Cognitive Design

The Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology offers world-class training for those interested in becoming designers, design thinkers and even design researchers and scholars. They just announced a new executive format for earning a Masters in Design Methods. Classes meet two weekends a month for 20 months for a total fee of approximately $51K.

“This program is for exceptional design, management, engineering, and other professionals who wish to acquire robust design methods and frameworks and apply design thinking to the development of products, communications, services, and systems.”

The idea is you can get world-class design thinking training and keep your day job. The program includes courses focused on cognitive design.  For example, The Brains Behavior and Design course draws on behavioral economics and cognitive science to equip designers with a toolkit for influencing consumer decision-making. You can download the toolkit for free.

Interested to hear from readers that are part of this program or other graduate training programs in design thinking that use the executive format.

A start-up called GreenGoose! is getting ready to release a toolkit for developing applications that remake the psychology of everyday events. The toolkit includes sensor stickers and a small base receiver that connects to your wireless router. Here is how it works:

“The sensors are wireless and have a battery inside which lasts a year. Each one measures a different thing you do, but they all communicate with the same egg-sized base-station. Just stick to items like pet food scoops, frisbees, and water bottles.”

The data that is captured can be used to drive a game, health application, social interaction or other means of creating mental energy and well being.

The system promises to be low-cost, robust and easy to use. They are looking for developers.  While some programming will be involved the real challenge is in the cognitive design.

How can data about everyday activities be used to create fun, meaning or other positive mental states?

They have an app coming out focused on your pets.

Interested to hear from readers that have ideas for the home, workplace and community (e.g. while shopping or walking through the woods) applications.

Studies in cognitive science and psychology in general are often done on a small group of subjects with a similar psychographic profile.  University college students are by far the most popular subject pool. This sampling bias slows the development of the science  and blocks useful generalizations.

Conducting large-scale and more empirically robust studies of how our minds work has until recently been far too costly and complex for most academic researchers. Mobile and social media is changing that.   A new generation of experimental design is emerging in cognitive science that makes use of the internet and smart phones as data collection tools that can involve hundreds if not thousands of subjects from diverse cultures around the world. But will it really make a difference?

According to the 17 authors of the paper, Smart Phone, Smart Science, not only will it make a difference, it will revolutionize cognitive science.  They show how the smart phone can be applied to study reaction times in lexical decision making, a classic research question in cognitive psychology. While the details of the experiment might not be of interest to readers of this blog, the general conclusion should be:

“The use of smartphones for scientific experimentation heralds a new era in behavioral sciences. The approach has wide multidisciplinary applications in areas as diverse as economics, social and affective neuroscience, linguistics, and experimental philosophy. Finally, it becomes possible to reliably collect culturally diverse data on a vast scale, permitting direct tests of the universality of cognitive theories.”

Changing how you can collect data in science, often revolutionizes the field. Think about the impact of the telescope and microscope.

If social mobile media can advance scientific practice, it can certainty also be used to improve how we  prototype, test and refine cognitive designs. It is not just smart phone – smart science, it is smart phone – smart cognitive design research.

I am interested in hearing from readers that have used smart phones or the internet (custom websites, communities, twitter, etc.) to conduct design research, prototype or otherwise empirically drive design thinking.

IBM has a vision for a smarter planet. The vision is rooted in taking a scientific approach to services and the emerging internet of things. The pitch is that we can instrument (slap a sensor or servo on) anything, interconnect it with everything and add intelligence.

Instrument, interconnect and add intelligence is a design pattern that shifts the cognitive load off people, extends the intelligence of individuals and groups and can otherwise be used to a wide variety mind-optimized designs.  

Applications big and small are popping up everywhere.

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The Rotman School of Management and Mayo’s Center for Innovation recently sponsored a business design challenge for graduate students. The idea is to deeply integrate MBA style business acumen with the creativity of design thinking to produce breakthrough insights. The challenge was to:

“Develop a new offering targeted at a specific patient population that will enable that population to improve their prospects for a healthy future.”

According to the post, The Rotman Design Challenge, the contest attracted some 19 teams from around the US and Canada. Five students from the Masters program in strategic foresight and innovation at the Ontario College of Art and Design won with the concept of Mayo Moms:

“Overlooking the intense emotions so often sparked by the topic of breastfeeding, the project envisioned Mayo as a facilitator, not a provider of healthcare per se. By certifying women who’d previously breastfed successfully as “Mayo Moms” and partnering them with mothers-to-be within the community, the students both leveraged Mayo’s brand and pointed to the creation of a potentially limitless social network.”

It will be interesting to see if this program is implemented. Getting individuals and groups more directly involved in wellness and prevention is something we clearly need to figure out – STAT.

Psychology Press, a leading publisher of books and articles on all aspects of cognition, has open up some of their content.  Over 40 articles from 14 top journals are available online for free. The journals include for example, Memory, Cognitive Neuroscience and Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition.  They plan on updating the content on a regular basis.

Although the articles are theoretical in nature, many of them have implications for cognitive designers. For example:

How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes, demonstrates that talking aloud while thinking improves the general intelligence of older adults but fails to have an impact on other cognitive tasks (e.g. visual memory) or boost cognition in younger adults.

Have You Got The Look? demonstrates a bias in visual cognition for faces that look directly at us rather than away. More specifically, a direct gaze (instead of averting your eyes) makes you more attractive to others.

The Influence of Affect on Higher Level Cognitive Functions reviews the literature on how emotion impacts interpretation, judgment, decision making and reasoning.  They found a pronounced and complex impact, challenging the dual-mode or hot (emotion-based) versus cool (reason-based) model of cognition that is popular now.  Instead they found a “dynamic interplay” of affect and cognition present in all higher cognitive functions.  They over a specific model of this interplay that has clear design implications for applications in interpretation, decision-making and general reasoning.

If you read any of the articles please share your insights and any design implications you see.

Over the last 30 years cognitive science has revealed a new and significantly different understanding of how minds work.  Little of this new view has been factored into management, education, healthcare, communications and other cognition-intense activities.  This creates opportunities for those interested in translating the science into new frameworks, methods and products aimed at creating more brain-smart practices. And the science continues to advanced – it is a moving target!

Take for example, the idea of dual-processing models of cognition that were popularized so well by the book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The key idea is that we have two types of mental processes – automatic and deliberate – and most of what we do between our ears is automatic.  Now more and more researchers are calling this simple distinction in question, claiming sub-classifications within both deliberate and automatic processing.  One clear example is the work being done at Max Planck Institute.  It is summarized nicely in Beyond Dual-Process Models.

The researchers focus on the automatic or intuitive processes and argue for four classes based on the cognitive process involved. The classes include association, matching, accumulation and constructive.

Such refinements suggest a number of possibilities for the design of education or decision-making applications.   For example, the researchers talk about the different role of affect (emotion) in each model. Further, leveraging these sub forms of intuition might also be a way to lower the cognitive load of various activities.   While these model are very much in the research phase, they signal the start of an important refinement in the science used by cognitive designers.

Design thinking, like quality thinking, process thinking, systemic thinking, lean thinking and the other “think like this” movements before it, is knocking on business’s door. It promises everything from more insightful strategy, to higher levels of innovation, truly agile operations and planned organizational change that works.

Design thinking as an early-stage management innovation is in a state of disarray.  But that’s natural. Basic questions about definitions, methods and even if it works dominate the conversation.  And these are the questions that you must answer to get traction in business.  And they must be answered in just the right way.  What is it? How do I do it? How do I know it works?

Indeed, when you look at the history of management innovation there is a clear signature to those that get traction and those that don’t.  A manifesto is required that provides answers to the three questions that are powerful, simple and easy to retell. A compelling position that declutters the conversation and readies the management mind for action.  While there are many fine books on design thinking for business, none come close to being a manifesto.

Manifestos are of special interest to cognitive designers that study management innovation and social change. They have a design that moves the heart and extends the mind.  So I am always on the lookout for manifestos anxious to understand their content and deconstruct their design and figure out what makes them tick.

Take for example the fourth coming book -Designing for Growth: a design thinking tool kit for managers.  It shows some signs of being a manifesto. I base that on  reading the first two chapters and looking at the cover art. The authors are good at creating cognitive dissonance and then resolving it in creative synthesis. This changes thinking.

For example, in the section on: Design and Business: A Match Made in Heaven – or Hell, they present a contrast table:

Runs deep and to the point but does not overload.  They also present a 4-step method and 10 tools which they build up graphically over time with a grand finale of:

While too complex to share easily the wave form and some of the catch phrases (e.g. what WOWs) could vector.

Interested to hear from readers that are aware of manifestos on design thinking or have insights into the cognition of why they work.

Xtranormal and Bing have teamed up to sponsor a contest for the best short online films with a decision making theme.  Xtranormal is creator of Movie Maker an easy to use tool for producing online films just by typing. Microsoft just launched a new version of Bing positioning it as a “decision engine”.  Here is the assignment:

“Create a video that’s two minutes or less in one of three categories: Action, Horror or Romance, and remember that Bing is looking for movies about a “decision”. A winning video from each category will receive $2,500 and be eligible for the grand prize: $5000!! – and a new Xtranormal actor made in his or her likeness!”

While the money is modest, the real value to the winner might be the brand lift they get from being announced at the Bing party at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 26.

Fortunately, using Movie Maker to create a film is really easy. While the theme can include anything involving decisions (e.g. a decision you made or how to make better decisions)  the judges might naturally favor something that resonates with Bing’s new brand:

“the decision engine that helps you make more informed decisions by providing the best search experience for topics that are important to you”

There is short video that describes decision-themed and lays downs the rules.

With an emphasis on decision-making, character design and on-line search experience this is clearly a cognitive design challenge.

Talk about out doing the change in millennium.

With population growth, the use of fossil fuels, atomic bomb tests and the like human activities are having a deep and lasting impact on the Earth.  No news here but some leading intellects are arguing that the impact is so deep we must declare a new epoch of geologic time. They call it the Anthropocene (Man made) era and it:

“…represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other. Geologically, this is a remarkable episode in the history of this planet.”

For a great overview check out the theme issue of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time? Follow the link to the journal and all the articles are free on-line.

The introduction might be of most use to designers. Assuming the Anthropocene has merit, there is likely no stronger argument to be made for the value and importance of design. We could even be so bold as to call it the Design Epoch.  Less technical but meaning the same thing, namely made by people.