My favourite parts of the older James Bond films (the ones prior to the Jason Bourne-influenced re-imagining) were the bits where MI6’s resident boffin Q would demonstrate his latest invention – typically a high-tech piece of kit cunningly disguised as a harmless, everyday object, like a pen or a desk lamp.

Unilever’s R&D department takes a similar approach when it comes to inventing devices to understand consumer behaviour.

In March this year, we heard the tale of Unilever’s spy toothbrush, which used in-built accelerometers to record when and for how long people in China would clean their teeth. This week the company unveiled the “shower sensor”.

Behavioural scientist Hilde Hendrickx told the BBC how Unilever designed a piece of kit to pick up on the noise water makes when running through a pipe and to detect changes in water temperature so as to monitor people’s shower habits without the need for surveys.

As with the toothbrush experiment, Unilever was looking to get round the unreliability of self-reporting and avoid the need for in-person monitoring. “People would not take too kindly to someone standing next to them with a clipboard” while in the shower, said Hendrickx.

The company logged 2,600 showers by 100 families over a 10-day period and found that the average shower lasted eight minutes – longer than previously assumed.

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