Cognitive Design

How does our ability to remember, think, plan, decide, learn and manage emotions change with age? What methods (exercise, diet, cognitive training, social interaction, stress management) can be used to help minimize cognitive decline?  How do we distinguish normal cognitive aging from a cognitive disease? Pressing questions as Baby Boomers begin to hit 65 in mass.

These questions are being taken up by a new public-private Research Partnership on Cognitive Aging.  Some $28M is already flowing into 17 research projects.

“These grants will make it possible for researchers to further pursue basic research in this area and to devise interventions that could be experimentally tested for their ability to improve cognitive function in older people,” 

The research is basic and still in the formative stages but it should be a great source of insights for cognitive designer. I will watch the progress of the 17 projects and share designable insights as they surface.

In the meantime, if you have insights into how to design for the aging mind please leave a comment and share your experiences with other readers.

Many studies have shown that we may tend toward lying, cheating or other unethical behaviors if we believe our identities are hidden. Being anonymous can have a big impact on behavior. A new study, Good Lamps are the Best Police, show that darkness encourages self-interested or unethical behavior even when it does not hide our identity. You can find a PDF version of the study in draft form (for free) here.

The researchers suggest that the perception of darkness creates the illusion of anonymity in our minds even when we consciously know are identity will be known.

“Departing from this body of work, we suggest that darkness does more than simply produce conditions of actual anonymity. We contend that darkness may create a sense of illusory anonymity that disinhibits self-interested and unethical behaviors. Individuals in a room with slightly dimmed lighting or people who have donned a pair of sunglasses may feel anonymous not because the associated darkness significantly reduces others’ ability to see or identify them, but because they are anchored on their own phenomenological experience of darkness. When individuals in such circumstances experience darkness and, consequently, impaired vision, they generalize that experience to others, expecting that others will conversely have difficulty perceiving or seeing them.” 

Clear implications for the cognitive designer interesting in leveraging the effects of lighting and other devices that can create a false sense of anonymity.

The PEW Research Center just released a major study on how Americans consume news. The findings show that the cognition involved definitely involves  opportunistic information foragaging across multiple sources.

“Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day.” 

Also of interest to cognitive designers is the finding that consumer do participate in the creation of the news but typically fall far short of citizen journalism. They create content by comments and reposting.

 ”37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.”

The report is loaded with findings on the psychographics of newsies.  See for example, top reasons people follow the news.  If you read the report and find other results relevant to cognitive design, please post a comment.

Cognitive design is about understanding and meeting the intellectual, affective, motivational and volitional needs of users. One powerful need that designers often fail to consider is the deep-rooted need for equality and fairness.  Just how deep-rooted is this need? Researcher at the California Institute of Technology and Trinity College conducting a brain scanning study found:

“… that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person’s head, rather than the poor person’s.”

The implications for cognitive designers are clear - including features that invoke a sense of fairness should increase pleasure and the positive mental energy created through interaction and use.

An interesting (and free) article, Directed Attention as a Common Resource for Executive Function and Self-Regulation was just published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The author’s argue that our ability to consciously control our attention is key capacity for both the executive function (planning, thinking) and self-regulation (control of thoughts and behavior). Further consciously controlled or directed attention is a limited resources that is quickly depleted. It can be restored by sleep, meditation or the use of involuntary attention instead of directed attention.

Of special interest to cognitive designer is the claim that nature-based activities (e.g. walking in the woods and gardening) have strong restorative effects on attention and therefore the ability to self-regulate, plan and use other higher cognitive functions. In the authors words:

“What is particularly remarkable about this study is the effect of a very modest intervention (an activity of at least 20 min carried out three times per week) on a problem that, according to the literature in this area, has the capacity to undermine people’s lives for a matter of years (Blesch et al., 1991; Winningham et al., 1994).

Clear implications for those designing programs to help with chronic disease management or other high self-regulation challenges.

In cognitive design we focus on creating a specific think-and-feel for artifacts.   Every interaction with a product or service generates thoughts and feelings and collectively those makeup experience.   Designing a specific experience especially one that differentiates a product or service is still very much an emerging practice but something executives want.  Or so argues Bruce Tempkin in a recent post, The State of Customer Experience 2010.

Bruce is a thought-leader for Forrester Research and I have blogged on several of his reports in the past.   His state of the customer experience research is based on interviews with 141 executives. Findings include: 90% see customer experience as an important strategy for 2010 but only 11% have a disciplined approach in place. More importantly for the cognitive designer, 80% want to use it for strategic differentiation.

Exercise bikes integrated with video games have been growing in popularity.  They offer a great platform for cognitive designers looking to shift the exercise experience.   Found a recent article, Predicting the Effects of Interactive Video Bikes on Exercise Adherence that suggests they may help us exercise more consistently by making it enjoyable.

 You have to pay to access the article but the research blog has a good summary post. The research was done using GameBikes an interactive video bike created by a small firm in Texas.

“The bottom-line: the men who trained on the GameBikes were more likely to stick to the exercise regime. They attended an average of 77 per cent of the sessions compared with 42 per cent of participants in the low-tech control condition. “

That 33% difference was attributed to the experience on the GameBike being more pleasant, enjoyable and exciting.  In cognitive design terms that means that exercising with the GameBike produces more mental energy (positive affective and emotions) than just cycling on a stationary bike.

Managing diabetes often calls for significant lifestyle and behavior change. Creating programs to help patients and family members make these changes requires a sophisticated understanding of how minds actually work.   Diabetes management is a major cognitive design challenge so I am always on the look our for fact-based insights into how the minds of diabetics work.

Late last year the IIT Institute of Design held a Diabetes Innovation Fair including three sessions on platform strategies, persuasive technologies and wellness experience research. They just released videos of each session.

All three sessions offering valuable insights for cognitive designers.

Clients often ask for advice on how to apply cognitive design to the challenge of group decision-making.  A common request is for interventions that get individuals to contribute more and avoid group think. How can we productively unleash the individual?

One approach is understand the individual and social cognition of conformity and design interventions and interactions that soften it.

For specific evidence-based clues on how to do that check out, Conformity: Ten Timeless Influencers. The author does an excellent job summarizing some of the literature.  Key point have clear design implications including, for example:

-  Avoid groups sizes of 3-5

- Plant a competent dissenter in the group

- Make authority less visible

- Deemphasize opportunities for winning group approval

Of course dialing-down the impact of conformity is just one of several things we can do with cognitive design  to improve group dynamics.  I am interested to hear about other approaches from readers.

Fast Company has a great article on The 10 most Addictive Sounds in World.  Here is how they were found:

“Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts, a sound identity company in New York, wired up 50 volunteers and measured their galvanic, pupil and brainwave responses to sounds using the latest neuroscience-based research methods. We learned that sound has remarkable power. This may not be surprising for many, but it was certainly surprising to realize just how many commercial brands over the past 20 years have made their way into the world’s 10 most powerful and addictive sounds–beating some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature.”

I won’t spoil any surprise by listing the sounds in this post, especially since the article includes a section for those that want to take a QUIZ . Be sure to listen to the sounds and ask yourself - can you ignore many of these? I think not.

The lesson for cognitive designers is simple, be sure to go beyond the visual when doing sensorial design. We often forget about the cognitive power of sound.