Hasta La Ideas

Yesterday, we took a look at a potentially revolutionary breakthrough in brain surgery, which is great for neuroscientists (and their patients)—but the rest of us, not so much. After all, Steve Jobs channeled Henry Ford’s dictum about a faster horse when he asserted that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” prefiguring an interdisciplinary approach to ‘neuromarketing.’ In order to uncover what consumers really want—as opposed to their conscious desires—researchers such as Dr. Steven Scholte measure subjects’ brain activity as they are exposed to various stimuli.

Now, designer Merel Bekking is looking to apply neuroscience to product design. In her quest to “create the perfect design,” Bekking realized that the main obstacle is the fact that “perfection is subject to taste and aesthetics.” The solution, then, is a systematic approach to determine what ‘perfection’ might be. “In ‘Brain_manufacturing,’ Bekking excludes personal preferences and tastes and creates designs purely based on scientific research results obtained with MRI scanners.”

In every design process, the designer makes choices, such as which shapes, colours and materials to use. “If you let a group of non-designers make these choices, will you end up with the perfect design?” Merel Bekking says. “And if you ask people directly versus letting their brains give the answer, will there be a difference?”

Working with Dr. Scholte and the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging in Amsterdam, Bekking had 20 subjects—half male, half female—undergo an MRI while presented with various images that represented the shape, material and color of what would be an ideal object. Here’s an informative (albeit a bit dry) video of Bekking describing her process:

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