Design firm Shikatani Lacroix is merging neuroscience with augmented reality and virtual reality to get into shoppers’ heads.
The Toronto-based company has partnered with neuromarketing research firm True Impact on technology that marries Microsoft Hololens and Samsung VR headgear with electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroscience equipment. The approach measures consumers’ emotional responses to retail concepts or package design.
Shikatani Lacroix was already using AR and VR to present concepts to its clients, but wanted to take it further, said president Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
“We were missing the emotional connection research dimension of the work we were doing,” he said. “We wanted better readings [from consumers] on our designs that are more closely aligned to how they would react in the real world.”
The firm tested the technology with a retail bank concept in VR and AR, measuring cognitive effort, short-term engagement and heart rate, as the consumer “walked” around the space.
With conventional research, “there is a certain subjectivity involved, whether or not somebody decides to like something or not,” said Daniel Terenzio, immersive solutions, digital creative experience at Shikatani Lacroix.
“With the EEG, you’re immediately getting a response that’s true or false. So it really eliminates a lot of the thinking that might go into someone’s answer to a survey. This puts science into the process that wasn’t there before.”
Terenzio added that the benefit to marketers and retailers is saving money. “Rather than build a prototype and find out that something doesn’t work, it’s very easy to cycle through many variations of a concept until we nail the one that is really going to work.”
Diana Lucaci, founder and CEO of True Impact, said the research is completely objective. “We don’t influence the answer because we don’t ask any questions. We simply let the person react.”
