Beauty, Brains and Banks

hi welcome to changing minds i'm your host emmanuel mayhew companies and banks increasingly adopt insights from behavioral science and neuroscience there's a wealth of research available for organizations to apply but we often don't know how it's applied for this reason we thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who deals with the implementation and usage of neuroscience and behavioral science research with me to discuss this today is rudy ruggierone the head of innovation research and development at intesa sao paulo's innovation center it is a sao paulo's italy's largest bank luigi has an economics and banking background and has worked in academia and at the imf on top of his long experience at the bank welcome to changing minds luigi thank you very much uh good morning emmanuel good morning everyone and thanks very much for inviting me over for this interesting and challenging dialogue thank you so first of all um i once came across a an article on your partnership with the museo del cinacolo vinciano of milan which has no masterpieces such as da vinci's last supper and it can you tell us a little bit more about what that partnership consisted in absolutely let me let me share my screen uh for a few minutes and see you know if we can look everyone through this uh uh this uh really exciting experience um i i hope you can see my screen right now yeah okay great okay well basically um this was a an interesting a very interesting applied research um a challenge uh we like to call them challenges um basically what happened is that the um the director of the of the museum um which is uh it's actually it's called museum but it only consists of of two of two paintings of west coast one in front of the other uh so it's not really a very uh rich museum rich in terms of number of uh of paintings but is obviously very rich you know for the you know for the quality and the importance of of leonardo's last supper um so um the museum approached us said and saying that they were not terribly happy or they thought they were not terribly happy with the experience that visitors were having um while visiting the the last supper and they they thought they might know improve the the quality of the exposition and they might improve the involvement of the um of the visitors um so they they asked us whether we could help them and and obviously we said yes because we strongly believe that you know there is a there is um a very tight relationship between um you know obviously arts and emotions and therefore arts and human beings arts and and you know and human brain and emotions um and you know the the analysis and the um and the exploration of emotions of human being emotions in in various you know instances of our existence is at the heart of the neuroscience so it's is is really you know the bread and butter of of the neuroscience lab that we have established uh three years ago at the innovation center into sao paulo so um we accepted the the challenge and um and we started this this research this cooperation with uh with uh chennai and and basically um what what we did we selected two different groups of visitors experts and non-experts and we carried out a research in two different instances in two different days one day when the museum was closed and the other one when the museum was open so it was open to publish so in some cases the visitors were the actually each visitor was the only person in front of the fresco and some other cases of the of the research um the people participating in the research were actually you know among many other many other visitors so we wanted to verify and see whether there were differences in the you know in the experience and the emotions that um that the paintings were uh were inducing in them in the visitors um [Music] it's interesting also to um to remind and to mention what kind of devices we use we basically used three devices on on on each on each visitor that was participating in the in the research um we basically um used the eye trackers okay so um in order to to to analyze in order to record you know heat maps to verify whether uh whether people and visitors were looking at certain parts of the painting and how long they would remain with their eyes and with their sight uh focusing on concentrating on this or or or that other uh particular part of the of the painting one was the the eeg the eeg is is basically you know a sort of helmet that that helps us measuring the the motivation the motivation index of people so the level of pleasantness that that people were experiencing while while facing and while looking at the painting and and or the paintings because in fact like i said there are two paintings um in this um in this museum and then finally we also used a bracelet that measures the galvanic skin response so it in in somehow it measures the arousal the the emotional involvement of of people so in one case the eg you know measures basically the the the level of activity of electric activity in our in some parts of our brain while the galvanic skin response basically measures how emotionally involved we are by measuring you know the the perspiration the the heartbeat and so on and so forth so um let me let me walk you through uh our findings yeah so sure go ahead please yeah no no i'm curious to know what this shows all right okay so this uh this is a slide that uh that presents uh um you know the results of of the of the eye tracking of the eye tracking measurement and as you can see so um the panel a uh reports uh the um how long and and where the eyes how long for the eyes of the of the visitors would focus on certain parts of the painting and as you can see they were focusing mainly of course uh on on jesus and some of the other um you know of the other figures in in the painting but most of all they were focusing a lot um if you see here under the painting under the fresco they were focusing a lot on the information material that it's written uh underneath this means that probably um a lot of people were you know were taking a lot of a long time in reading rather than uh observing the the painting itself so they were actually reading what the painting is about reading about the various figures you know saint thomas and peter judas and so on and so forth rather than actually looking at them and experiencing you know the the beauty and experiencing the the yeah the the visual experience of the of leonardo's painting um so um when when it comes to observing the closed museum the um the difference is not striking um visitors were still focusing very much on the information content but they were actually they were actually insisting more and focusing more on spending more time with their eyes uh looking at the various parts of the painting so uh obviously when the museum was closed obviously you know uh there was much more involvement and there was more time and it was easier to focus the the attention and to focus you know your site on um on the painting it's interesting to notice that also uh basically the major elements of interest are above the table so people were looking uh what was happening uh among the people among jesus and the other participants in the last supper and they were not really looking what was happening at what was happening underneath or above them which is in a way a pity because uh because the perspective of uh of this uh of this fresco this painting is very interesting so apparently people were not really looking at the perspective but they were looking at the figures themselves so in in a way they were missing out on some interesting parts of of this leonardo's painting [Music] what emerges here also is that by considering and by verifying that nobody was actually looking uh above the painting you know here where you have this you know this uh you know semi-circular parts of the paint nobody was actually looking at them and actually they are an integral in so under no circumstances neither when the um when the museum was open nor when it was closed so nobody's actually looking at them which is a real pity because these are an integral part of the painting and uh experts told us that they're actually you know very important they are worth looking at with a lot of attention and nobody was actually looking at them so one of the uh one of the messages that the uh the museum got from this was that they were probably um they probably need to change the light uh the the illumination of the painting they um they gathered from from from this figure from from this data from from this evidence from this empirical evidence the museum gathered the impression that they need to change the way they illuminate and the way they you know they they shed light on the painting probably and possibly uh those upper parts of the painting are not adequately illuminated so they probably need to do something about that so this is one way in which we know science and research in a way had an impact and induced the museum to uh at least you know raise an issue and uh and probably try to solve it with by changing did the illumination use your findings also for the explanations uh uh well i do not know honestly because i do not have access to the internal documents of of the museum but i presume so you know every time you want to change something you uh must ground you know your uh your your decision on your or your proposal so i i presume so but i'm but i'm not certain about it sure um through the eye tracking device we also measured um you know the uh the various area of interest so this is basically a sequence um of uh so the the the order by which people were looking at the um so so obviously you know people were starting from the very center of the painting so they were first looking at jesus and the time people on average spent looking and focusing and concentrating their sights on jesus is actually very long because it's above 16 seconds so for more than 16 seconds people were looking at uh at the face of jesus uh you know uh at his hands at his dress uh his uh his facial expression so 16 seconds is is really you know it's really quite a long time it doesn't it doesn't sound long but it is long um then it's interesting because uh that because in general visitors uh jump from you know from left to right uh almost on a regular basis you see number two giovanni or john uh is you know is is uh is on the left-hand side and then they move to thomas number three then they remain on that side of the painting with number four and then and then they jump all the way down to the left-hand side of the painting so this is interesting um this is interesting because it uh you know it makes us understand that um visitors spend quite a while on on each of the figures um but with apparently not a very you know uh not in an ordinary way so they jump from you know from uh from character to character in a way um it's interesting it's interesting to to see that a lot of people um so the the the longest time spent looking at a figure that's not jesus um was spent by looking at the uh the figure of of thomas that the car at no time thomas is is very interesting because thomas um is one of the disciples of jesus that you know he was a famous or or i dare say notorious for being one who uh was hard to convince he it was hard to make him believe things so he was always doubtful you know he always had to uh you know experience things on his skin uh so he had to feel things just he had to live things in order to believe in them yeah so it's interesting that so probably people were bringing you know this this no with them this knowledge that they have of thomas and they wanted to see how leonardo represented thomas how how how leonardo painted the expression of thomas so that's interesting that you know the second the second highest time uh spent looking at the painting is spent on thomas which is very very interesting um here we also again we have a you know a measure of the heat map of where and how long experts look at parts of the painting and non-experts and obviously you know the x panel is for experts the y pane is for non-experts and obviously you can see here that experts tend to look at more details they tend to have a broader you know a broader review and tend to to to look at the the painting know more broadly than than non-experts which is you know obviously um it's an unsurprising result i mean it's quite it's quite obvious it's quite obvious that's really interesting so the experts view the experts saw a lot more things exactly span through yeah exactly span through the year okay um so what were the um takeaways you took from this research um um what i the takeaways that we took from this research um uh basically are that um [Music] it's very um it's very interesting to explore what happens to emotions when people are looking at art this is this is very very interesting art is really um is really um something that uh touches our you know uh touches us as human beings in our depth so it deeply touches us which is very interesting so this is a scientific sort of you know uh demonstration scientific proof that that art is something that really is able to really you know uh touch the the deepest chords in our in our emotions and in our in our brain in our senses um and it it's also um another important takeaway is that you know we believe that this kind of analysis can give back to managers in this case the manager of the museum can give back very sound and important pieces of information that can actually help them in in doing their their job in making you know the experience that visitors have a better experience a more uh an even more involving experience so uh these are the major takeaways that we had from this research that's really interesting i mean i never i've never heard of an analysis like this being done um in a museum not even in the most known yeah but me neither but i mean i'm not really a you know a close follower of literature but certainly um this was a great experience and and i can tell you so if you want to stay tuned uh that we are preparing um a similar uh research on another very very important uh uh piece of art in italy i i cannot disclose [Music] it's not a painting anymore it's a statue which is even no it's even probably more involving because it's uh you know it's a three dimension uh it's just a three-dimensional object so you can look at it from different perspectives you can walk around it um so uh stay tuned and maybe you know in in in a few months we will be able to reconvene here and have a chat on on a similar research but on a statue and not not a painting definitely well you you're leaving us guessing now as to what that statue is um i'm quite quite curious to find out that's that's really fascinating how you this research basically informed how eeg and eye tracking informed um the museum's policy also as to how to improve the visitor experience um do you have any um so this is applying the research to um uh an external partner the museo vinciano um can you tell us about um an occasion where you used the methodologies and findings of the research and innovation center to solve some of the bank's internal challenges um rather than those of uh external partners sure yeah that's also thanks emmanuel this is a very um interesting question also because you know we uh um we receive for for these researchers a lot of funding from our parent company which is a bank so we have to give back to our uh to one of our major uh stakeholders um so we do a lot of works obviously also for for the parent company for for the um for the for the bank for the banking group um i i would mention an experience that we had with uh with an online branch um you know obviously that you know banks are less and less physical so there are uh there are less and less people or less you know crowd going physically to our branches and most of them use either their smartphone to interact with the bank so to to move money from one account to the other from to make payments and so on and so forth um and some other people used uh you use telephone lines um so it's what we call the online bank so the actually the online and telephone banking so it's it's an online branch basically you pick up the phone you call them the the operator and uh he or she help tries to help you in you know in uh in solving your issue while you are in front of your computer and sometimes they also try to sell you stuff you know uh we are very big group so not only do we sell banking services but we also sell insurance contracts for example so um together with the online branch we ran a um a research we ran an experiment um in which we tried to um we tried to select those words and those expressions that that were more engaging for clients that were more inducive into clients the willingness to listen to the telephone operator and perhaps even to buy or at least to listen uh to listen to the description of the contra that was being offered this was very interesting and i can um i'm afraid it's uh it's in italian but uh uh but you know it's not very important uh actually the understanding of the of the single words what's important is the um uh hang on what's important is the actually the the content so um i think you can see my screen by now can you see my screen yeah it's a little bit small but um yeah we can see it yeah yeah well basically these are uh examples of uh um of sentences uh the green ones that just ignore the the the central the central column the the the the the the yeah just focus on the uh the left-hand side and the the right-hand side so there's a green column and a red column obviously uh no colors are uh are speaking for themselves green is is is a green light green is a go green is a is a word or an expression that engages that you know that that feels that makes the the client feel uh keener to listen to uh to the proposal uh the red the red sentence of is something that you know uh makes you lose almost immediately um so so what we have done we have recorded and registered the level of uh of involvement uh depending upon the sentence and the under the words that were used by the telephone operator and we gave back to the to the online to the director of the online branches we gave uh we gave her back uh a list of uh of a sentences that we believe are more engaging um and they they prepared a sort of you know guideline in which they were uh encouraging uh telephone operator to use some sentences rather than others okay uh obviously you know provided that they wanted to sell the product but that's that's the that's that's the basic of the basic the basic prior um so this is something that we've done for the bank and we're very happy and we're very happy to see that in fact it was uh it was actually used uh empirically it was used in a day-in day-out uh business operations uh so we feel that we with the neuroscience we helped our colleagues to uh you know to do their job in a in a better way that's really good okay so you basically tested different conditions of sentences empirically and uh retained the ones that were most successful in winning your new clients exactly exactly okay huh cool no that's that's a really great application and um so in fact um uh i saw that your uh research center also does um machine learning and works also on artificial intelligence one of the things that i just had a quick view of is a project that you mentioned in a previous talk in which you're in what you're saying that in tessa san paulo's innovation center has a machine learning project through which it's trying to understand a movie audience's preferences i was wondering what that project consisted in um yes this project it's still at its initial stages and by initial stages i mean well first of all let me let me clear let me be clear on the fact that our projects especially the artificial intelligence ones um they last for an average of 11 or 12 months so on average on average these are we're talking about at least you know you know give or take one year one year time one year period so this these are quite a long researchers um in in this very instance we are still at the initial stage in which we are still uh trying to understand uh what is the most promising path that we might follow so we're still in the in the selection process of you know of stream of research that we really want to to follow that we really want to explore the the basic aim of this research um is to uh try and understand what are the topics um uh that on on which on which people are about which people are talking on social media so what are the topics that that are more involving for for the public in general or for some parts of the public which are indicated by our clients so maybe you are interested in getting to know uh what my you know my 17 year old son is is talking about with his friend so uh you know so you make a selection uh of uh it's all public information i want to be clear also that we are not uh we are not uh intruding in anybody's privacy or we're not um we're not uh grasping any any you know uh uh any information any um information uh on other enterprises so um so um so we do that we so we sell we try to select the topics which are of major interest and we try to uh teach the machine through machine learning uh approaches machine learning devices uh to try and teach the machine to uh create and generate uh either uh journal articles either no newspaper articles that focus on that topic or plots that can be used to create documentaries or even movies around these topics well it says in narrative plots right yes exactly so so the idea is to start from social media understand what what's what what are the main topics uh you know going around in the social media and and try to teach the machine to extrapolate in a way or to generate from these topics either lyrics for songs or articles or plots for documentaries or or movies which is very difficult yeah that's really fascinating because you know the ability to of artistic creation or of imagining stories seemed like something uniquely human up to now exactly that's uh that that's uh what you're saying is very important in fact um the first uh preliminary evidence seems to suggest that it's not entirely possible to live this only and entirely to the machine so there has to be at some point some human intervention which in a way is is good i think because i i would feel you know very in a way frustrated or depressed if if i were able to generate a machine or to teach a machine how to generate texts automatically without having somebody with uh hands eyes brain uh you know uh nose uh you know writing it or at least contributing to it so in a way i think this is refreshing but on the other hand is is very is very interesting and very challenging so but to be honest with with you um we're still at the initial stages so uh we have some encouraging results in terms of generating at least newspaper articles um but uh but we're still quite far away from being able to generate uh you know full-fledged plots for documentaries or or even or even movies or cities so or city comedies so um we'll see we'll see whoa but that's really amazing and so creating basically creating text creating stories and going back to the other projects you described the the research and innovation center in tiza sao paulo seems to have a really broad array of research interests and applications going from the emotional reaction to art the user experience in museums and testing conditions with customers seeing what works best and then creating narratives it's surprising because uh bank is a very large group but at the same time for some of these things the connection with banking is not immediate although i suppose that uh doing research doing uh all sorts of research then gives you an advantage maybe on the long run because people might not see the connection to banking might but it might appear one day absolutely you're you're you're totally right emmanuel you you actually you know put your finger or right on it um obviously you know um we um we are very um very keen to contribute with positive impacts uh on you know on our clients on on our fellow citizens in italy in europe but obviously we are not entirely philanthropists right so we would do that also for for for business purposes um so uh so yes what we feel we are doing and actually what the intuition uh of the ca ceo was when he created the innovation center was precisely to invest in innovation to uh to explore the the frontier the and and perhaps try to move it ahead to move it forward uh and and giving back what we learn to to the bank and also to our clients um so it's a sort of investment and and we try to open our clients to innovation to new techniques uh like you know uh like this technique of choosing the right words when you have going to sell something or a new technique of you know generating uh a a newspaper article um you know without without having to spend like three four hours to do research on an event and to and to check all the facts but having a machine do it for it for you so uh so yes you're right we we do that for you know with both goals in mind of making life of people better because human being for us is the center it's it's the value but also we have to keep an eye on you know one on shareholders and balance sheet and then costs and income that's uh that's important to come to terms with of course whoa that's so i i'd really like to keep asking you questions and i can think of a whole range but unfortunately we're out of time um so i'd really like to thank you so much luigi um thanks luigi uh roger a head of innovation research and development at initial samples innovation center thanks so much for your time luigi thank you very much and thanks to all those who will have a look at this uh uh at this program okay thanks very much thank you talk to you soon then yeah absolutely uh i'm looking forward to discovering the name of the statue certainly okay you'll see you'll see and thanks for watching bye cheers bye and thanks to all our viewers for watching and keep tuned with ucl changing minds webinars

2021-02-16 18:30

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