Innovation at the Intersection of Art, Neuroscience and Design

If you happened to wander into SAP’s AppHaus Palo Alto on Sept 29th, you may have wondered if you were in the right place. Scattered around our “treehouse of creativity” were guests from diverse backgrounds, mingling and admiring a collection of artistic renderings detailing human brain activity.

Over one hundred people attended the art salon and pop-up gallery, put on in collaboration with BeiBei Song, Founder and Principal of Essinova, a forward-thinking creative agency.

The inaugural salon featured the artist Greg Dunn — a neuroscientist turned artist who showcases the inner workings of the brain using beautiful gold leaf micro-etching. Dunn has exhibited globally, and is featured in prestigious publications such as New York times and Wired. At the salon we had the unique opportunity to view his latest work, “Self Reflected”, which was funded by National Science Foundation and is on permanent display at the Franklin Institute.

At first it may seem unusual for SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation (DCC) to be filled with gold-leaf artwork of brain images. But it isn’t as strange as it sounds. Fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and science, business and technology, humans and machines lies at the heart of what we do at the DCC.

Sam Yen, SAP’s Chief Design Officer and Managing Director of SAP Silicon Valley kicked off the event, welcoming guests to the AppHaus.

Greg Dunn gave an insightful talk about the inner workings of the brain, his innovative techniques, and an introduction to the artwork on display.

Next, I spoke about empathy and its relevance to our design process. We kicked off the talk with a warm up game, where the audience divided into pairs and mirrored each other’s gestures. We linked this game back to the theme of the evening — the neuroscience-based research on the areas of the brain activated when we watch others perform tasks. I then shared some of our award winning work, demonstrating how empathy is central to great design.

Following the talk, we pondered an age old question with the audience — what makes us Human? Here are some of the guests’ responses:

We hope that guests left as entertained, inspired and educated as we did, and went home with a new admiration for the beauty of the human brain, as well as a deeper understanding of SAP’s customer experience design process.

We look forward to hosting more unexpected collaborations in the future — so stay tuned!