Have you ever walked into a store and been overwhelmed by choice? Well, Uniqlo wants to read your brain and help you quit waffling.
On Wednesday, the Japanese clothing brand launched a new experience in its Pitt Street store in Sydney, Australia that aims to use neuroscience to help match customers' moods with the perfect T-shirt. Tracy Lang, Uniqlo Australia's marketing director, told reporters Tuesday the technology, called "UMood" was an Australian-first.
Customers put on a headset that uses a single sensor on the forehead to measure brain activity, as people watch seconds-long video clips that each represent up to 10 moods such as "dandy" and "stormy."
IMAGE: UNIQLO
The technology's algorithm then employs five metrics — interest, like, concentration, stress and drowsiness — to measure the user's response to the videos and tries to best match a design with the user's mood. Uniqlo used surveys to map its more than 600 T-shirt styles and colours to various mood territories.
The brainwave sensing technology used by UMood was designed by the Japanese company, Dentsu ScienceJam. While the sensor is a commercially-available biosensor made by NeuroSky.
Australian comedian and writer Benjamin Law gave a demonstration of the technology, which he called "Tinder for T-shirts."
With the headset on, he watched an array of videos including a woman reading in a forest, a kitten, cherry blossoms and a man dancing. Once the algorithm picked his mood, "calm," it showed him a few different T-shirts and measured his brain's response to each option before offering him "the one" — a green T-shirt with a print of three of the little aliens from Toy Story.
So, would he wear it? Law said he would. "It did reflect my mood. I did feel like I was in a green mood," he explained. "Look, I'm a fan to Pixar."
My mood was deemed "stormy" by the technology, so that may be why I wasn't entirely a fan of any of the styles UMood offered. It did understand my brain well enough to know I didn't want any cartoon characters on my t-shirt, at least.
Lang said the experience was designed to be engaging for the consumer, rather than collecting data about people's preferences. "It's not really about consumer research, by any means," she added.
After spending a week in the inner-city location, UMood will be moving to other stores in Sydney and Melbourne. "We may well take it to other parts of the world if it's successful," Lang said.
Phil Harris, a consumer neuroscientist at brand insight company Nuro and the University of Melbourne, told Mashable Australia neuroscience could be immensely useful in the retail space going forward. "We know that consumers want lots of choice, but when we give them lots of choice people actually have trouble making decisions," he explained. "I see a tool that helps narrow the range of options ... being really beneficial."
A little help shopping would be no bad thing, but perhaps they could add another couple of electrodes to the mix.
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