As a PhD neuroscientist, I spend a lot of time talking about data—implicit scores, EEG signals, physiological readouts, statistical significance. But before any of that, I often find myself recommending something far less flashy: good old qualitative research.

Why? Because the hardest part of a study isn't usually the measurement. It’s figuring out what to measure—and why.

In this post, we take a more methodical look at how to study consumer experience with beauty devices. Not just satisfaction, but emotional engagement, habit formation, and long-term adherence. Here’s how behavioral neuroscience can guide more meaningful evaluation and insight generation in this fast-growing space.

In their 2025 study published in Nature - Scientific Reports, Maack, Ostrowski, & Rose explore how the human brain encodes and retrieves the sequence order of multisensory information. Specifically, how the order of auditory and visual stimuli affects memory recognition.

When companies bring me in to review or teach neuro-based research methods, I can usually predict where the conversation will go. We’ll talk about EEG. GSR. Maybe eye tracking. Often the Implicit Association Test (IAT). There’s usually excitement about the potential of these tools. And rightly so, they can provide valuable insights when used well.

But there's one message I find myself repeating in every session, like a drum I can’t stop beating: humans are complicated.