I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the SUE offices in Amsterdam, but if not, you’re very welcome to visit us one day. And if you have, you’ve probably noticed that we don’t have a very ‘regular’ office.
I don’t mean that in the “we have a slide and a ping-pong table” kind of way. From the moment we started SUE, I’ve been almost obsessive about protecting what I call our 9+ customer experience.
We’re in an old 17th-century building. Is it noisy from time to time? Very much so. But what you get in return is the smell of wood and beautiful, diffused light. We have Marjan, the best cook and friendliest person I’ve ever met. Do we serve the horrible sandwiches the Dutch are infamous for? Absolutely not. Instead, she brings out delicate salads and focaccias. We have special playlists and ‘The Big Lebowski’ playing on a loop. Silence and sterile focus? Not quite. Instead, there’s a steady energy in the background that keeps you going. We have comfortable couches instead of desks, everywhere. Do they take up more space? Absolutely. But they also make you feel at home almost instantly. And I could go on.
So what? you might think. But there is a so what.
Because these are exactly the kinds of things that are first to be cut when you look at them from a spreadsheet point of view. Do they look inefficient? Absolutely. But what they create in behaviour is something no Excel sheet can capture.
These small, seemingly insignificant details? They make perfect ROI sense. And it has nothing to do with your product. It has everything to do with the senses.
Aradhna Krishna, a researcher at the University of Michigan who studies sensory marketing, has spent years documenting how the physical experience of a retail environment shapes memory, preference, and loyalty in ways that go far beyond what people consciously register. The lighting, the smell, the sound levels, the texture of surfaces, these sensory inputs bypass the rational mind and land directly in the emotional brain, forming associations that stick long after the visit is over.
How to use this insight:
The question for anyone designing a space, a service, or a customer experience is not only: what does this offer? It is: what does this feel like to be in?
Sensory cues work on people whether you intend them to or not. A waiting room with harsh lighting and no natural sound communicates something about how much you value the people waiting in it. An office with no smell, no texture, no variation in light levels communicates something about how seriously you take the people working there.
For leaders: the physical environment you create for your team is a message, even when you think it is just a practical decision. The temperature of a meeting room, the quality of the coffee, whether there are plants or windows, these are not aesthetic choices. They are signals about what you think people are worth.
For product and service designers: before adding another feature, ask whether the experience of using what you already have actually feels good. Speed and function are necessary but rarely sufficient. The emotional texture of an experience is often what determines whether someone comes back.
I happily invite you to come over and experience SUE yourself someday.
An impression of the SUE Academy in Amsterdam
Behavioural Design for teams
If your physical environment is already shaping how people feel and behave, imagine what happens when your team learns to design that intentionally.
Our team programmes give your people a shared framework for understanding how decisions are really made, and how to design the conditions that make the right behaviour easier. Applied directly to your own challenge, from day one.
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Why shops that smell of something sell more
Researchers have found that adding a simple ambient scent to a retail environment increases the time customers spend browsing and the amount they spend. In one study, a floral scent in a shoe shop led customers to evaluate the products more positively and to buy more, compared to an identical unscented shop.
What makes this finding striking is not the size of the effect but the mechanism behind it. Scent bypasses the conscious filter almost entirely. Unlike a price tag or a product description, a smell is processed before you have had a chance to think about it. By the time you are aware of it, the emotional association is already formed.
Krishna's broader research shows that this is true across all the senses. The weight of a product in your hand affects how premium you perceive it to be. The sound of a car door closing shapes your assessment of its quality. The background music in a restaurant influences how long you stay and how much you order.
The implication is simple but often overlooked: the sensory environment you create is making an argument about your product whether you realise it or not. Better to make that argument deliberately.
Here's to the stubborn optimists, who unlock the power of Behavioural Design for optimising work, life, and everything in between.
Until next week,
Astrid Groenewegen
Co-Founder of SUE | Behavioural Design Academy, Author of 'The Art of Designing Behaviour' / 'De Kunst van Gedrag Ontwerpen' and ‘De Gelukscode’.
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