Sensory Load
Some people walk into a room and the room walks in with them. For others the same room fades to background.
Sensory Load is the filter that sits before conscious thought, deciding how much of the noise, light, texture, and movement around you actually gets through. It runs before you can choose, which is why a loud space can be tiring before you have done anything in it.
The range
- Turned up, over-responsive
- The world arrives at high volume. Noise, light, and texture compete for attention and spend capacity, so busy places saturate you faster than the people around you and take longer to recover from.
- Turned down, under-responsive
- Subtle input may not register. Quiet cues get missed, and you may seek stronger stimulation to feel switched on. Demanding rooms can leave you unbothered while others wilt.
What it is not
- Not threat reading
- Sensory Load governs how much of everything gets through. Threat Sensitivity governs how much of what gets through is read as danger. One is volume, the other is meaning.
It was never that the room was fine and I was not. The room was genuinely louder for me.
the reaction we design for