Cognitive Design

TV devices are being reinvented. They are now internet connected and can run apps just like your phone or iPad. Furthermore, with on-board gestural interfaces, cameras and microphones, they can listen, see and to some degree understand. According to Wired, Smart TVs Abound at the recent international consumer electronics show.  The questions for cognitive designers is do smart TVs offer a new platform for applications or is it redundant?

In cognitive design we can frame business ethics as a behavior change challenge.  This means identifying target behaviors to stop, start and avoid starting and then designing changes to the environment that encourage or require the behaviors as well as one or more pathways to learn them from experience.

More specifically, some behaviors and decisions are ethical and others are not.  The challenge in many organizations is to have employees either stop or avoid starting unethical behaviors and start ethical ones.

Taking a cognitive design approach means we study actual business behaviors and the deeply felt psychological needs that drive them.   Only by understanding the underlying psychology can we hope to design an effective program to change unethical behavior or promote ethical ones.

This approach is gaining academic traction in the rapidly emerging field of behavioral business ethics.  According to a new book just edited by two leaders in the field:

“This book takes a look at how and why individuals display unethical behavior. It emphasizes the actual behavior of individuals rather than the specific business practices. It draws from work on psychology which is the scientific study of human behavior and thought processes. As Max Bazerman said, “efforts to improve ethical decision making are better aimed at understanding our psychological tendencies.”

For a shorter  introduction to what behavioral science can do for the practice of business ethics check out this inaugural address given at the Rotterdam School of Management.  Cognitive designers will be most interested in the discussion on the emergence of distrust.

The cognitive-behavioral approach promises to reframe our approach to business ethics in a way that leads to dramatic improvements.   We might make more progress treating ethics problems like we do eating or smoking problems.  After all, assuming people are greedy and corrupt leads nowhere. Perhaps the key is to understand why they cannot control their impulses in a particular environment and how deeply felt psychological needs can be met in a more ethical manner.

Big data involves using super-sized data sets to create value in new ways. According to a recent report by the McKinsey Institute it is The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity.

“Data have swept into every industry and business function and are now an important factor of production, alongside labor and capital. We estimate that, by 2009, nearly all sectors in the US economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data (twice the size of US retailer Wal-Mart’s data warehouse in 1999) per company with more than 1,000 employees. “

How can a ton of data drive innovation, productivity and competitive advantage?  According to the report it can be used to:

1. Create transparency in operations, service, price and quality.
2. Enable experiments to discover needs, root causes, variability and improve performance.
3. Understand populations of customers and employees to offer customized offerings and interventions.
4. Develop algorithms to support, improve or replace human decision-making.
5. Create new business models, products and services by leveraging data about use to refine them, building information components into them and selling data.

In each of these strategies cognitive design plays an important role. Cognitive design focuses on the experiential component of big data applications to insure they authentically move hearts, extend minds or otherwise create value through positive psychological impact.

The report highlights that one of the major challenges of big data is having enough managerial and technical talent to do the work.  They predict a shortage of some 1.5M big data savvy workers by 2018. Fortunately,  leading universities such as Northwestern are offering new programs in Predictive Analytics and Analytics  to help meet the demand for big data professionals.

From time to time the Psychology Press makes key papers available for free. This week they have opened up some papers on cognitive neuroscience.  Cognitive designers will find, On The Functional Anatomy of the Urge-for-Action, of special interest.

The discussion paper provides a review of what we know about everyday urges for action such as yawning and swallowing as well as mental health challenges such as obsessiveness compulsive disorder. They find a common neural architecture for all such urges that is distinct from the brain regions that drive intentional behaviors. The article provides important background for designers and innovators working on behavior change challenges.

Functional jewelry includes wearable artifacts that are truly beautiful but also do something really useful, often everyday.  I just completed a small innovation project with a client where we looked at trends and used cognitive design to prototype new product concepts for functional jewelry that fit their core competencies in electronics.

We can make wearable gadgets that are already useful more beautiful as some net-connected watches are or we can take jewelry that is already beautiful such as bracelets or rings and make them more useful.  A third category includes wearable artifacts that are designed from the ground up to include both art and functionality,  for instance  devices that support personal informatics, wearable computing,  environmental causes (e.g. jewelry made from crystals the absorb greenhouse gases) and even innovation in art-based approaches to therapy or behavior change.

Jawbone just announced how they are using their strength in blue tooth technology and design skills in inescapable engagement to create UP, a piece of functional jewelry that works with a smart phone App to track your movement, sleeping and eating patterns and act as a life coach.

UP is a great example in the personal health informatics space. It also raises the question of beauty. How do you really combine art and product engineering?

As I cataloged and deconstructed examples of functional jewelry two reusable design patterns emerged.  I was surprised by how much activity and potential there is the market. There is a lot of opportunity for cognitive designers in functional jewelry, especially if we start with the art.

Interested to hear from readers that own functional jewelry.

As a adviser I often work with leaders or other professionals that are struggling to make sense of what seems to be crazy, counter productive and even irrational behavior in their organizations.  This “crazy behavior” messes with everything from making good decisions and implementing change to treating customers well. Cognitive designers can play an important role in such situations by bring models of how minds work to bear on the problem, identifying the type of dysfunctional thinking in the context, determining root causes and implementing intervention that mitigate or leverage it.

Sounds a bit like therapy and it is. Indeed, some of the best tools for tackling this challenge come from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). In CBT the therapist assumes the patient’s unwanted behavior is being generated by faulty or counter productive beliefs or thinking patterns. The therapist work to surface and change the counter productive thinking pattern in order to end or modify the unwanted behavior.  CBT has be very successful over the last 20 years on everything from depression to obsessive compulsive disorder to anxiety, grief and even procrastination.

CBT is no silver bullet but it does offer the cognitive designer many field tested frameworks and tools for understanding how minds are working.   For example, cognitive distortions or the thinking patterns that are often at the root cause of counter productive behaviors is an extremely value tool. For an introduction check out, 15 common Cognitive Distortions, on the PsychCentral blog. The post gives you a quick definition of common distorts such as over generalizing, black-and-white thinking and the fallacy of fairness.  I often use this list when first introducing the idea to a client because they can immediate recognize them at work in their context.  Suddenly the crazy behavior begins to make a little sense.

Of course spotting cognitive distortions in action is one thing, figuring out how to mitigate or even leverage them is another.

Interested to hear from readers that use cognitive distortions in their consulting, teaching or innovation practices.

Smart phones are a new frontier for cognitive designers. Jobs, consulting and even R&D opportunities abound.  Figuring out how our minds work on mobile platforms and remaking services to better meet our cognitive, emotional, motivational and volitional needs is big business.  Using smart phones to learn, make more effective decisions, change unwanted behaviors and increase situational awareness are obvious opportunities for cognitive designers.   Less obvious are the challenges of figuring out psychological optimal ways of presenting ads (yikes!) and leveraging the unique properties of smart phones to act as sources of on-demand mental energy for managing stress (yea!).

I am always on the lookout for good research into the actual use and cognitive science of cell phones.  Take for example, a recent article in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing entitled, Habits Make Smart Phone Use More Pervasive.  The authors use designed-focused ethnographic techniques to peer into the lives of smart phone users.   They found people spending 2-2.5 hours on their phones each day in 90 second bursts (median time) exercising a checking habit and seeking information rewards.

“Checking habit: brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content quickly accessible on the device”

Some interactions were even shorter (few seconds) as people turned on their phone’s screen to check notification icons or the time.

Just as we naturally scan the physical environment seeking interesting things to see, hear, touch, smell or taste we are now regularly checking cyberspace for interesting things to see and hear. A new innovation frontier for cognitive design is open wide!

Submission deadline December 9, 2011 

The Management Innovation eXchange or MIX aspires to revolutionize the theory and practice of management. The idea is that the world is changing faster than our management models and that we are now so badly out of step that nothing short of a revolution in the foundations of management is needed.  The world of work spins on services, networks, knowledge, intangible value and agility. Our management models are focused on products, hierarchy, information, tangible assets and control.

The exchange has done a good job of building community and sharing knowledge on hacks (disruptive ideas) and stories (inspiring examples) but has failed to deliver a revolution.  While their are many interesting ideas and examples on the site, we have yet to see new principles and frameworks emerge. Hopefully that will come with time.

MIX uses a prize-based open innovation model.    The current challenge is a Human Capital M-Prize on Leadership.  They are looking for hacks and stories that tell us how to develop the leadership talents of everyone not just those with formal position in the hierarchy of an organization.   To quote:

“We are looking for ideas and examples that can inspire and instruct talent professionals in their quest to build organizations that encourage and capture the leadership gifts of everyone, every day.” 

So-called informal, unassigned or emergent leaders represent a largely untapped opportunity.   How can we develop and unleash them?

Sony announced a head-mounted display that creates a theater-quality 750 inch virtual screen in 2D or 3D. This takes the cognitive impact of games, movies and video-based communications, training and learning to the next level.  Available in Japan now at around $800.  Very interested to hear from readers that own or have used Sony’s Personal 3D viewer HMZ-T1.

Source of Images: Japanese Photo Gallery 

Every successful innovator or leader I have met is always trying very hard to figure something out. Asking questions, learning, testing concepts and talking with others about new ideas.  That simple observation is at the heart of two new books on innovation.

The Innovator’s DNA focuses on five skills of disruptive innovators including asking questions, observing, networking with people for new ideas, making associations and experimenting to uncover insights. Of course you need a the traditional willingness to take risks and challenge the status quo. Likewise in yet to be released book, The Lean Startup,  sees successful entrepreneurs are those that systematically experiment with all aspects of their vision – product, distribution, business model – and quickly figure out how to build a sustainable business.

Fuzzy notions of creativity are replaced by crisper notions and even disciplined methods (e.g. validated learning) for figuring things out. Readers of the cognitive design blog will see at the core of both books the psychology of  the experiential learning loop where we take action, reflect on the action, conceptualize or build up an understanding of what might be going on, take another action to test that understanding and repeat until you give up or have figured things out.

Moving through the loop, fast, cheap and deep requires considerable skill and motivation but nothing mysterious.   Much like a diet or other forms of self improvement, innovation does not involve rocket science just the hard but enjoyable work of figuring things out.

What are you trying hard to figure out? How fast, cheap and deep are you moving through the experiential learning loop to do it?