Podcast: Laura Beavin-Yates of Immersion talks about Agile Neuroscience

We were pleased to welcome Laura Beavin-Yates, senior vice president of Customer Success for Immersion, to our podcast recently. Laura earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University and contributed to the foundational science of Immersion. She spoke with us about how new agile neuroscience techniques can help companies start making better decisions based on what their audiences’ brains truly value. 

Laura was excited to talk to us about how agile neuroscience techniques can help companies make better decisions based what their audiences truly value.

First, she helped define what the word "agile" means in this context, indicating the ability to meet people where they are and fit into various scenarios that more traditional approaches to neuroscience could not do. At Immersion, they have made neuroscience more accessible and easy-to-use for uncovering insights.

Neuroscience methodologies have come a long way. It is more scalable and no longer requires a lab. For example, Immersion uses smart watches to measure people's physiological reactions in real-time. Laura believes that approaches like this, that prioritize agility, flexibility and accessibility, will play a vital role moving the insights space forward.

When combined with other traditional methodologies, it can even have a multiplying effect. It gives added value for consumer insights by "getting beneath the surface" and delivering understanding surrounding subconscious reactions to consumer experiences and interactions to content, brands or other activities. 

She touched on how consumer privacy is protected in these kinds of scenarios, as well as how agile neuroscience techniques (like Immersion's) originated in an academic lab - and the literal "blood, sweat and tears" measured there. This provided the foundation that eventually moved neuroscience into the commercial sphere.

Today, agile neuroscience techniques are used for a wide range of consumer insights applications including in-home product testing, early stage concept testing (products, ads, brands), content testing, shop-alongs, shopper journey tracking, employee connection with programs at companies and so much more. Laura covered Immersion's primary metric, "immersion", which measures people's overall emotional connection and attention. Laura dives into some of the subtleties of how different companies are using Immersion's technology, and the insights that they've helped uncover using agile neuroscience. 

Finally, we looked into the crystal ball to see what the future may hold for agile neuroscience. Laura says that we will continue to see things become more agile, as more people opt-in to scenarios that use technologies to collect and communicate data in more real-time. As individuals want more personalization and relevance in their experiences, and they participate and interact more with things like the metaverse, augmented reality and utilize connected devices (IoT), we will get more real-time data. 

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