Cognitive Design

If you are looking to gain experience in the new open source community-based approach to design check out Open Planet Ideas.  The goal is to use existing Sony technology to create breakthrough solutions to environmental challenges. To stimulate thinking they offer a technology showcase as  a collection of building blocks to construct design ideas.

This is not a design contest with an open innovation prize but instead an opportunity to work with a community of designers and innovators (including Sony engineers) through inspiration, concepting, evaluation and realization.   They are not looking for new product ideas, or ideas on how to make consumer electronics greener.  Instead the challenge is to determine how to use existing technologies to achieve sustainability.

A video explains how the process works. They have collected 22 inspirations so far that include views of the most pressing environmental issues as well examples of clever uses of technology. Concepting will start in 29 days.

I strongly encourage readers of this blog to participate.   From a cognitive design perspective I am very interested to see how removing the element of competition with a cash prize impacts the outcome.

IDEO has recently started a site, OpenIDEO, to apply crowdsourcing to social innovation. This is your chance to participate in all phases of the innovation process (inspiration, concepting, evaluation and development) for a big question that is posed by a sponsor. There are two big questions currently in the hopper:

1. How might we increase the availability of affordable learning tools & services for students in the developing world?

2. How can we raise kids’ awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices?

Both are excellent challenges for cognitive designers.

The Sekai Camera is a free smart phone App that locates, tags and provides information about the scene in your camera view. It also lets you “air tag” or provide descriptions and comments (text, pictures, icons, etc.) on the scene.  Additional features include a life-log.

A bit crude but it is an important first generation augmented reality application using the mobile web. One more example of how we are breaking down the barrier between the digital and physical worlds.

I invite cognitive designers to experiment with the Sekai Camera and suggest ideas for how it can be adapted to create lasting behavior change, improve organizational performance,  create a differentiated think-and-FEEL for existing products and services or enhance an individuals cognitive performance.

Quickly building low-cost prototypes is a great way to test design concepts especially early in the innovation process.  I’ve seen robust insights developed from on-the-spot mock ups created from simple materials. One of my favorite materials for doing this is Play-Doh. That’s why the 1 hour design challenge: Play-Doh kicks on Core77 caught my eye.

“Your task is to recreate or reinterpret your favorite pair of shoes in play-doh, in one hour or less. Cut loose and give your imagination a stretch. Maybe you’ll create a miniature tribute to your favorite sneaker designer of all time. Or, honor your humble, beat up kicks by sculpting their likeness, busted soles and all.” 

Grand prize includes a $100 gift certificate.   If nothing else you get to practice your prototyping skills to see if you can demonstrate the soul of a shoe in clay in a hour or less.

Understanding the constraints in any given context is fundamental to good design. Indeed, some define design as the ability to simultaneously satisfy multiple constraints. Design is a constraint satisfaction problem.

Constraints come from the client as needs and requirements, the government as rules and regulations and nature as laws and events.  Some say the more constraints you have the fewer options you have as a designer.  This is logical but seems to make assumptions on the limits of creativity. Perhaps we should say, the more constraints you have the more expertise and creativity you need to generate options.

Fred Brooks is a master thinker about the nature of constraints. Outside of computer science he is most famous for his book The Mythical Man-Month.   In this book he reveals a fundamental constraint – after a given point, adding additional resources (e.g. people) to a task does not accelerate the work.  Indeed, at some point the more you add the slower the work goes because complexity and coordination costs increase.   There are many popularizations of Brook’s law – nine women cannot make a baby in a month, you cannot solve a problem by throwing money at it and so on.

Fred Brooks continues to emphasize the importance of constraints in his new book The Design of Design.   A key theme -  design by discovering your scarcest resource and generate a solution that optimizes for it.  You can get a taste for this in an interview he gave to Wired (August 2010 edition not yet available online):

“The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing.”

Strongly suggest wading through the 448 pages of the book to any serious student of design.  Another key theme is that there are invariants across different mediums or fields of design. Identify those and we can factor in lessons across design disciplines.  It is a different type of read than your typical book on design. It is written by one of our deepest design thinkers.

The idea that great designs optimize the scarcest resource has some interesting implications for understanding cognitive design. In many situations attention and more broadly mental energy will always be the scarcest resource we have.  Look first the workflow between the ears for your scarcest resource.

For those that seek to improve organizations the metaphor of “breaking down silos” has a special place. The idea is to get things to work more smoothly across organizational boundaries without disrupting the value those boundaries provide.

Today, we face a new kind of silo or boundary that both accelerates and impedes organizational performance. It is the boundary between the digital or online world and the physical world.  We bridge these worlds with smart phones, digital cameras, PCs, tons of other gadgets and a huge range of software applications ranging from Office products and Facebook to supercomputing applications.  

Integrating cyberspace with office space is one of the major issues we face in the early 21st century.

Meeting this challenge requires a boat load of cognitive design.   To get your wheels turning check out Microsoft’s vision (6 minute video) for getting it done.  It starts out slow but pay special attention to the features and functions that get the big burst of applause.

The electric power generation and distribution system in the US is sometimes called the grid.  A major makeover is in the works that includes an overlay of computers, monitoring devices and software that will make it smarter. This so-called Smart Grid is supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) and is being developed by corporate giants such as IBM and GE. It will change everything about how we use electrical energy for the better – faster, cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.

Designers are even getting into the game. Check out Frog Design is Making the Smart Grid Sexy:

 ”Smart energy products are still in their infancy. While plenty of tools exist to help homeowners track their power use, the majority of them don’t actively help consumers  do anything about their excessive energy use. “We are in the era of awareness tech,” explains David Merkoski, Executive Creative Director at frog design. “The next era is products and services that move into behavior design.”

This is a major opportunity for cognitive designers interested in behavior change.  And it is not just in the home but also business and other organizations that are looking to save money and the planet by making a smart grid investment.

Cognitive design has a key role to play because the hardware/software infrastructure or “information management overlay” needed for the Smart Grid will evolve in stages. We are a long-way off from full automation and therefore human habit and behavior change will continue to play a staring role in creating value.  These behavior changes include for example  shutting off lights, unplugging appliances with vampire load,  putting your computer in sleep mode and adjusting temperature when you are gone or sleeping. All things we don’t have much of a personal financial incentive to do. Perhaps we can find new ways to motivate such behaviors using the “awareness tech” (mentioned above). But who is working on those designs?

When meeting with a prospective client I am always asked – What is cognitive design and what can it do for me? I explain that CD is dedicated to using the latest science and clinical practice to design products, services and organizations for how minds really work.  The value is to achieve lasting behavior change, product/service differentiation, improved organizational effectiveness and peak cognitive performance.  Usually the conversation quickly focuses on behavior change or designing a “think and feel” into a product or service.   More recently, I have seen interest in how individuals can achieve peak cognitive performance to drive success at work, school and life.  Little wonder, according to a recent marketing report by SharpBrains the market for brain training and cognitive health solutions grew by 35% in 2009.

The report, Transforming Brain Health with Digital Tools is filled with insights for cognitive designers but it is very pricey.   For example, the report reveals what those surveyed (1900 decision-makers and early adopters) view as effective ways to preserve and boost brain power:

“Professional and intellectual challenges were rated very effective by 61% of respondents, aerobic exercise and reading books by 42%, meditation by 38%, computerized brain training by 26%, taking prescription drugs by 13%, taking supplements by 12%, and self-medicating with drugs by 1%.”

This leaves plenty of room for innovation.  I am reporting on such innovation (large and small) in YourNextBrain!.

In developed countries the top survival skill in the early 21st century looks to be the ability to self-regulate or control your own behaviors, appetites and emotions. The simple form of this argument points to otherwise avoidable health risks being the number one cause of death. Lifestyle choices (eating, exercise, drugs, stress, etc.) leading to chronic conditions and eventual death.  

In a recent New York Times article Dysregulation Nation, Judith Warner, chronicles the details:

“Now there is a case to be made that problems of self-regulation — of appetite, emotion, impulse and cupidity — may well be the defining social pathology of our time.”

“Eating disorders, “in general a disorder of self-regulation,” according to Darlene M. Atkins, director of the Eating Disorders Clinic at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, grew epidemic in the past few decades, and in recent years have spread to minority communities, younger girls, older women and boys and men too.”

“We read about dopamine fiends sitting enslaved to their screens, their brains hooked on the bursts of pleasure they receive from the ding of each new e-mail message or the arousing flash of a tweet. “

“Mental-health professionals report seeing increasing numbers of kids who are all out of sync: they can’t sustain attention, regulate their rage, moderate their pain, tolerate normal types of sensory input.”

“The signs that something is amiss in our inner mechanisms of control and restraint are everywhere. “

As dark as this seems I firmly believe we can design our way out of it. (more…)

We are creating an internet of things where all objects not just computers, phones and webcams are networked and interacting with each other. Books, pens, cars, household appliances, RFID tagged objects,  body sensors or literally any “thing” is being wired and connected. This trend has big implications for cognitive designers. For example, it significantly extends the range of options for designing for behavior change.

Part of this trend includes using everyday objects as interfaces. For some interesting examples check out Core77′s 1-hour design challenge on gestural interfaces. They are still open for submissions if you are feeling creative.

My favorite is shown to the right. According to the designer: “Here’s a credit card that gets more jagged the more you use it! Be sure to pay it off before it becomes so sharp that you can’t even use it (without special gloves, sold separately).”