The LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES tool was created to guide learners on a multisensory journey that goes beyond words, fostering deep self-awareness through touch, smell, taste, and hearing. It is not a simple perceptual activity, but a true rite of identity exploration, activating bodily memory, imagination, and emotional connection with space.
The module is conceived as a transformative tool, able to restore meaning to the relationship with materials, colors, and atmospheres, and to serve as a concrete resource for the empathetic design of both domestic and collective environments.
The goal is not to evaluate or clinically interpret responses, but to gather sensory, emotional, and symbolic traces that emerge spontaneously during the experience. In particular, through the act of touching, smelling, listening to, and tasting selected elements, learners come into contact with their inner world and represent it through marks, words, colors, or shapes.
This process – intimate yet shareable – encourages reflection on how we want to inhabit space and which stimuli make us feel at home, protected, inspired, or unsettled. LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES is addressed to anyone – regardless of age, condition, or cognitive level – who wishes to create and inhabit spaces more consciously, while cultivating greater empathy toward oneself and others.
It is, in fact, a tool that begins with the body in order to reach design: a body that perceives, reacts, remembers, and imagines. From this foundation, it becomes possible to create spaces that are truly human-centered.
Data interpretation
The outputs emerging from the sensory experiences should be read as open narratives, not as results to be classified or standardized. Each line drawn, each color chosen, each word evoked is a window into the learner’s perceptual and emotional world. The key to interpretation is qualitative, symbolic, and relational.
The facilitator may observe the lines, the choice of colors, the words used or avoided, the gestures performed during the activity. For example: a soft or angular stroke, the use of warm or cool colors, an abstract versus a concrete description, or the type of material that most stimulated the learner.
These clues reveal the way the person perceives and represents themselves within space.
It is essential to maintain a non-judgmental approach: there are no right or wrong interpretations, only insights that can guide design toward greater sensory and emotional attunement.
Some responses may reveal implicit needs (for instance, the desire for protection, the need for stimulation, or the rejection of certain textures), while others may bring out memories, desires, or poetic images useful for shaping spaces that feel meaningful and welcoming.
Taken together, the sensory experiences form a kind of non-verbal emotional map, which can be integrated with other tools (such as the previous one, OBSERVE) to give greater depth and coherence to design choices.
Made with love by Wellhome team
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
