Cognitive Design

We like to keep things the same, even if it means making errors or receiving less benefit from a situation.  This effect is called the status quo bias. For example, employees will accept the default asset allocation selection in a retirement plan while at the same time understanding that this will likely not produce the best return for them.  The amount of mental energy it takes to think through and select an alternative is not worth the potential future financial benefit.  Plus there is the potential negative emotional energy associated with taking responsibility for the choice and the worry and even anxiety that may produce.  This is not irrationality but it does illustrate the unique cognitive calculus of the status quo bias.  We are very sensitive to (put a huge premium on) the amount of mental energy things take. We don’t want our heads to blow up!

In theory, the harder a decision the more mental energy it requires and therefore the stronger the status quo bias should be.  A recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides evidence for that and even identifies the region of the brain that is active when we overcome the bias. This could prove an important result for those investing in a neuromarketing approach to complex products and services.

One research group reports that we have a distinct pattern of neural activity approximately 30 seconds before making a error in a routine or monotonous task. As the authors point out:

“Our findings provide insights into the brain network dynamics preceding human performance errors and suggest that monitoring of the identified precursor states may help in avoiding human errors in critical real-world situations.” 

If this holds up it is great news for designers of augmented cognition applications. 

Cognitive designers seek to go beyond usability and look-and-feel to create specific mental states or a “think-and-feel”. Designing for pleasure, emotion, meaning, pain relief and improved decision making, learning and behavioral self-control are only a few of the application areas.  The goal is to optimize our designs for how minds work. 

Taking a systematic approach to cognitive design requires that we can somehow get between the ears of the people we are designing for and understand inner mental life and how it is shaped by features, functions and forms.

So I am always on the look out for new tools and techniques for modeling mental states and processes. The holy grail is neural decoding or the ability to translate measurable data on brain activity into the meaning of thoughts, emotions and actions. In short, directly reading the mind. The state of the art in neural decoding was discussed at a recent Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.  The New Scientist offers an excellence synopsis in Brain Scanner Can Tell What You are Thinking About.

Nothing yet for the designer’s toolkit but some very interesting developments:

“He (Jack Gallant) and colleague Shinji Nishimoto showed that they could create a crude reproduction of a movie clip that someone was watching just by viewing their brain activity. Others at the same meeting claimed that such neural decoding could be used to read memories and future plans - and even to diagnose eating disorders.” 

Being able to accurately and cost effectively translate biometric information from our nervous systems into the corresponding thoughts, feeling, motivations and intentions will be one of the major innovations of the 21st century.  Among other things, it will provide the foundation needed to take an exacting approach to optimizing our designs for how minds really work. Cognitive design unleashed.

Image a device, implanted in your brain, that allows you to tune the neurochemistry of motivation to make difficult tasks easy and even immensely enjoyable. That is the idea behind, iPlant, a conceptual design for Human application (10 years out?) but already working in some mammals.  The device generates dopamine (reward drug)  or a powerful motivator to repeat what you just did such as exercise, avoid eating a cookie (self-regulation), study a difficult passage  and so on.

Check out this YouTube that introduces the concept.   For a more robust introduction, check out this longer video that explains how iPlant relates to deep brain stimulation devices already in human use.

It will be interesting to see which hits the market first - brain implants (or hopefully a less invasive device) to control motivation or the so-called “self control” pill. No matter, it looks like good old fashion will power may soon be supercharged by some application of augmented cognition. I am sure that is a good thing.

An outstanding new book, Brain Landscape, argues that the time is ripe to develop paradigms that deeply integrate neuroscientific insights into architectural design practice and create classrooms that impact the cognitive processes of children, hospital rooms that impact the recovery rate of patients and work environments that improve white collar productivity as well as other spaces that favorably impact the brain.

The book is a treasure trove for the cognitive designer. The author, John Eberhard, provides grand vision:

“It seems likely that just as 19th-century physics underlay the development of 20th-century engineering applications, so neuroscience (combined with genetics) will become the basis for new applied science tools in the 21st century. In the next few decades it is likely that the fundamental aspects of neuroscience will become the domain of a new generation of applied social and behavioral scientists, engineers and architects.” 

 As well as a number of well-grounded hypotheses that are specific enough to guide design work:

“A child provided with a space that is appropriately scaled to his or her size will have an adjusted sense of time and space that leads to reduced stress, greater feelings of security, and increased competence.”

The book is a bit pricey but is available at a modest discount as a Kindle edition.

The disciplines of management and leadership have the most to gain from advances in the cognitive and neuro sciences that reveal how people perceive, learn, think, feel and inter-relate.  Especially in the era of knowledge work where emotional quotients are more important than intelligence quotients and  overall cognitive performance is a matter of competitive advantage, leaders must do what they can to understand and support the “workflow between the ears”.

And we have learned a lot about how the mind works but it does not seem to be rewiring our approach to management and leadership.

Why is that?

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The FDA just approved (under the humanitarian device exception) a deep brain stimulation implant to help control treatment-resistive obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The device is aptly called Reclaim and was developed by Medtronic. According to an FDA press release: 

“The Reclaim system uses a small electrical generator known as a pulse generator to create electrical stimulation that blocks abnormal nerve signals in the brain. This small battery-powered device is implanted near the abdomen or the collar bone and connected to four electrodes implanted in the brain through an insulated electric wire known as the lead. Two device systems may be implanted to stimulate both sides of the brain or one device may be implanted with two lead outputs. ”

Not offered as a cure or even as a substitute for medication it is still a good example of how we are using insights from cognitive science to design new artifacts - in this case a therapy.   Additional applications (e.g. depression) are now in clinical trials.

Leading Organizations are Investing in Developing Sophisticated Models of Employee and Customer Cognition. 

When talking to process improvement experts, organizational designers or IT professionals about cognitive design I emphasize that the starting point is always the “workflow between your ears”.  The idea is to understand how people perceive, remember, think, feel, learn and interact with each other in order to do work. This is not the workflow that happens between departments but it is the invisible workflow that happens between the ears and amongst our heads and employees and customers.

Making an effort to model cognition or the workflow between the ears gives us the insight into how people really think and feel. This in turn supports the redesign of business models, work processes, information systems, management policies, incentives and other aspects of the work system in a way that supports, enhances or even creates employee and customer cognition. This means serivce innovation, higher productivity, fewer errors, less turnover, faster uptake, less burnout and all the other signs of happy and engaged knowledge workers.  

Remaking our processes and organizations (not to mention products and services) for how minds naturally work is a mega innovation opportunity for the 21st century.

So how do we see the workflow between the ears, how can we model cognition? 

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Almost two weeks ago I did a post on harnessing brainpower, a report by 60 Minutes on brain-machine interfaces. Now brain-machine interfaces are on the cover of Scientific American magazine. 

The lead story, Jacking into the Brain, covers the expected ground but does have some interesting speculation about the future including  the possibility of converting text into neural signals for downloading into our brains.

The Discovery Channel’s Prototype This! team used biofeedback and mind control systems to prototype a car that safely slows and even stops  as the driver becomes angry.

If you have 40 minutes watch the full episode of the Mind Controlled Car. It is worth it! Or if you just have a few minutes check out this 3 min video on final testing.