Dyson has made a smart hair dryer and it has been created after 10 ...

Dyson calls its new hair dryer — Supersonic Nural — its smartest ever. It sure is packed with features, and it is also the result of over 10 years of hair and scalp research by Dyson.

Hold it, and it becomes clear that Supersonic Nural, a new hair dryer from Dyson, is something special. The company, as it launched Nural at an event in Seoul, South Korea, calls its new product the smartest and most intelligent hair dryer it has made so far. Unlike the regular dryers in the market, Nural comes with a number of smart features such as the ability to manage and control air temperature so that there is no heat damage to hair or scalp. It also comes with many sensors, which allow it to have features like pause detect and ability to sense how far it is being held from hair.

Nural is an expensive hair dryer, something that should not come as a surprise to Dyson fans. But the price, once you hear how it has been developed and what all it comes with, doesn't seem that steep. To talk about Nural, India Today Tech sat down with Jake Reynolds, an Associate Design Manager with Beauty RDD at Dyson, and he explained that this new hair dryer packs in a technology that the company has developed and refined over a period of 10 years.

"We've been researching hair science for around 10 years. Over a decade. And as we researched more, we started to understand more about the scalp and hair growth," says Reynolds.

As Dyson researched hair science, as well as the problems faced by users with the regular hair dryers, the company realised that it wanted to create a hair dryer that would put focus on hair health and not just on drying them.

The research is at the core of every Dyson product. This was also explained by James Dyson, the company founder in an interaction with media on the sidelines of the Nural launch. "There are different hair types," James Dyson said. "Type 1 hair is a world away from Type 4 hair. Take Type 1 hair, each of its strands is round, while Type 4 hair strand is flat. You've got different problems to solveâ€æ So all the time we're thinking of all the different types of hair and how we answer the questions (of users) and give the best styling and best hair care for all those different types. (Nural) is quite a complex design."

In fact, it is with research that a journey of a product starts at Dyson. The scientists and engineers at Dyson are probably constantly busy researching and identifying real-world problems faced by people in their homes. Once they understand the problem, the development of the next Dyson appliance begins to take shape. "At Dyson, we never stand still. We're perpetually researching, discovering the challenges faced by real people in their actual homes worldwide. Once we pinpoint the problem, the question becomes: How do we innovate to resolve it? Following that, the technology and design come into play," says Reynolds.

In the case of Nural, Dyson found something interesting in its preliminary research. "We found that around 38 per cent of our users, wash their hair every day and we know that if someone washes their hair every day, then they're going to be drying and styling their hair every day and that means they'll need to avoid heat exposure that can lead to scalp damage," says Reynolds.

This led the company to focus on heat management in Nural, which the hair dryer does by collecting data from its sensors to maintain drying temperature at below 55 degrees, depending on how far or close the dryer is to scalp and hair.

All the tech inside the Dyson products may give an impression to users that they are over-engineered and hence more expensive than necessary. Reynolds agrees with the over-engineered part but says that price is worth paying.

"A Dyson product is an investment. They're engineered very well to ensure that we have robustness. For example some of the products we drop test from the height of like over 2.1 metres and higher," says Reynold. And it is worth paying a slightly higher price for them because, says Reynold, "if you have a product that you use and you have to buy it again every six months because it breaks, in the long run, you're better buying a product that's going to last."

After Dyson, through its consumer research, has identified the problems it wants to solve for users, it focuses on engineering the products. Along with the engineers, there is the design part, another key area for the company. Unlike the other utilitarian products in the market - for example all these grey and rather boring hair dryers - Dyson focuses on giving its products a design that not only makes them look futuristic but which can also help users identify with the product. In other words, the company aims to combine top-class engineering with evocative design that compliments the lifestyle of its users.

"We know our owners have an emotional connection with the machines, so we want to (focus) on that as well," says Reynold.

As an example he cites the use of LED dots in Nural, which conveys some useful information to users while looking all cool and futuristic at the same time. "When (the light) goes red, it's because my scalp is far away. I move my hand and it drops to Yellow because the heat power drops and that's all about showing our users what's going on with the products, building that relationship between the product and the user as well," says Reynold.