Reon Brand, senior manager for research, innovation and development at Philips Design gave the audience a peek into how one of the world’s largest manufacturers uses research to design its next wave of products.

Innovation has almost become a bit of a buzzword, and definitions of what it actually means are “a dime a dozen” according to Brand.

In his opinion “innovation is about furthering human progress to get to a better way of living”, and this is at the centre of the Philips philosophy.

So where does research come in when a new product is in the pipeline? ‘From everywhere’ is the answer. “For us,” Brand said, “research is creating building blocks and inspiring ideas.”

To get these building blocks Brand calls on “people on the fringe”, such as poets and artists, to gain insight into a particular product or topic, because “design is shaped by culture”, not just consumers.

However, insight alone is not what Brand is after. He wants to empathise with people to get a better understanding of what they want and need.

He said you have to work on a much “broader scope” to achieve this, but the results are worth it.

To illustrate the point he told the audience about how Philips redesigned some of its MRI machines in hospitals. After taking a holistic approach and talking to child patients, doctors and their parents it became clear that some children became scared when they were separated from their parents and put in the machine.

In the short term, a piece of string tied to a child’s hand that its parents could pull reassured them but Brand and his team set to work on developing the next generation of MRI machines.

These machines included interactive games and stories that put the child at ease while they were in the machine, which in turn calmed the nerves of their parents waiting outside.