kiki and which is booboo? 98% of the general
populaVon chose the pointy one as kiki. Did you?

7. Speaker’s Notes:
Synesthesia is best understood through the eyes of the
people who experience it.
Take arVst Carol Steen. Carol has pain > color
synesthesia and experiences colors and pa@erns in
response to pain.
This painVng is the result of what she saw during
acupuncture.

8. Speaker’s Notes:
I have had numerous and ongoing conversaVons with
synesthetes, including Brendan.
Brendan is a grapheme > color synesthete, which
means he sees le@ers and numbers in his own unique
colors, like his personal alphabet shown here.
Brendan’s grandmother crochets synestheVc pa@erns
and his mother organizes concepts by color.

9. Speaker’s Notes:
And this is reflecVonist, Marcia Smileck. She
photographs reflecVons on moving water, whenever
she hears a chord of color or feels a texture.
MarciaI took the picture when the red roof turned to
velvet against her skin and the white shingles felt as
so= as Santa’s beard.

10. Speaker’s Notes:
This is another one of Marcia’s photographs – she
heard the sound of a cello on the water and took the
shot. A neuro‐scienVst told her she had captured on
film the exact sine waves produced by the sound of
cello strings. Marcia can also play the seams of a
dress and she hears music in mountains.

11. Speaker’s Notes:
I stand at the crossroads of design and creaVvity. I am
not a natural synesthete, but it's my job to form new
interacVon pa@erns, metaphors, and ways of design
thinking. When I approach design synestheVcally, even
associaVonally, it opens up wider design opportuniVes
and modes of thought for me. And this led me to
Synesign, the intersecVon of synesthesia + design.

12. Speaker’s Notes:
My first exposure to synestheVc thinking came when I
was researching the idea of measuring emoVon
through sound. What you see here is the emoVon
engine, which was designed to capture a person’s
emo@onal response to a product over @me.
The dial, in the lower leX corner, could be manipulated
between a major and minor chord to express a
person’s emoVonal response.

13. Speaker’s Notes:
Consider designer Jonathan Harris who spent seven
days on a whale hunt with Eskimos in Alaska and
captured the enVre experience based on his
heartbeat.
He took photos at 15 minute intervals, increasing the
frequency when his heart sped up, like during the
butchering of the whales.

14. Speaker’s Notes:
Consider this memorial in Germany called Touched
Echo. When a spectator grasps the rails, he is taken
back in Vme to the terrible air raid of 1945 as the
sound of WWII bombers fills his ears.
While it looks as if they are shunng their ears from
the noise, the sound is actually carried through bone
conducVon. Like synesthesia, it’s a uniquely personal
and unseen experience.

15. Speaker’s Notes:
Consider Charles Ives, called the greatest American
composer. He would go out in thunderstorms, listen to
the wind and the rain and the church bells clanging
and would then race back inside desperate to capture
the sounds on his piano. When he couldn’t, he started
playing the “cracks” between the piano keys, which
became the microtones of modern music.

16. What do you hear?
Speaker’s Notes:
And consider this sound…what do you think you hear?

17. Speaker’s Notes:
Did anyone guess the sound of urine analysis?
Dr. Charles Sweeley at Minnesota State, found that he
could be@er determine diseases in urine samples by
hearing what his eyes could not see.
Visually, we can only scan one line at a Vme, but
aurally we can hear a complete song or the 57 unique
instruments that may make up the song.
This has also been done for DNA.

18. Speaker’s Notes:
This is your cue to unwrap the TCHO chocolate.
Put it in your mouth now to let it warm up, but do not
bite into it.
At the start of the next slide, I want you to close your
eyes and draw a slow, conVnuous line of what you feel
you taste as you let the chocolate dissolve in your
mouth.

19. Speaker’s Notes:
Start drawing now.

20. Speaker’s Notes:
When I tried chocolatey at a conference, I closed my
eyes and drew a wavy line.
When I opened my eyes the presenter said, “The
founder likes to call this one a roller coaster ride.”
Does chocolate have a heartbeat?
Thank you. And would we have an even deeper understanding of
our language if we could smell it?
I think the answer is yes.