Chinwag Psych: Multisensory Human Communications
Last night we hosted the first Chinwag Psych: PsychUp, which was part of the Festival of Marketing (8-10 Oct). The evening was a great success and Emma from The Blue Ballroom wrote this lovely blog all about it.
The next PsychUp will be hosted on Tuesday 12th November. Tickets sell out fast, so get yours while you can.
Last night’s gathering was aimed for anyone with an interest in how businesses can use psychology, neuroscience and behavioural traits to do better; so off I went with my internal communications hat on hoping to learn something new.
“Always learning” is one of our values here, and wow, I did learn last night. Adrian Cheok, Professor of Pervasive Computing at City University London gave us a presentation on multisensory human communication, and after a few laughs at Kissenger (yes, you can send an actual kiss through the internet it would seem) and how augmented reality will really integrate with reality in the future (even if it is people playing with their umbrellas in the street), it came about that whilst we communicate with our senses on a face to face basis, we shouldn’t discount the ability to communicate with our senses online. And that is the future…apparently.
I did sit there and wonder how this helps my clients. Will managers be sending us virtual high-fives from their offices with hand attachments to our computers? Will we have apps and attachments to our desks and phones that communicate actual good vibes? Could an internal communications campaign be to emit the smell of delicious baked food to all staff wherever they may be so that nobody feels left out on the actual sharing of cake?
Perhaps Adrian Cheok is on to something, and as silly as some of these ideas sound, in the near future we could all be communicating with “robots” rather than humans to get the attention we need. Personally, I’m not so sure, as we all need face to face communications and I don’t know whether wearing a ring that emits a hug will replace an actual hug.
Reblogged with permission. View the original here.
// Grab a spot at the next Chinwag Psych: PsychUp now.
Photo (cc) Benjamin Ellis.
