(audience applauds)

(rhythmic percussion music)

I am on this search for universal design principles

and a universal design language,

which I know sounds outrageous.

But I think it is rooted in something bigger

than any one individual's personal expression.

So in 1977, George Nelson,

who was the design director

for Herman Miller for 30 years,

wrote this book called How to See.

His belief was that if the world could learn to see,

it would be a happier place.

And he did it really with a great sense of humor,

so I'm gonna read just one little paragraph here to you.

He says, people who buy things make decisions

on the basis of whether or not they like the design,

since they rarely have any way of knowing

how well the product will work after they get it home.

The trouble with such design decisions

is that visual illiterates have no way of knowing

whether a design is good or not.

And this is why the interiors of most houses

look as if they had been put together by the blind.

(audience laughs)

In fact, most motel rooms are equally tasteless

and mediocre probably because the management wants

the customers to relax in a familiar homelike environment.

So, what he was suggesting in the book

is that the world is filled with visual pollution.

And that we are all responsible for this.

It turns out that the way George sees it

is actually rooted in some scientific evidence

that only 40 years later we're starting to discover.

I want to unlock some of that for you.

A couple of years ago I began noticing

some interesting psychological studies in the news.

So, here's one.

Two professors found that we rent

more romance films when it's cold outside.

And they believe it's because

it's a search for emotional warmth.

That somehow in our minds we're equating

physical warmth and emotional warmth together.

Researchers found that momentarily

holding a warm cup of coffee cause us

to consider others, strangers, warm, friendly people.

And the inverse was true as well.

One more study for you.

This one, the University of Amsterdam.

So they took two groups and gave them a task.

One group was given a clipboard that was lightweight.

One was given a clipboard that was heavy.

And the group that had the heavy clipboard,

took the job more seriously

than the group with the light clipboard.

Somehow they were equating the heaviness

with importance and value,

so that weight equaled value.

And that tactile sensation

actually influenced their decision making.

These studies and a lot more like them

are correlating emotions, and our five senses,

and language metaphors.

And that caught my attention.

I mean I thought of language metaphor

as a poetic device.

It is an instrument that we use

to describe experiential things.

I had never realized that they might be

revealing something about human experience

or the way we understand the world.

Interestingly, during the same decade

that George Nelson wrote How to See,

there was this debate going on

about the origin of language.

Noam Chomsky had a student named George Lakoff.

The theory at the time was that language

is inherent in humanity

and we generate language from our being.

Lakoff said, I don't know, I think it's more

generated from our experience,

and our experience dictates how we create language.

But in the end, Lakoff did have

enough evidence to prove a theory.

And that theory was that human experience

creates language and he did it through metaphor.

He wrote a book in 1980 called Metaphors We Live By.

It shows how a visceral experience

creates language rather than

disembodied reason creating language.

And that idea is most elegantly illustrated

through language metaphor.

So this made me wonder, if our understanding

of metaphor is useful for inspiration for design.

I wondered and so I asked George Lakoff.

I wrote him and said,

Hey, I kind of understand your theory like this.

I'm thinking about what metaphor means for design,

and how we as designers talk about how

a design might be strong or warm or busy.

Do you think there's a connection here

and is it something interesting?

And George wrote back and said,

Yeah, I think that is.

That's a very reasonable connection.

So you guys all probably live by Cartesian theory.

Cartesian theory is basically

the mind and the body are separate.

Rational thinking is the kind of thinking

that we should all adhere to,

and emotional thinking is what we should all reject.

In reality we know we don't live that way at all.

We have a very intertwined life.

And this Cartesian theory

has been with us for a long time now.

And I think especially in the business world

we struggle with it all the time.

And there's very little discussion

about the aesthetic value of what you're doing

or the enrichment you're giving the world.

So, I think it's actually ignoring

the deep, unspoken appeal of design

when we just say emotions don't matter.

Brain imaging tools show that

when we experience something or we imagine something,

the same regions of our mind are being activated.

So for example, if I'm thinking about cold weather

or I'm thinking about a callous person,

the region of the brain that connects those two words,

that cold word together, is connecting.

And so the implication is that whether

you're imagining something or you're taking action,

to the brain it's all the same.

And I think this is why it matters to design.

It turns out that metaphors,

whether visual or spoken, are triggering imagination,

and they are tools that we as creators

can use to make the world better

and make experiences better.

So there's this field of study called embodied cognition.

Another term for it is physical intelligence,

the idea that we're understanding with our bodies.

That our five senses are giving us the key

to unlocking the world.

And so a number of us at IDEO

were confident in these theories

and said let's try to map some of these things out

and make tools that we could share

to either give designers more confidence

in their own intuition,

or to help our clients understand

the values that we have.

So we made a map.

And we based 'em off the five senses.

Let's look at fresh.

So fresh can be understood via sight and sound.

And we can connect freshness

with concepts like new and healthy and young.

I think you know this is true

from your own personal experience.

Which apple would you like to eat?

I think most of us would choose the healthy one, yeah?

We actually use this very slide

in a client meeting when we're have trouble

getting the client to invest in new manufacturing processes.

We showed this to the board room.

I asked them the same question.

They all said they would like to eat

the healthy apple as well.

From that point we got them to invest

in the new manufacturing equipment.

So that was really great 'cause

all I did was show them two apples, right?

Didn't have to show any spreadsheets.

And it worked.

And I want to show you the difference in the designs here.

These are two mattresses,

but the design in the front, you can see,

is much crisper, plumper, fuller

than the design in the back,

which is what they previously had.

Another example, this one also based on fruit.

A startup called Axio came to us

and said they would like us

to help them redesign their hardware design language,

their interactions, and their brand.

And so we said, Okay, your name's Axio.

You sound like a villain.

Maybe we should reconsider that,

since the product was actually helping people

understand their brain waves

and find focus and flow.

Be able to track that with a head band,

being able to connect that via Bluetooth to your iphoness.

So we renamed them Melon.

Much friendlier and much more approachable.

You can start to see how the idea of focus

and structure can be built

into those beautiful colors from the melon.

It's juicy, something that's confident and quiet.

Another one, we'll look at the root metaphor of old.

Old can be positive or negative.

I think it's actually a very positive thing.

So, surviving time, enduring,

showing marks, creating a diary.

And I think that sounds a lot like

your favorite pair of Chuck Taylors, probably.

So when we designed the retail flagship store for Converse,

we brought those ideas into the store.

So that the flow would wear a certain way.

So that the bleachers would show marks,

so that it felt worn in, not worn out.

So as it turns out, the way George saw the world

is the way we can all see the world.

And the way George Lakoff heard it

is how we can all hear it.

And so we've come full circle,

connecting the ideas of two visionaries

with the art and science of visual literacy.

So my parting thought to you is

if anything I said to you today sounds important,

it was probably the slides with the heavy font.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) (techno music)