A Framework for Experience: Eight Elements of Ambience

Ambience is a term frequently used to describe the feeling of a space, but incredibly difficult to define. It also happens to be intimately related to the practice of experience design.?

At HUSH, we seek to create spaces to move people, to change their behavior for the better, to evoke a feeling, and to imprint a memory. As part of a recent project with an international airport client, we were challenged to improve the passenger experience of the terminal, with the specific goal of positively affecting the quality of ambience (a tangible, trackable KPI). It was a beautiful design challenge, but it left us asking: How do we capture the ‘lightning in a bottle’ that is ambience? And how might we understand it in order to improve it? It became increasingly clear that we needed to deconstruct what ambience means in order to identify the design levers we could use to improve it. We needed a shared framework.

So, we began by defining ambience.

The word ambience originates from the French, ambiant, meaning surrounding. Today, the dictionary defines ambience as, “the character and atmosphere of a place.” It’s immediately evident when the ambience is bad. Something seems off—a vibe, a feeling, a mood. Conversely, we can all tell when the ambience is good. Everything just works.?

I’ve begun to see ambience as a collection of moments and artifacts, that—especially when coordinated and optimized to deliver strategic impact—come together to create a coherent experience of a space, and the memory of it we retain. This coherence is critical, because the way a space is remembered can make or break a customer’s opinion of a company’s brand, service, or product.?

In the discovery and analysis phase of work for the airport terminal, eight elements of ambience emerged. And, in collaboration with design and environmental psychology firm Design with Science , we applied behavioral science theories to support design recommendations for each element.?

Even if imperfect, this work-in-progress framework has given us a meaningful method to move into deeper strategic design work. I’m sharing this now, perhaps a bit early, in the hopes that it could be valuable to others’ design endeavors as well, since we’re all—in one way or another—in the business of improving experience.

1. Elevating Arts & Entertainment

Airports are quickly becoming exhibition and entertainment spaces—just see the repertoire of great commissions featured on CODAworxs , for example. In analyzing the airport terminal, it became clear that context can often overwhelm the power of arts and entertainment, rendering it invisible. Since art is a powerful tool in the repertoire of ambience, we sought to rethink the scale, placement and medium of arts interventions—both permanent and temporary, across all physical and digital scales. In the context of experience design, the ambient effects of art and entertainment need elevating and framing so they actually read as art, and can influence behavior to improve the visitor experience, like moving people away from a central thoroughfare, or towards a particular destination of interest.?

2. Building narrative through Storytelling & Tone of Voice

In the world of experience design, we believe that every space tells a story, and therefore has some kind of voice. This could be overt communication (an exhibit, for example) or an expressive theme (art or placemaking). If a brand has an existing tone of voice, then it’s important for that to carry through its physical manifestations. Is it invitational? Serious? What are the stories that we should tell? How do they work together? In the context of the airport terminal there were many stories at play. But they were in competition—developed ad hoc, over many years, under the pressure of divergent stakeholders and funding sources. The complexity of the storytelling obscured an important and ownable narrative. By surfacing key themes and a tone of voice, we’ll better align visitors with a strong sense of place and strengthen the overall ambience.

3. Harnessing In-between Spaces

In-between spaces are most often observed in complex environments with diverse audiences, in buildings like airports, or public spaces such as malls, transportation hubs, and stadiums. Think of these as the “non spaces” that exist only in relation to other clearly demarcated areas of a program. If created without strategic intention, they are often commandeered by users for their own purposes: they become sleeping nooks, gathering points, temporary storage, staging areas, etc. However, when strategically designed and located, these “non spaces” offer moments for people to rest and reorganize, or create much needed respite for children or the neurodivergent. These areas became diamonds in the rough—giving space a purpose. Personally, I see incredible value in increasing the amount of these areas to improve overall ambience. In the terminal specifically, these areas will become elements like playfully designed non-gate seating, allowing the remaining areas to operate closer to 70% occupancy—which research tells us makes people feel optimally comfortable.?

4. Guiding the way with Lighting

Research demonstrates that the color, tone, intensity, consistency, and placement of lighting affects how we feel in a space, and the ways we act in it. A typical example: cooler / bluer lighting can help us concentrate, while warmer light better facilitates positive social interactions. While usually the domain of lighting designers, the effects of light originate from many sources, including windows, practical lighting, and digital surfaces at all scales. Through this broader lens—looking at light in all its forms and sources—it was obvious that because lighting has such a powerful experiential effect, we needed to ensure there was a stronger strategy to guide lighting design to engender the desired behavioral outcomes, and thus improve ambience.?

5. Using Sound to cut through the noise

If you’ve ever tried to hold a conversation in a noisy restaurant, you’ll know why a space’s sound matters. Just like lighting, sound can be all encompassing, bending around corners in exponential complexity. As such, it can greatly affect our mood—especially in high-congestion areas—as well as our cognitive performance and feeling of safety. Volume, tone, timbre, and purpose of audio elements all come into play here, plus everything from music choices to interface sound effects and alerts. HUSH’s history working with sound designers to create strategic, targeted sonic environments, audio signatures, and scores has helped us unlock the potential to create incredibly powerful, targeted ambient effects. But the inverse is also true: minimizing sound by designing intentionally quiet spaces, or creating moments of calm with nature sounds in confined spaces is just as powerful.

6. Enhancing visual and haptic cues via Materials & Color

Psychologically, materials and color palettes significantly affect our energy, mood, and comfort in a space. When they work together they ensure the experience feels consistent. We know that this applies to digital elements like screens, interfaces, and content as well—which are all forms of “technological” canvases that are inherently material, and can change with dynamic digital color. Given the breadth of materials and colors in an airport, we’re seeking to unify these design choices, reducing complexity and aligning them to be more supportive of the passenger journey—from high-energy moments at security (bright, slick, fast) to moments of waiting at the gate (soft, natural, textural).?

7. Keeping Commercial Signage consistent

Commercial signage is a competitive endeavor—each retailer attempting to control its own space, visibility and adherence to brand guidelines. Within the airport terminal context, the pressures on commercial signage become even more visible, competing not only with other retailers, but with other layers of visual information like wayfinding and operational messaging. The density of visual information in this context creates a cognitive load. What’s contained in a passenger’s entire field of view? How might we separate layers of information to help them make decisions more easily? Creating more consistency for all commercial signage—physically, materially, digitally, and in scale and placement—ensures passengers’ minds can efficiently make sense of the world of information at hand.?

8. Getting specific with Information & Wayfinding

Information hierarchy is a classic design tool applied to everything from a small digital interface, to the largest of architectural contexts. The work for our airport client revealed a complicated system of information, which is all necessary, but without a clear visual logic. We took an inventory of the various informational signage and noticed discrepancies in height and scale, location, and form factor. We’re creating a clear system of requirements for placement, and matching information to key moments of the passenger journey. This will reduce the volume of signage and increase comprehension and utility, all in support of improving the ambience throughout the passenger journey.

What struck me most as this framework and project took shape, is the holistic nature of ambience. Individually, each of these elements is a world of possibility, but perhaps nothing incredibly new—already the focus for architects, lighting designers, sound designers, materials specialists, information designers, and the like. But few firms have the privilege of seeking exponential impact on the human experience of space by pursuing the balance of an entire system, aiming to remove, reduce, and curate, rather than add or aggrandize.?

I believe that any one of these elements won’t generate an ambience so powerful it creates a lasting memory. But if brought together within a connected experience, they will ultimately create a powerful ambience—a deep memory of the space—that is unique, and worth returning to over and over. And this, of course, is the goal of any public environment, from retail to museums, workplaces to transit hubs. Especially an airport.