Sensory design: how sound, texture, temperature and movement transform an experience

You might see a perfect design and feel that something isn’t quite right

An elegant door that sounds fragile when it closes. An attractive app whose transition leaves you wondering what just happened. A chair that looked comfortable but turns out to be cold and stiff. A well-designed shop where the music makes conversation impossible. A beautiful fabric that’s scratchy, heavy or doesn’t drape as you’d expected.

In none of these cases is the visual aspect at fault. What’s at fault is something conveyed through other channels: hearing, touch, the body, response time. The experience contains information that an image cannot convey or verify.

This is the essence of experience design when perception is taken seriously: it is not enough to decide how something looks; one must craft what a person perceives, at what moment and for what purpose. Design begins to be felt before we can explain what we are perceiving. To understand this, it is helpful to explore an experience in four stages.

Stage 1. The threshold: before you even look, the experience has already begun

Even before conscious contact, the body is already receiving signals. In a space, you perceive the echo, the background noise, a draught, the temperature, and the sensation of openness or confinement. With a product, you notice its weight, balance, the sound of a mechanism or the initial resistance before you even know whether you like its shape. In a digital experience, the loading speed, the stability of the elements or an automatic sound create a first impression before you’ve even completed any task.

This threshold creates expectations. If it promises something that the rest of the experience fails to deliver, the inconsistency will be felt even if no one can put a name to it.

Time 2. Touch: the material responds before you can describe it

Touching is not just about recognising a texture. Contact provides information about hardness, flexibility, friction, grip, weight, surface temperature, vibration, stability and even cleanliness or safety.

Here lies a key distinction in texture within design: visual texture and tactile texture do not always coincide. An image may suggest roughness, softness or quality, but that expectation is either confirmed or shattered upon touch. A surface that looks soft may be rigid; a material with a metallic appearance may sound and feel like plastic.

In fashion, this idea is part of everyday life: with a garment, it is not just the print, colour or silhouette that matter, but also the drape, the feel against the skin, the elasticity, the weight, the breathability and the continuous contact with the body. A material is not merely an image applied to a shape: it is a behaviour that emerges when you touch it, move it, wear it and care for it. That is why the relationship between materials and user experience cannot be fully understood on screen alone.

Time 3. The response: when you act, the design must respond

Every action expects a perceptible consequence: knowing that a button has registered a press, that something is being processed, that a task has finished, that an error has occurred, that a door has been closed.

Movement in interfaces serves an informative, rather than a decorative, function here. It can direct attention, show continuity, reveal cause and effect, convey weight or represent progress. It becomes problematic when it delays the task, does not represent any real change, appears constantly or causes dizziness. The W3C’s accessibility guidelines recommend that non-essential animations should be able to be disabled, as certain effects cause distraction, dizziness or headaches for some users.

Sound in design functions in a similar way. It is not just music: it can confirm, warn, localise, anticipate or convey fragility. However, it should not be the sole channel for conveying essential information, as this would exclude those who cannot hear it or who are in a noisy environment.

Alongside sound and movement comes haptic sensory feedback: vibrations, resistance and forces that confirm an action through the body. A response works when it allows the user to understand what has happened without forcing them to interpret decorative effects.

Time 4. The after-effect: the experience continues even when you are no longer interacting

The initial impact comes from novelty; quality emerges through repeated use. The legacy of an experience includes memory, comfort, fatigue, trust, a sense of control, a desire to repeat, or saturation.

It is worth asking: did the user end up feeling comfortable or exhausted? Did the sound remain useful after twenty repetitions, or did it become noise? Did the surface maintain its behaviour with use? Did the movement help with orientation or cause distraction? A design that only works the first time is not complete.

What each variable changes

Going beyond the visual does not mean going against the visual

Sight remains fundamental. The point is that it does not act alone: it creates expectations about what will be heard or touched, it can reinforce or contradict those other signals, and it can be exclusive when it concentrates all the information.

A material may look heavy but sound hollow. An interface may appear responsive but respond with a delay. A space may seem peaceful but have exhausting acoustics. The problem is not designing the visual aspect: it is assuming that the visual aspect encompasses the entire experience.

The senses can collaborate, compete or contradict one another

Multisensory perception does not operate through isolated channels: what you hear alters how you interpret a material, and what you touch changes your expectations regarding quality or use. That is why sensory coherence does not consist of repeating the same adjective across all channels — warm sound, warm texture, warm light. It arises when various cues explain the same action, when feedback arrives at the right moment, or when the material behaves as you expected.

Contrast also has its place: it can signal a risk, highlight an exception or deliberately subvert an expectation. It becomes problematic when it looks like a mistake, creates a false promise or makes the experience unpredictable. Consistency does not require everything to say the same thing; it requires each cue to have a comprehensible relationship with the experience. This is what distinguishes a well-composed multisensory experience from a mere accumulation of stimuli.

Points to note to avoid beginner’s mistakes

Sound: more than just a soundtrack

In sound design, it is advisable to distinguish between four layers: ambient sound (conversations, ventilation, reverberation, relative silence), functional sound (confirmations, warnings, status indicators), narrative sound (music, voice, effects) and material sound (a click, a latch, a creak). There is also a useful technical distinction: the acoustic environment is what can be measured; the soundscape is how a person perceives and understands that environment within a context, as defined by the relevant ISO standard.

A key question sums up the criterion: what information would the experience lose if we removed this sound? If the answer is ‘none’, its inclusion should be reconsidered.

Texture: not a graphic pattern

Texture combines tactile variables (roughness, hardness, elasticity, friction, grip) with usage variables (cleanliness, wear and tear, maintenance, safety, brief or prolonged contact). Does it facilitate a firm grip? Does it work with gloves? Does it remain pleasant to the touch after several minutes? Does it age consistently? Texture does not merely adorn a surface: it alters how it is gripped, touched, recognised and held.

Temperature: air, surface and light are not the same thing

When discussing temperature and design, it is essential to distinguish between at least four things: the ambient temperature of a space, the surface temperature of a material when touched, the operational heat generated by a device during use, and the colour temperature of light—which is expressed in kelvins and does not correspond to any physical temperature. A metal surface may feel cold in a temperate room; warm lighting can coexist with an uncomfortable thermal environment. Thermal comfort, moreover, does not depend on a single figure: humidity, air movement, activity, clothing and the possibility of individual control all play a part.

Movement: information that unfolds over time

Movement includes interface transitions, but also the movement of a fabric, a camera, a character, a mechanism or a robot. Its variables — direction, speed, duration, latency, rhythm, repetition — determine whether it explains a causal relationship or merely distracts. Useful questions: Does it respond to an action? Can it be paused? Is there a simplified alternative? Does it remain functional after being repeated twenty times?

Accessibility: more channels do not guarantee greater access

A multisensory experience can broaden access when it offers redundant information, does not rely solely on sight, allows users to choose, and adapts the intensity. But it can also be exclusionary: constant noise, uncontrollable movement, unexpected vibrations, intense smells or stimuli that cannot be reduced or turned off. The WCAG guidelines state, for example, that instructions must not rely exclusively on sensory characteristics such as shape, colour or sound.

One concept helps us to think about sensory accessibility: the sensory budget. Every experience has a limited amount of attention and tolerance. Each stimulus must justify its function, its intensity, its duration and the possibility of controlling it. More stimuli do not necessarily mean a better experience.

Sensory flaws rarely show up in the render

A visualisation may approve a project that the body rejects: a prototype that feels flimsy, a texture that traps dirt, a transition that is too slow, a fabric that does not drape as expected, or a surface that becomes hot. That is why the prototype is not a finishing stage, but a tool for gaining insight: it allows us to detect what a visual representation conceals.

How to test a sensory experience

A simple six-step method:

1. Walk through. Go through the experience in silence, noting which stimuli dominate and which absences are noticeable.
2. Isolate. Test variables in isolation: without sound, with a different texture, with reduced movement, at a different temperature.
3. Recombine. Assess coherence, competition between signals, redundancy and timing.
4. Observe. Note down any doubts, errors, avoidance, task completion time and spontaneous comments from the testers.
5. Ask. Don’t limit yourself to ‘do you like it?’: what did you expect to happen, which cue helped you, what would you have liked to control?
6. Measure. Combine physical data (decibels, temperature, latency) with observation and subjective assessment, bearing in mind that a measurement describes a condition but does not demonstrate how each individual will experience it.

The sensory score of an experience

A score doesn’t make all the instruments play at once: it organises entries, silences, intensities and hierarchies. An experience works in the same way. This template helps you compose it:

The question of control is always the same: does every signal fulfil a function that could not be resolved in a clearer, quieter or more accessible way?

The aspect you notice most may give you a clue as to your vocation

If multisensory design has struck a chord with you, perhaps your curiosity is already pointing towards a discipline, even if you can’t quite put a name to it yet.

At UDIT, these areas explore the same reality — the relationship between body, environment, object, interface and time — from different perspectives. Some projects developed at the university illustrate this through method, not slogans: the collaboration with the CISEN special needs school used co-creation and stations for smell, sound and touch to observe which elements could foster calm environments; and the Ma-Ka project explores mycelium as a material believed to possess sound-absorbing properties, linking product, materiality and the acoustic environment. In both cases, the methodological key is the same as that running through this article: observing with real people what a rendering cannot verify.

Frequently asked questions about sensory design

What is sensory design?

It is the deliberate design of the signals that a person perceives through their body during an experience: sound, touch, texture, temperature, vibration, movement, light or smell. It does not seek to activate all the senses, but rather to organise what information each channel provides, how they combine and what control the user retains.

What is the difference between sensory design and multisensory design?

Sensory design can focus on one or several perceptual dimensions. Multisensory design emphasises how different modalities combine and influence one another: how a sound alters the perception of a material, or how an animation and a vibration confirm the same action. The key word here is not ‘several’, but ‘combine’.

What is haptic design?

It is the design of information and sensations conveyed through touch, vibration, force, pressure, resistance or mechanical movement. Haptic interaction is applied to objects, controls, devices, vehicles and immersive environments: from the vibration that confirms a press to the resistance of a control.

Do more stimuli improve an experience?

Not necessarily. Each signal demands attention and may compete with the others. The aim is to create a clear hierarchy, provide control and eliminate anything that serves no purpose.

Is a multisensory experience always more accessible?

No. It can broaden access when it offers alternatives and redundant cues, but it can also lead to sensory overload or exclude people who are sensitive to noise, movement or vibration. Accessibility requires control, alternatives and testing with a diverse range of users.

How do you test a sensory design?

By combining observation walks, tests with isolated variables, real-world usage observation, interviews that go beyond ‘do you like it?’, and physical measurements. None of these tools is sufficient on its own.

Which fields of study relate to sensory design?

It depends on the area you’re interested in: Interiors deals with space and comfort; Product, with materials and ergonomics; Fashion, with fabric and the body; UX, with response and interaction; Animation and Audiovisuals, with movement and sound; Video Games, with feedback and environments; Robotics, with sensors and physical responses.

Start observing in a different way

The next time you use a product, enter a space or interact with a screen, don’t just look at its appearance. Listen to how it responds, touch its surfaces, notice the temperature, follow its movements and ask yourself what design decision lies behind each sensation. You might just discover a design discipline there that you didn’t yet know how to name.