CW: How can design address hidden needs?
ML: I don’t think there are hidden need. The needs haven’t changed much. It is even quite surprising to see how much the societies have changed but not primary needs. As always we need air, water, recognition, faith, life presence, light, food, sex and power. I am not working with other needs, and I certainly don’t want to create new ones. I just try to widen the spectrum of possible interventions beyond “sit / eat / sleep”. In the visible and the invisible realm, inside and outside the body.

CW: What kind of methods do you use?
ML: Even if I might not understand it entirely I essentially refer to science for its ability to investigate human being, his way of working and his needs. I need to know every detail of the human I am addressing. I need to understand how they see, how they hear, how they breath, how their brain inform or mislead them, how they remember and forget. The marketing people have never been able to do so; the scientists yes. Marketing reduces ad simplifies the group; scientists admit complexity, fluctuation and unicity. So I work on m projects collaborating with specialists in the domains, submitting them my intuitions or hypothesis, they react, and together we build the project.

CW: What do you think is the role of design?
ML: My role as a designer is the one of a doctor. As a designer we are lucky enough to be able to establish diagnosis and remedies at the same time. In that sense, design is the undoubtedly the most powerful medicine.

Mathieu Lehanneur - Therapeutic Objects http://www.mathieulehanneur.fr/