instinct laboratory
During my degree, I was lucky to spend my year in industry with the instinct laboratory gang and understand how human beings think, feel and behave. As a designer, once you know these factors, you can tackle any human-centric problem. Their horizontal approach follows the human being along their end-to-end journey, enabling us to operate across a formidable range of market sectors. Over the course of the year, they gave me the opportunity to carry out my own research study for reducing the environmental impact on plastic carrier bags, sketch point of sale concepts for brands such as Oakley and travel to Los Angeles to observe consumers purchase energy drinks for Red Bull.
The Challenge
Learning the background of human psychology and applying the theories to the design didn’t come naturally to me. By working with the team, I started to understand the instinct perspective on consumer behaviour with the combined model of consumer behaviour. In most retail environments we are bombarded with sights, sounds, smells and more. With so much information competing for our attention we can’t process it all at once. I learnt that our brain copes with this dilemma by separating attention into two distinct cognitive processes: peripheral and selective attention. People tend to only perceive that which is relevant to the accomplishment of their current goal, as the pre attentive processing stage is more likely to direct attention only to relevant and engaging stimuli. Stimuli which are: colourful, large, simple and has strong contrast with its surroundings are significantly more likely to break through into conscious awareness.
After learning the foundations of these cognitive processes, one of my tasks was to create the retail store tonality for Unitymedia. We created a samples box that was full of tangible materials that would evoke a response from the retail director when the design proposals were presented for their flagship store.
It might seem strange having plants and French oak in a retail store selling broadband, but research has shown that humans react more positively towards natural environments. Not only do natural environments invoke a positive mood (which can influence consumers’ perception of service and product quality), but they have also been shown to have significant stress reducing effects on a subconscious level.
Creating POS props with blackboards created a sense of fun and ensure our retail messages (for their broadband packages) effectively cut through the ‘noise’ and provoke a specific reaction.
