design

in an age of global strifeand climate change, i'm here to answerthe all important question: why is sex so damn good? if you're laughing, you know what i mean. now, before we get to that answer,

design, let me tell you about chris hosmer. chris is a great friend of minefrom my university days, but secretly, i hate him. here's why. back in university,we had a quick project

to design some solar-powered clocks. here's my clock. it uses something calledthe dwarf sunflower, which grows to about 12 inches in height. now, as you know, sunflowers track the sunduring the course of the day. so in the morning, you seewhich direction the sunflower is facing, and you mark it on the blankarea in the base. at noon, you mark the changedposition of the sunflower,

and in the evening again,and that's your clock. now, i know my clock doesn'ttell you the exact time, but it does give you a generalidea using a flower. so, in my completely unbiased,subjective opinion, it's brilliant. however, here's chris's clock. it's five magnifying glasseswith a shot glass under each one. in each shot glassis a different scented oil. in the morning, the sunlightwill shine down

on the first magnifying glass, focusing a beam of lighton the shot glass underneath. this will warm up the scented oil inside, and a particular smell will be emitted. a couple of hours later,the sun will shine on the next magnifying glass,and a different smell will be emitted. so during the course of the day,five different smells are dispersed throughout that environment. anyone living in that housecan tell the time

just by the smell. you can see why i hate chris. i thought my idea was pretty good, but his idea is genius, and at the time, i knewhis idea was better than mine, but i just couldn't explain why. one thing you have to knowabout me is i hate to lose. this problem's been bugging mefor well over a decade. all right, let's get backto the question of why sex is so good.

many years after the solarpowered clocks project, a young lady i knew suggestedmaybe sex is so good because of the five senses. and when she said this, i had an epiphany. so i decided to evaluate differentexperiences i had in my life from the point of view of the five senses. to do this, i devised somethingcalled the five senses graph. along the y-axis, you havea scale from zero to 10, and along the x-axis, you have,of course, the five senses.

anytime i had a memorableexperience in my life, i would record it on this graphlike a five senses diary. here's a quick videoto show you how it works. (video) jinsop lee: hey, my name's jinsop, and today, i'm going to showyou what riding motorbikes is like from the point of viewof the five senses. hey! bike designer: this is [unclear],custom bike designer. (motorcyle revving) [sound]

[touch] [sight] [smell] [taste] jl: and that's how the five sensesgraph works. now, for a period of three years,i gathered data, not just me but also some of my friends, and i used to teachin university, so i forced my -- i mean, i asked my studentsto do this as well.

so here are some other results. the first is for instant noodles. now obviously, tasteand smell are quite high, but notice sound is at three. many people told me a big part of the noodle-eating experienceis the slurping noise. you know. (slurps) needless to say, i no longerdine with these people. ok, next, clubbing.

ok, here what i found interesting was that taste is at four,and many respondents told me it's because of the taste of drinks, but also, in some cases, kissing is a bigpart of the clubbing experience. these people i still do hang out with. all right, and smoking. here i found touch is at [six],and one of the reasons is that smokers told me the sensationof holding a cigarette and bringing it up to your lips is a bigpart of the smoking experience,

which shows, it's kind of scary to think how well cigarettes are designedby the manufacturers. ok. now, what would the perfectexperience look like on the five senses graph? it would, of course, bea horizontal line along the top. now you can see, noteven as intense an experience as riding a motorbike comes close. in fact, in the yearsthat i gathered data, only one experience came closeto being the perfect one.

that is, of course, sex. great sex. respondents said that great sex hits all of the five sensesat an extreme level. here i'll quoteone of my students who said, "sex is so good, it's goodeven when it's bad." so the five sensestheory does help explain why sex is so good. now in the middle of all thisfive senses work, i suddenly rememberedthe solar-powered clocks project

from my youth. and i realized this theoryalso explains why chris's clock is so much better than mine. you see, my clock only focuses on sight, and a little bit of touch. here's chris's clock. it's the first clock everthat uses smell to tell the time. in fact, in terms of the five senses, chris's clock is a revolution.

and that's what this theorytaught me about my field. you see, up till now, us designers, we've mainly focused on makingthings look very pretty, and a little bit of touch, which means we've ignoredthe other three senses. chris's clock shows usthat even raising just one of those other senses canmake for a brilliant product. so what if we started usingthe five senses theory in all of our designs?

here's three quick ideas i came up with. this is an iron, youknow, for your clothes, to which i added a spraying mechanism, so you fill up the vialwith your favorite scent, and your clothes will smell nicer, but hopefully it should also make the ironing experience more enjoyable. we could call this "the perfumator." all right, next.

so i brush my teeth twice a day, and what if we had a toothbrush that tastes like candy, and when the taste of candy ran out, you'd know it's timeto change your toothbrush? finally, i have a thing for the keyson a flute or a clarinet. it's not just the way they look,but i love the way they feel when you press down on them. now, i don't play the fluteor the clarinet,

so i decided to combine these keyswith an instrument i do play: the television remote control. now, when we look at thesethree ideas together, you'll notice that the five senses theory doesn't only change the waywe use these products but also the way they look. so in conclusion, i've foundthe five senses theory to be a very useful tool in evaluating different experiences in my life,

and then taking those best experiences and hopefully incorporatingthem into my designs. now, i realize the five sensesisn't the only thing that makes life interesting. there's also the six emotions and that elusive x-factor. maybe that could bethe topic of my next talk. until then, please have fun using the five senses in your own lives

and your own designs. oh, one last thing before i leave. here's the experience youall had while listening to the ted talks. however, it would be betterif we could boost up a couple of the other senseslike smell and taste. and the best way to do that is with free candy. you guys ready?

all right. (applause)

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