Human Insight Lab
Welcome to the Human Insight Lab
At the Human Insight Lab, also known as HI-Lab, we uncover and apply insights from human behaviour to optimise business performance. Whether we’re studying how consumers engage with an app or website, understanding their emotional responses to complex decisions, or co-developing a digital product, our aim is to identify what works – and why.
Collaborate with us!
The Human Insight Lab operates from two convenient locations on the University of Surrey’s Stag Hill campus.
Our lab provides multiple facilities, including:
- The ability to test up to 18 desk-based participants at once
- The ability to run both desk-based and field studies
- A Mixed Reality Lab with VR and AR headsets
- Physiological sensors including heart rate monitors, eye trackers and Shimmer galvanic response sensors
- iMotions software to integrate all sensor data into one timeline.
Business collaboration
The HI-Lab provides a dedicated space for conducting experiments across different types of business and management applications.
NPD professionals can use the lab to:
- Test the design of your Products and Services with consumers
- Gather product interaction data to inform product and service development
- Create training exercises for creative problem-solving
- Boost innovation capabilities through interaction with expert innovation management academics.
Marketing professionals can use the lab to test customer reactions to:
- Develop tailored product advertisements
- Explore physiological predictors of customer preferences.
- Test consumer engagement and motivation
- Boost Marketing and communication skills through relevant product data
- Insights Website and app development.
The laboratory can be used by Operations Managers and professionals to:
- Help design/redesign tasks and processes that are accurate and efficient
- Help to identify instructions/tasks that are confusing, and how to improve them
- Help to identify how fatigue/stress/attention drop-off affects task performance and operational efficiency.
Access to the Human Insight Lab was extremely beneficial because it allowed me to go beyond traditional survey-based analysis and capture real behavioural and physiological data. Using equipment such as Smart Eye Aurora for eye tracking and Polar sensors for heart rate monitoring, I could measure how people actually interacted with visualisations in real time. This helped identify not just whether someone answered correctly, but how much mental effort was involved.Arpit, Business Analytics student who conducted his dissertation using the lab, examining whether redesigned statistical visualisations help people interpret data more accurately and with less mental effort compared to standard histograms.
Directors
Co-Director of The Human Insight Lab
Dr Pablo Pereira Doel
Human Insight Lab co-director; Fellow at the Institute for Sustainability; Visiting Fellow, Center for Tourism Research at Wakayama University (Japan)
Biography
I am co-director of the Human Insight Lab at Surrey Business School and a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey. My research examines how everyday resource-use behaviours, particularly water use, can be understood, measured, and redesigned to support environmental sustainability. Drawing on behavioural science, environmental psychology, data analytics, and design research, I study the structural and contextual drivers of behaviour using sensor technology and biometric methods (eye-tracking, galvanic skin response, facial-expression analysis) in laboratory, field, and hybrid experiments across real-world settings such as homes, student accommodation, hotels, healthcare facilities, and product-use contexts. Much of my work is co-created with industry and policy partners to translate evidence into practical, measurable impact. I aim to make sustainable behaviour intuitive and rewarding, showing how context redesign and digital innovation can change what people feel and do.
Co-Director of The Human Insight Lab
Dr Andrew Hill
Senior Lecturer in Business Analytics
Biography
Andy is a lecturer on the Business Analytics MSc. His main research interests lie how to translate complex quantitative analysis into useful insights understood by anyone. His specialism lies in quantitative operational research methods, including Monte Carlo simulation, Machine Learning and Data Analysis.
Andy started out as a Risk Analyst at the Animal and Plant Health Agency, helping deliver the scientific evidence behind various UK policies and EU regulations in food safety and exotic disease control, working with Defra, the UK Food Standards Agency, the European Food Safety Authority and commercial companies such as Novartis and Unilever. Andy has also spent time as a Principal Modelling and Analysis Consultant at BAE Systems, delivering solutions to various problems including inventory forecasting and optimising processes for new digital technologies in forensics and warship energy management.
Interested in participating in social science experiments?
Join now to participate in social science experiments with the HI-Lab!
Get in touch with our researchers
Dr Nicole Cocolas
Lecturer in Transport Management
Dr Irina Cojuharenco
Associate Professor, Founding Director of the University of Surrey Business and Economic Experiments Laboratory (Now Human Insights Lab)
Professor Xavier Font
Professor of Sustainability Marketing
Dr Marion Karl
Senior Lecturer in Tourism Marketing and Management
Dr Erin Ling
Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work
Dr Sebastiano Massaro
Associate Professor (Reader)
Safina Naz
Postgraduate Research Student
Dr Jonathan Skinner
Director of Prospective Engagement and Outreach, and Reader in the Anthropology of Events,
