We’ve been running Users’ Groups in many locations for quite some time now. At the end of January, Heidi, Mark and I were in the UK for Users’ Groups for both Compusense five and Compusense at-hand, and had a fantastic turnout. In New Jersey, not only did our Compusense five days generate a lot of interest, but we had great attendance at the Compusense at-hand day. In fact, the attendance was so great that we had to move to a larger room!

For us, one of the great benefits of having Users’ Groups is the chance to connect in person with clients that we speak with by phone and email. Many of our clients get very well acquainted with our Support Specialists, and it’s really great to know how appreciated our Support Team is. Compusense strives to provide a superior level of Support, and we consistently hear how valuable that is to our clients.

In New Jersey, we were able to show off some new features for Compusense five as well as Compusense at-hand. We demonstrated the use of Penalty Analysis in both Compusense five and Compusense at-hand. This analysis allows the combining of liking and just-about-right scales in order to get a better sense of the impact of an attribute’s strength on a product’s liking.

For the Compusense at-hand day, Heidi showed the use of Feedback Calibration (Compusense FCM™) to train descriptive panelists faster and more effectively. As our attendees were our panelists, chocolate was a well-appreciated product for that demonstration!

Heidi also demonstrated the use of Temporal Order of Sensations (TOS) in Compusense at-hand. We’ve introduced two new temporal methods - Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) and Temporal Order of Sensations - to the software in the last release. These two new methods round out the temporal question types in Compusenseat-hand, as we have both Single and Dual Attribute Time Intensity (SATI and DATI) question types available for a while now.

At the end of our Compusense at-hand Users’ Group day, I took some time to talk about what’s to come in future releases. One of the features that’s been generating interest lately is a question type that we call the XY Question. This question type is our approach to Projective Mapping - a panelist is presented with a two-dimensional space where they can organize samples according to their perceived similarities and differences. Our implementation of the XY question will allow panelists to tag their samples. This means that a panelist could associate a series of samples with a common attribute or descriptor.

Michael Nestrud has posted this video on YouTube to help explain the concept of Projective Mapping as it works for panelists.

We’ll be demonstrating this new question type at the IFT FoodExpo in Las Vegas in June. To see this new feature in action while you’re at the conference, drop by our booth, or email us to schedule a time to see the many new features in Compusense at-hand.

We’ve had some great feedback from our visit to New Jersey and we’re busy planning our next Users’ Group in the US. If you’re interested in attending an upcoming Users’ Group, please let us know by emailing support@compusense.com.

It is truly delightful to watch the recent Bloomberg clip of Barbara Booth demonstrating the importance of the sensory properties of McDonalds’ fries at their sensory facility in Oak Brook, IL. Barb has been a tireless proponent of the power of good sensory data ever since her days at the NutraSweet Company, where she was one of our early adopters of Compusense’s original sensory software tool, CSA.

I loved to see the impact that Barb’s statement that “Biting into a McDonald’s french fry should be like walking on freshly fallen snow” had on the Bloomberg commentators. It really highlights for me the potential transformation that can be achieved by helping people focus on the sensations that they experience in the moment (and in this case, the AHA! Moment).

When Barb went on to say, “If you can’t tell what you’re eating in three seconds, there’s a problem”, it reminded me of the temporal nature of sensory experience. This is an area of ongoing research in our field and an interest of mine for many years. Not only is the nature of the sensation important, the timing of that sensation may be the key to success for the product. We have learned in our Feedback Calibration Method (FCM) research, according to the work of Greg Ashby at UCSB, that if feedback is given within 3 seconds, the synapse is still active when the dopamine is released causing a strong physiological reinforcement. For panel training the FCM procedure has become a powerful tool, improving proficiency and cutting training time in half.

It may well be that three seconds is also the gold standard for consumers to register a brand’s sensory impact. We know that odour memory is a strong trigger and we recognize our favourite scents almost immediately. The smell of fresh coffee in the morning; baby powder; spring lilacs; chicken on the barbeque; fresh mint; bread baking in the oven… I’m sure that you can make up your own list of those aromas, fragrances, scents and smells that hit us in less than 3 seconds.

The latest release of Compusense five is now shipping! Contact Compusense Support for more details about Compusense five Release 5.4.

New features in this release…

• Penalty Analysis
  Penalty Analysis is now a direct export from Compusense five! Use Liking and Just About Right scales for data collection, and then analyze the data with penalty analysis to identify sensory attributes associated with decreased overall liking of a product. This graphical technique reveals the mean drop in product liking due to the product having “too much” or “too little” of an attribute.
• Support for Microsoft Office 2010
  Take advantage of the latest features of Microsoft Office 2010 for your reports.
• Time Intensity Reliability Analysis
  Looking to determine the reliability of your panelists in Time Intensity studies? Compusense five Release 5.4 provides Time Intensity Reliability (TI-R) analysis. Use TI-R to confirm the reproducibility of research findings; develop and refine time-intensity panels; and maintain standards for time-intensity evaluations in research and industry.

  For more information review the publication ‘An objective numerical method of assessing reliability of time intensity panellist’ located in our research library.

• Improvements for testing in languages that use non-Latin character sets
• Direct data export to Senstools.NET
• Countdown display of time-delay on the Run Screen, helpful for Central Location Testing

When Karen and I were in South Africa recently, we were pleased to see Jeanine Sainsbury at my SAAFoST lecture at the University of Pretoria. We took advantage of Jeanine’s invitation to drop in on the new Sensory and Innovation Centre at McCormick’s facility in Midrand. A quick Gautrain ride from Pretoria and we were whisked from the station to the new Centre.

The Centre has its official opening this week, but we were able to have a sneak preview. A fire had damaged to building last year, but the new renovation looks great. Not only does McCormick have a first class sensory lab, they also have a focus group room and Innovation Centre. Jeanine and her colleagues are running a very busy program and will be able to deliver great sensory and consumer research as part of McCormick’s global sensory team. We were happy to be able to get a firsthand look at their operation.

Banana split - Molecular Gastronomy

So many sensory experiences have time as a key element. Delight is a combination of Liking (a pleasant hedonic experience) and Surprise (the unexpected). What better way to create surprise in a product than to have an unexpected change in perception taking place? When the molecular gastronomer, Heston Blumenthal makes bacon and egg ice cream for you, it is a series of surprises. When he drops a green tea and vodka ice cream on your tongue after forming it in liquid nitrogen at -80 degrees, it explodes in your mouth and releases the vodka followed by the cooling sweetness of the ice cream and the flavor of green tea. When you consume a refreshing beverage that is initially sweet, but sweetness continues to linger when all other sensation is gone, your liking for the product starts to slide. The first taste of a wine that is astringent may be pleasant, but continued sips intensify the astringency to the point of revulsion. When your chewing gum loses all flavor and becomes a piece of rubber in your mouth, it’s not pleasant.

These are all questions that time-intensity (TI) can help to answer. After all, we measure the sensory properties of products to understand what consumers like and to provide product developers with reliable information to help them create better products. If we don’t have reliable data about the impact of product reformulation, we are just guessing. The role of Sensory Science is to provide valid and robust information to help marketing and product development make well informed decisions.

The details of Time-Intensity procedures can be found in texts like Lawless and Heymann’s Sensory Evaluation of Food, or in the ASTM Standard Guide E1909 on Time Intensity.

In fact, we are expecting panelists to multi-task. A survey of the current literature on human multi-tasking concludes that “multi-tasking is a myth”. Humans cannot focus on two or more tasks simultaneously; we tend to toggle between tasks in a process called “Continuous Partial Attention”. The result is that performance actually gets poorer as the number of tasks increase. There are more errors and a longer time is required than if each task was conducted sequentially. The cognitive load of following sensory attributes and measuring intensity exceeds our ability to process.

In effect, if the attributes that interest us are changing rapidly (measured over a few seconds), for example the bouquet of a wine as it responds to air, we are hard-pressed to register their sequence and to have a computer time-stamp the response. This is the domain of Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) or Temporal Order of Sensation (TOS). However, if the changes are a bit slower, there are several strategies that we can apply to measure their intensity.

Progressive Profiling uses a series of line scales that are on the same screen (practically a maximum of 5). The screen appears and the panelist scores the line-scale attributes in exactly the same way as standard descriptive profiling. Then the screen changes to a neutral background for a fixed time-delay (anywhere from 5 seconds to several minutes, depending upon the product) before the same screen of attributes appears for the next time point. This technique has often been used in conventional profiling to measure aftertaste a fixed time after swallowing. This puts all panelists into the same time line.

Progressive Profiling has the benefit of being a simple descriptive analysis task that our panelists are well trained to accomplish. The attributes are fixed, making their measurement sequential and repetitive, reducing the cognitive load. Data may be analyzed by ANOVA at each time point or it may be presented as actual time-intensity curves for the duration of the test.

A variation on this method that has been conducted by Lisa Methven at the University of Reading is called Sequential Profiling, “The effect of consumption volume on profile and liking of oral nutritional supplements of varied sweetness: Sequential profiling and boredom tests”. 2010. L. Methven, et al. Food Quality and Preference (21:8) 948-955.

We will continue our development of temporal methods in search of reliable and useful tools that answer research questions. Please contact me if you have any ideas or thoughts to share.

Could this be lunch?

The Nordic Workshop in Sensory Science was held at a spa resort in Snekkersten, Denmark, not far from the castle setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Compusense exhibited at the event, providing us with an opportunity to connect with our clients as well as researchers and practitioners working in the field. This is our tangible show of support for the field of sensory and consumer studies in the Nordic countries. The theme this time was professionalism, with emphasis on the action words of the discipline: evoke, measure, analyze, and interpret.

The relatively small conference provides many opportunities for discussion, both public and private. I appreciated having chances to socialize, learn, and discuss professional and research interests, and this, along with workshop activities were certainly the highlight of the event. On the program, three presentations stood out for me:

Dr. Mari Sandell (University of Turku) gave an interesting talk that demonstrated relatedness between genotypes, PROP/PTC sensitivity, and food choice. PROP/PTC sensitive individuals experience bitter more intensely in many foods, which often translates into lower veggie consumption and heavier sugar use. These investigations underscore the complexity inherent in studying consumer preferences of where populations of interest might be quite heterogeneous in their sensory perceptions. I thought that her findings squared nicely with conclusions made by Dr. John Hayes (Penn State) at the recent Pangborn Symposium, who discussed bitter receptors and their relationship to healthy eating, as well as the importance of using a bitter substance appropriate for the study when screening potential assessors.

Chantal Gilbert (former Compusense statistician now with Campden BRI) had the dreaded early-morning- after-the-conference-banquet slot, with the added challenge of presenting statistics to non-statisticians (mostly). It’s been some time since I’ve had the opportunity to hear Chantal present, and true to form she gave a very engaging talk. The emphasis was on similarity testing, anova/regression, and the (mis-)interpretation of PCA biplots. Statistics is more than pressing a button on a piece of software, and she illustrated this nicely, pointing out several potential pitfalls.

Dr. Frank Meijer (DSM) discussed a specific ingredient formulation for a Japanese food which elicited the sensation of kokumi, a putative sixth taste. The sensation is well identified in Japanese society, and associated with thickness, roundness and balance, often arising after long processes such as stewing or cheese-ripening. It is often expressed alongside umami, and at a receptor level involves Calcium-sensing receptors on the tongue that respond to certain peptides (e.g. glutathione). This was one of those rare presentations that made me sit up and begin furious note-taking. Later, I discovered that his presentation will be among those available on the conference website.

There were other good presentations, but the only other one I will mention here was the banquet keynote by Thomas Raab, well-known popularizer of science in Denmark. His high-energy talk on the brain and the senses delivered a live version of television-quality edu-tainment, peppered with well-timed humour. Sometimes he poked fun at himself. Sometimes he poked fun at ants, who he says carry a living ant “kicking and screaming” to the burial heap based on a chemical cue (oleic acid) applied by a researcher. Sometimes he directed his humour, gently or pointedly, at us. His parting message: if we really want to be agents of positive change for a better and more sustainable world, we should use our knowledge to get people in the developed world eating insects instead of meat. Following that challenge, you might have expected chocolate crickets to be served for dessert, allowing our speaker to take a proper leadership role. I fear it was an opportunity lost for the cause of entomophagy, but perhaps some intrepid researcher will prove me wrong when the next Nordic sensory workshop to be held in Helsinki in 2013.

The CN Tower and the Toronto skyline at dusk

Summer is almost always a busy time for Compusense, and we’re gearing up for our biggest event of the season, the Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium.

We’ve been attending the Pangborn Symposium since its inception in 1992 and have found it an excellent opportunity to connect with colleagues, enjoy the company of friends and be challenged by new ideas in sensory science. We’ve been greatly anticipating this year’s symposium, and having it so close to home makes it even more exciting for us.

Prior to the start of the conference, a number of us will be attending the Institute for Perception‘s Current Topics In Sensory and Consumer Science course. I’m particularly interested in their coverage of tetrad testing as compared to triangle tests.

During the conference, we’ll have two posters — Chris and Sheila will be presenting their work on internet-based panelist training with feedback calibration (you can read about our approach to feedback calibration here). Moyi Li, who has been with us while she’s been working on her PhD in statistics at the University of Guelph will present her work on a new method for Time Intensity analysis.

On Wednesday at 3:20pm, John will be giving an oral presentation on the refinement of a statistical framework for an own-brand large-scale consumer quality program.

We’ll also be exhibiting at the symposium, and we’ll be previewing the latest release of Compusense at-hand! We’re quite excited about this release as we’ve included a lot of great new features, including Time Intensity and a new approach to ranking.

Toronto can be a great place to visit this time of year – the temperature is usually a lot more pleasant than the hotter days of August, and autumn is just around the corner. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a glimpse of the leaves turning the gorgeous red, orange and yellows that make this time of year so beautiful in Southern Ontario.

As Compusensers are no strangers to Toronto, we’re very happy to show people around and give you tips about some of the great things the city has to offer. It’s a diverse and interesting place, with something for everyone. Come by our booth or say hi when you see us at sessions, and we’ll be happy to share Toronto with you from a “local” perspective.

Check out this great site to get some ideas about what to do while you’re in Toronto. See you next week!

The 5-member team raised nearly $13,000 to support research, teaching and care at The Princess Margaret.

Congratulations, John and Team Dave Scott!

Photo courtesy of Keis Photography.