This project aims to explore how interactive technological artefacts can support young adults with sensory overload in their experiences. It intends to investigate the potential of carefully designing technologies tailored to the user's sensory needs of managing and reflecting on the sensory experience, and understanding their patterns. The project adopted an iterative design process and applied several methods with an emphasis on designing meaningful user experiences. The project conducted user research with people experiencing sensory overload to understand the experiential aspects of trying to manage the negative experiences it entails. The final design consists of two prototypes. The first one was a Role Prototype created with Figma and took the form of a mHealth app powered by Artificial Intelligence for detecting patterns in the user’s data and documenting sensory experiences through journaling. The second one is an Implementation prototype in the form of a tangible electronic prototype created by using Arduino Nano BLE 33 Sense and sensors for recognising biometric data and environmental cues. Additionally, technological exploration was undertaken through sketching in hardware. This led to delving into how Machine Learning and gas sensors can be combined in order to create a scent-detecting sensor. The results suggest that the design concept provides the user with valuable tools to manage their overwhelming sensory experiences. Lastly, the results indicate that a sensory experience prediction component would be a valuable feature for people who need to manage sensory overload.

As sensory marketing is becoming a more widely used strategy in the world, the need to distinguish oneself is more important than ever. The general knowledge of sensory cues, their interplay and sensory overload among Swedish retail beauty companies is researched in this thesis. We set out to identify the baseline knowledge of the store personnel and the implications thereof in Sweden on the subjects formerly mentioned.       This investigative study aims to provide an insight into the workings and knowledge gap of retail store design from the perspective of store personnel with sensory- marketing, interplay and congruency in mind with focus on the senses vision, audio and scent. The knowledge of these are assumed to influence a stores’ ability to cater to and adapt to everyday and sensory-sensitive consumers. The study also aims to provide an insight into the subject of sensory overload, what causes it and the effects that might be had from the experience.    To achieve this, we formed the research questions: “How do beauty retail stores in Sweden keep sensorial interplay in mind when designing their retail setting?” and “How do beauty retail stores in Sweden take sensory overload into consideration?”. We performed qualitative interviews with Swedish retail beauty stores’ employees. A foundational knowledge was established in the form of a literature review followed by empirical findings, to be discussed in the analysis.   The conclusions drawn from our research, were that there is awareness among managers on sensory marketing. However, sensory cues are commonly broken down and compartmentalized into singular events. While we found that there are congruence considerations taken as to how the cues relate to the stores’ brand, there seemed to be little to none taken to how the cues interplay with each other. We could also conclude that sensory overload is not a consideration. However, that there are various reasons to this, one major being that Swedish retailers are careful about the implementation of sensory experiences and therefore consider themselves safe from the possibility.