90 percent of everything : Usability Blog

Written by Harry Brignull

Neuromarketing. Neurodesign. Neurocinema… The prefix “neuro” being treated like the new “2.0″ and it bothers me.

“Neuro” is not a fashionable synonym for the unconscious mind or the brain. It does not refer to an assorted collection of interesting pop psychology findings. It does not confer newness. You should not use the term unless you really are referring to actual neuroscience.

When you bolt the word “neuro” onto an existing term, it’s a kind of shibboleth – it raises a red flag. You are placed on the cusp between two things – being perceived as an actual neuroscientist (which you will need to back up), or being perceived as a try-hard who doesn’t quite know what they’re talking about.

I couldn’t help but repost this Aaron Levenstein quote from Brand Autopsy. I’ve been thinking about writing a post on the death of critical thinking for a while, but this pretty much sums it up. Statistics – and research in general – is carried out by *people*. People have motivations. Understand their motivations and you understand a lot about what they have done (either unwittingly or deliberately) to achieve the results presented to you.