Translator: Elisabeth Dalby Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
Who runs us?
Who runs our lives? Who runs the world?
Politicians?
Banks?
Religion?
Family?
Maybe the media, or maybe “Gafa”,
you know, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, our friends of the web?
Huge topic, right?
Well, what really runs the world are our senses.
Aristotle already said that in ancient times,
he get across this message to us:
“There is nothing in our intelligence that hasn’t first passed through our senses.”
I’m a designer,
and I live by Aristotle’s principles.
I use my senses
to create things that speak – at least I hope –
to our sensory intelligence.
I would like to share with you glimpses of this sensory intelligence.
It often goes over our heads, but it totally defines us.
It’s simple like youth,
my youth.
Imagine, I’m five years old.
Just try to imagine because…
(Laughter)
My room shares a wall with my mother’s weaving workshop.
In the morning,
I would wake up to the noise of her workshop and her activity:
the mechanical rhythm of her industrial sewing machine,
the damp sound of the iron’s steam,
or the squeal of the fabric being torn.
Not bad, eh? But there’s also the smell.
It’s not the smell of coffee that reaches my nostrils,
but the odor of new fabric which smells like animals or synthetics,
and which is unfolded or shaken.
When I enter her workshop,
which is a completely magical place for me as a child,
it’s completely cluttered with pieces of fabric
which are ready to become seats, drapes and curtains.
I’m still five, well … imagine.
Back then, I would follow my grandad, a civil engineer,
on a tour of his construction sites.
Still today,
I am delighted by the smell of fresh cement that perfumed all of our visits.
So, I think that my designer career,
I built it in this youth,
at the original stream of all these sensations
that my family doers have offered me,
and also of all the memories I have accumulated.
This gave me a taste for materials, for shapes,
and the capacity to imagine, create objects that are useful, practical –
poetic, I hope –
complex, technical and totally sensory.
In the end, I’ve been trying for the last few years
to make things that make sense and have senses.
But, I’m not the only one
to have built a career on childhood feelings.
Prior to becoming a writer, Proust was a child.
His first sensations as a child
were the key to the success of his entire adult life,
and above all, of all his activity as a writer.
Who doesn’t know his “Madeleine”?
It looks like everybody knows it!
I promise, I’m not going to read
the seven volumes of “In Search of Lost Time;”
however, I’m going to describe with a few extracts,
the working of his sensory intelligence
so that we can start to understand our own sensory stories.
One Sunday, Proust, in his adult years,
is served a cup of tea by his mother with a little madeleine.
Then, in a very conventional way,
he eats this madeleine, and drinks his tea.
At that moment, he shudders with pleasure, and he is amazed to see
that this pleasure was not in him, but rather he himself was it,
and most of all that this “essence” as he calls it,
as soon as he savoured the madeleine,
allows him to stop feeling “mediocre, petty and mortal,” he says.
Just imagine for a few seconds
the savings on anti-anxiety drugs that we would all make
if we could taste a madeleine
and all feel absolutely amazing just by tasting it.
Obviously, not just any madeleine but our own madeleine!
I will spare you the details but Proust ponders this over many pages
until he reaches a revelation.
And this revelation is a childhood memory.
And he says,
“Suddenly, the memory came back to me.”
It was every Sunday morning
when he visited his aunt, Léonie, in Combray.
She used to give him little pieces of madeleine
that she dipped in her herbal tea.
The sight of the madeleine when he tasted it with his mum
didn’t do anything to him at all,
but it is the very taste and smell of the madeleine
that made the difference.
Proust says that taste and smell are like souls
that keep on remembering [and carrying] the vast structure of recollection.
What about you?
What feeling overwhelms you,
if you let yourself take time to think about it?
What madeleine makes you succumb?
What childhood sensations are building your life,
your habits, your desires, your adult preferences
and perhaps your career?
By chance, is any of you addicted to the smell of fresh linen?
Wouldn’t it be because you were hiding,
when you were a child, in the basket of linen waiting to be ironed?
Indeed, there are not always positive things.
Why do you hate the taste of beets?
Wouldn’t it be because it reminds you of the primary school’s canteen?
What if I hummed for you these five tones?
(Humming) Ta ta ta ta ta …
(Laughter)
Doesn’t it suddenly make you think of the Dim tights
and doesn’t it lift your mood a little?
So, why do all these memories instinctively
give you a thrill of happiness, of nostalgia maybe, of aversion,
or perhaps give you simply energy?
This is because, although we are not really aware of it,
we have truly exceptional tools
that are individual, personal, and highly advanced.
These are our body senses
our emotions in our brain.
That’s not bad.
We should not neglect them nor forget them.
Today, even if we live in a digital world
where the virtual rhymes with the mutation of society,
we need to consider our senses.
And, indeed, neurosciences – which are quite good sciences –
gives us the keys to access all these tools.
They help us understand and interpret
why the smell of fresh cement or the famous madeleine
build our personality.
So, schematically,
our brain behaves differently on the periphery and at its center.
On the periphery, it is Cartesian.
It provides rational thoughts and especially, it deals with language.
At the center is the kingdom of the madeleine,
a wonderful kingdom of sensations and of survival instinct,
of emotions and memories.
And more importantly, the central brain decides.
So of course, it has delegated the language to the periphery.
That’s why, sometimes, you can perfectly understand a situation,
the facts, figures, details, but you have difficulties validating it.
You can’t find the right word and you often think:
“I don’t know why, but this doesn’t feel right.”
That’s normal.
It’s the brain of the madeleine that controls your decision,
and your emotion,
but not the language.
This is also why marketers, designers,
manufacturers, innovators, even designers –
only those who aren’t sensory designers –
create products that are increasingly specific, useful, efficient,
technological, financially viable as projects,
but that don’t appeal to your central brain.
In other words, they don’t evoke in you
some kind of positive emotion and positive feeling,
so you will not buy them nor promote them.
Now you know why nearly 70% of new products
are difficult to use and fail commercially.
We call this “perceptual bugs.”
The field of transportation
offers us beautiful examples of “perceptual bugs”
which cause tremendous discomfort to passengers.
You’ve probably all been once a high-speed train passenger.
When the high-speed train arrives at your destination,
you are at the door and press the button to open it.
And the door remains mute.
It has not registered your request.
Nothing happens.
Rationally, you know it’s going to open,
that the train won’t leave without letting you off,
but you cannot really feel it,
and indeed, stress comes up;
although a simple sign could have reassured and calmed you,
such as small indicator light that would tell you
that it has registered the request, and that you’re waiting for the mechanism.
This small indicator light would appeal to your senses
but not necessarily to your reason.
Now, let’s stay in the field of transportation.
Are you using a little avoidance strategy
to refrain from touching the central handrail when you enter the subway train?
(Laughter)
You know, this stainless steel bar super-shiny and smooth,
except that when all hands have held on to it,
it becomes warm, slippery, moist, greasy.
Inevitably, what seize you here is not a feeling of stress but of disgust
and the worry of catching all the germs of the previous passengers.
This is a very classic case of “perceptual bug”
that makes your journey necessarily unpleasant
and may sometimes force you to take an Uber.
Currently, the handrail material has been modified.
It has a drier touch; it is grippier;
and the passenger’s perception makes him think it’s cleaner.
So far,
these examples I’m giving you are good,
but experience is better.
Let’s move on to some practical work
that is going to test our sensory intelligence and our memories.
You’ll certainly find next to your seat
a small pot.
To, to, to, to.
(Laughter)
It’s an experiment, so …
This small pot is the small pot of glue of the nursery school
that helped you,
when you were in the nursery school under your lady teacher’s caring gaze,
to become the adult that you are today.
It’s a very long story.
(Laughter)
Not that easy, huh? This small pot was created in 1930.
It is still made in Touraine, France,
and it is still used by schoolchildren.
And it is totally sensory, we just heard that.
So,
first, the sight … It’s the easiest.
Look.
This small pot, so familiar, is Cléopâtre.
We can be proud of it. It is unique.
For 90 years, its shape has remained unchanged,
its volume and graphical representation hardly modified.
It’s exactly like the perfume bottle Chanel No 5
which, since its creation,
remains the same and constantly altered
and adapted to its time.
Verify.
Next the sound … We already experienced it.
(Creaks of the lid being rotated)
What a great little music!
Listen, we could do a concert! that’s just right, we’re in the Opera.
A great little music
that announces something even more interesting:
the smell.
Smell it!
(Laughter)
The smell of almond,
the smell of almond and childhood.
You become Proust!
Remember, he told us,
smell and flavor like souls, keep on for a long time,
remembering and [carrying] the vast structure of recollection.
Here you are, back in the nursery school.
Now the touch: look at the tiny spatula.
It’s in complete osmosis with the glue that is inside.
It’s to facilitate the learning of fine motor skills
and the successful collage exercise and work of art
of the nursery school child.
As artists, you did perfectly.
Finally, the taste.
(Laughter)
Who’s never tasted the glue?
(Laughter)
Almost all of you have eaten some of it.
It’s a mixture of potato starch and water,
so no stress but rather a retroactive moving thought
for the improvised snack you had that day.
(Laughter)
Why did we create this sensory DNA we just analysed together?
To develop what we call a “sensory signature,”
and develop with this signature
a new range of products in line with the history of this glue.
And why would we do that, in the end?
To use other measures
than the sole technical and technological performance
in order to compete with human assets
against the major international groups of glue.
Remember that it’s a SME.
“There is nothing in our intelligence that has not passed first through our senses.”
Today, being super innovative
is not necessarily about being digitally connected;
it’s not only about being on the cutting edge of technology;
but it’s knowing how to use and decipher senses and emotions
to better guide reason.
To be a designer,
is to invent positive experiences for people’s everyday life.
These are experiences that mix perceptions, sensations and emotions
to create a design that takes almost nothing
but reveals everything.
So, this approach can be applied at any scale,
to machine tools, for instance.
If we design a machine tool,
it’s to increase a positive impression of safety when used.
To cars: when you close the door of a luxury or premium car,
the sound of the door closure reinforce the feeling of a luxury car.
When you feel the soft touch of the dashboard of this same car,
it reassures you when you are driving it.
Even to beauty products:
the fluid and non-greasy feel of a cream texture
boosts and enhances a better self-esteem.
Even tramways can be sensory.
I’ll give you only one example: thermal comfort.
One question, one issue:
Is it be possible to keep a constant temperature in a tramway
when the doors open every two minutes?
No.
In summer, it’s hot and in winter, it’s cold.
Another issue.
You all listen to weather reports,
so you know they talk about the actual temperature
and the perceived temperature.
Well, we worked on the perceived temperature in tramcars.
We designed the interior light
by changing the colour temperature of the light sources.
No one can see it – and that’s on purpose.
In winter, a warmer light gives you a specific sensation;
in summer, it gives a cooler light
in order to gain about two degrees of perceived temperature.
The expression of sensory design takes almost nothing –
you cannot see it – nevertheless, it brings a real comfort.
So, what if we try together
to share and meet the challenges of sensory intelligence?
First, I suggest we should rediscover our madeleines, all of us,
so as to prepare the ground for this intelligence.
And then, I would like to ask you to share and understand its mechanisms
so that we recover a form of simplicity
and of freedom in thinking and consuming.
And I would like that we give back sensory intelligence
the place it deserves in our lives.
Why? We just experienced it:
Because what doesn’t change in each of us,
is the desire to be comforted, reassured, reinforced
in what we are or what we would like to be.
So,
if we are able develop these three elements,
then we will find solutions that inspire.
Feelings and emotions will become the real drivers
of a society we live in,
where we will provide more performance,
greater sustainability and more prosperity.
We will be ready to develop an economy based on desire.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Who runs us?
Who runs our lives? Who runs the world?
Politicians?
Banks?
Religion?
Family?
Maybe the media, or maybe “Gafa”,
you know, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, our friends of the web?
Huge topic, right?
Well, what really runs the world are our senses.
Aristotle already said that in ancient times,
he get across this message to us:
“There is nothing in our intelligence that hasn’t first passed through our senses.”
I’m a designer,
and I live by Aristotle’s principles.
I use my senses
to create things that speak – at least I hope –
to our sensory intelligence.
I would like to share with you glimpses of this sensory intelligence.
It often goes over our heads, but it totally defines us.
It’s simple like youth,
my youth.
Imagine, I’m five years old.
Just try to imagine because…
(Laughter)
My room shares a wall with my mother’s weaving workshop.
In the morning,
I would wake up to the noise of her workshop and her activity:
the mechanical rhythm of her industrial sewing machine,
the damp sound of the iron’s steam,
or the squeal of the fabric being torn.
Not bad, eh? But there’s also the smell.
It’s not the smell of coffee that reaches my nostrils,
but the odor of new fabric which smells like animals or synthetics,
and which is unfolded or shaken.
When I enter her workshop,
which is a completely magical place for me as a child,
it’s completely cluttered with pieces of fabric
which are ready to become seats, drapes and curtains.
I’m still five, well … imagine.
Back then, I would follow my grandad, a civil engineer,
on a tour of his construction sites.
Still today,
I am delighted by the smell of fresh cement that perfumed all of our visits.
So, I think that my designer career,
I built it in this youth,
at the original stream of all these sensations
that my family doers have offered me,
and also of all the memories I have accumulated.
This gave me a taste for materials, for shapes,
and the capacity to imagine, create objects that are useful, practical –
poetic, I hope –
complex, technical and totally sensory.
In the end, I’ve been trying for the last few years
to make things that make sense and have senses.
But, I’m not the only one
to have built a career on childhood feelings.
Prior to becoming a writer, Proust was a child.
His first sensations as a child
were the key to the success of his entire adult life,
and above all, of all his activity as a writer.
Who doesn’t know his “Madeleine”?
It looks like everybody knows it!
I promise, I’m not going to read
the seven volumes of “In Search of Lost Time;”
however, I’m going to describe with a few extracts,
the working of his sensory intelligence
so that we can start to understand our own sensory stories.
One Sunday, Proust, in his adult years,
is served a cup of tea by his mother with a little madeleine.
Then, in a very conventional way,
he eats this madeleine, and drinks his tea.
At that moment, he shudders with pleasure, and he is amazed to see
that this pleasure was not in him, but rather he himself was it,
and most of all that this “essence” as he calls it,
as soon as he savoured the madeleine,
allows him to stop feeling “mediocre, petty and mortal,” he says.
Just imagine for a few seconds
the savings on anti-anxiety drugs that we would all make
if we could taste a madeleine
and all feel absolutely amazing just by tasting it.
Obviously, not just any madeleine but our own madeleine!
I will spare you the details but Proust ponders this over many pages
until he reaches a revelation.
And this revelation is a childhood memory.
And he says,
“Suddenly, the memory came back to me.”
It was every Sunday morning
when he visited his aunt, Léonie, in Combray.
She used to give him little pieces of madeleine
that she dipped in her herbal tea.
The sight of the madeleine when he tasted it with his mum
didn’t do anything to him at all,
but it is the very taste and smell of the madeleine
that made the difference.
Proust says that taste and smell are like souls
that keep on remembering [and carrying] the vast structure of recollection.
What about you?
What feeling overwhelms you,
if you let yourself take time to think about it?
What madeleine makes you succumb?
What childhood sensations are building your life,
your habits, your desires, your adult preferences
and perhaps your career?
By chance, is any of you addicted to the smell of fresh linen?
Wouldn’t it be because you were hiding,
when you were a child, in the basket of linen waiting to be ironed?
Indeed, there are not always positive things.
Why do you hate the taste of beets?
Wouldn’t it be because it reminds you of the primary school’s canteen?
What if I hummed for you these five tones?
(Humming) Ta ta ta ta ta …
(Laughter)
Doesn’t it suddenly make you think of the Dim tights
and doesn’t it lift your mood a little?
So, why do all these memories instinctively
give you a thrill of happiness, of nostalgia maybe, of aversion,
or perhaps give you simply energy?
This is because, although we are not really aware of it,
we have truly exceptional tools
that are individual, personal, and highly advanced.
These are our body senses
our emotions in our brain.
That’s not bad.
We should not neglect them nor forget them.
Today, even if we live in a digital world
where the virtual rhymes with the mutation of society,
we need to consider our senses.
And, indeed, neurosciences – which are quite good sciences –
gives us the keys to access all these tools.
They help us understand and interpret
why the smell of fresh cement or the famous madeleine
build our personality.
So, schematically,
our brain behaves differently on the periphery and at its center.
On the periphery, it is Cartesian.
It provides rational thoughts and especially, it deals with language.
At the center is the kingdom of the madeleine,
a wonderful kingdom of sensations and of survival instinct,
of emotions and memories.
And more importantly, the central brain decides.
So of course, it has delegated the language to the periphery.
That’s why, sometimes, you can perfectly understand a situation,
the facts, figures, details, but you have difficulties validating it.
You can’t find the right word and you often think:
“I don’t know why, but this doesn’t feel right.”
That’s normal.
It’s the brain of the madeleine that controls your decision,
and your emotion,
but not the language.
This is also why marketers, designers,
manufacturers, innovators, even designers –
only those who aren’t sensory designers –
create products that are increasingly specific, useful, efficient,
technological, financially viable as projects,
but that don’t appeal to your central brain.
In other words, they don’t evoke in you
some kind of positive emotion and positive feeling,
so you will not buy them nor promote them.
Now you know why nearly 70% of new products
are difficult to use and fail commercially.
We call this “perceptual bugs.”
The field of transportation
offers us beautiful examples of “perceptual bugs”
which cause tremendous discomfort to passengers.
You’ve probably all been once a high-speed train passenger.
When the high-speed train arrives at your destination,
you are at the door and press the button to open it.
And the door remains mute.
It has not registered your request.
Nothing happens.
Rationally, you know it’s going to open,
that the train won’t leave without letting you off,
but you cannot really feel it,
and indeed, stress comes up;
although a simple sign could have reassured and calmed you,
such as small indicator light that would tell you
that it has registered the request, and that you’re waiting for the mechanism.
This small indicator light would appeal to your senses
but not necessarily to your reason.
Now, let’s stay in the field of transportation.
Are you using a little avoidance strategy
to refrain from touching the central handrail when you enter the subway train?
(Laughter)
You know, this stainless steel bar super-shiny and smooth,
except that when all hands have held on to it,
it becomes warm, slippery, moist, greasy.
Inevitably, what seize you here is not a feeling of stress but of disgust
and the worry of catching all the germs of the previous passengers.
This is a very classic case of “perceptual bug”
that makes your journey necessarily unpleasant
and may sometimes force you to take an Uber.
Currently, the handrail material has been modified.
It has a drier touch; it is grippier;
and the passenger’s perception makes him think it’s cleaner.
So far,
these examples I’m giving you are good,
but experience is better.
Let’s move on to some practical work
that is going to test our sensory intelligence and our memories.
You’ll certainly find next to your seat
a small pot.
To, to, to, to.
(Laughter)
It’s an experiment, so …
This small pot is the small pot of glue of the nursery school
that helped you,
when you were in the nursery school under your lady teacher’s caring gaze,
to become the adult that you are today.
It’s a very long story.
(Laughter)
Not that easy, huh? This small pot was created in 1930.
It is still made in Touraine, France,
and it is still used by schoolchildren.
And it is totally sensory, we just heard that.
So,
first, the sight … It’s the easiest.
Look.
This small pot, so familiar, is Cléopâtre.
We can be proud of it. It is unique.
For 90 years, its shape has remained unchanged,
its volume and graphical representation hardly modified.
It’s exactly like the perfume bottle Chanel No 5
which, since its creation,
remains the same and constantly altered
and adapted to its time.
Verify.
Next the sound … We already experienced it.
(Creaks of the lid being rotated)
What a great little music!
Listen, we could do a concert! that’s just right, we’re in the Opera.
A great little music
that announces something even more interesting:
the smell.
Smell it!
(Laughter)
The smell of almond,
the smell of almond and childhood.
You become Proust!
Remember, he told us,
smell and flavor like souls, keep on for a long time,
remembering and [carrying] the vast structure of recollection.
Here you are, back in the nursery school.
Now the touch: look at the tiny spatula.
It’s in complete osmosis with the glue that is inside.
It’s to facilitate the learning of fine motor skills
and the successful collage exercise and work of art
of the nursery school child.
As artists, you did perfectly.
Finally, the taste.
(Laughter)
Who’s never tasted the glue?
(Laughter)
Almost all of you have eaten some of it.
It’s a mixture of potato starch and water,
so no stress but rather a retroactive moving thought
for the improvised snack you had that day.
(Laughter)
Why did we create this sensory DNA we just analysed together?
To develop what we call a “sensory signature,”
and develop with this signature
a new range of products in line with the history of this glue.
And why would we do that, in the end?
To use other measures
than the sole technical and technological performance
in order to compete with human assets
against the major international groups of glue.
Remember that it’s a SME.
“There is nothing in our intelligence that has not passed first through our senses.”
Today, being super innovative
is not necessarily about being digitally connected;
it’s not only about being on the cutting edge of technology;
but it’s knowing how to use and decipher senses and emotions
to better guide reason.
To be a designer,
is to invent positive experiences for people’s everyday life.
These are experiences that mix perceptions, sensations and emotions
to create a design that takes almost nothing
but reveals everything.
So, this approach can be applied at any scale,
to machine tools, for instance.
If we design a machine tool,
it’s to increase a positive impression of safety when used.
To cars: when you close the door of a luxury or premium car,
the sound of the door closure reinforce the feeling of a luxury car.
When you feel the soft touch of the dashboard of this same car,
it reassures you when you are driving it.
Even to beauty products:
the fluid and non-greasy feel of a cream texture
boosts and enhances a better self-esteem.
Even tramways can be sensory.
I’ll give you only one example: thermal comfort.
One question, one issue:
Is it be possible to keep a constant temperature in a tramway
when the doors open every two minutes?
No.
In summer, it’s hot and in winter, it’s cold.
Another issue.
You all listen to weather reports,
so you know they talk about the actual temperature
and the perceived temperature.
Well, we worked on the perceived temperature in tramcars.
We designed the interior light
by changing the colour temperature of the light sources.
No one can see it – and that’s on purpose.
In winter, a warmer light gives you a specific sensation;
in summer, it gives a cooler light
in order to gain about two degrees of perceived temperature.
The expression of sensory design takes almost nothing –
you cannot see it – nevertheless, it brings a real comfort.
So, what if we try together
to share and meet the challenges of sensory intelligence?
First, I suggest we should rediscover our madeleines, all of us,
so as to prepare the ground for this intelligence.
And then, I would like to ask you to share and understand its mechanisms
so that we recover a form of simplicity
and of freedom in thinking and consuming.
And I would like that we give back sensory intelligence
the place it deserves in our lives.
Why? We just experienced it:
Because what doesn’t change in each of us,
is the desire to be comforted, reassured, reinforced
in what we are or what we would like to be.
So,
if we are able develop these three elements,
then we will find solutions that inspire.
Feelings and emotions will become the real drivers
of a society we live in,
where we will provide more performance,
greater sustainability and more prosperity.
We will be ready to develop an economy based on desire.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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