As we age we begin to bind or encode non-relevant bits of information into the memories we form. This is called hyper-binding and reveals an interesting increase in bandwidth but decrease in discrimination in memory formation in the elderly. This may have significant implications for the cognitive designer.
Cognitive design is about understanding the psychological (intellectual, affective, volitional and motivational) needs of individuals and groups and optimizing the artifacts we create to meet those needs. Cognitive designers are by profession catalogers of psychological needs. The results are often cast in psychographic profiles that show how clusters of needs work together to create a “cognitive type” that we can design for.
So I am always on the look out for new scientific studies that shed light on the psychological needs of specific groups. The blog, Speak the Culture has a recent post that does an excellent job summarizing five major studies that shed light on the cognitive needs of employees. I won’t repeat the great reporting in the post but will quote the conclusion:
“All this research seems to reiterate the same thing! Inspiring employees to be engaged and productive is not just about the money — it’s about winning their heads and hearts by offering an optimal amount of challenge, ensuring they feel valued and exhibiting sincere concern for their well-being. Confirmation bias at its best? Perhaps it’s simply the truth.”
The post and referenced reports are definitely worth a read for anyone looking to take a cognitive approach to workplace design issues.
I occasionally work with graduate students at Northwestern University to reverse engineer designs that have exceptional impact on cognition or how we think-and-feel. The goal is to discover what unique set of cognitive needs they satisfy and what special features/functions they deploy that move our hearts and minds so effectively.
A student recently sent a link to Questing for Well-Being at Weight Watchers, that reveals some insight into the unique set of cognitive needs the program satisfies:
“We find that among Weight Watchers members in the United States, the support group acts as a venue for angst?alleviating therapeutic confession, fosters the enactment of the support group as a benevolent system of therapeutic oversight, and facilitates a revitalizing practice of autotherapeutic testimonial.”
In short it relieves negative emotions associated with set-backs, makes members comfortable with surrendering some control to the group and promotes wellbeing through helping others. Weight Watchers is effective at achieving sustained weight loss for its members. One reason it works is that it attends to cognitive needs that other programs fail to meet.
I am doing some work for a small firm that specializes in providing products and services to new entrepreneurs. The conditions for starting new businesses have changed dramatically over the last few years. My client wants to be sure their offerings are optimized for how the “entrepreneurial minds actually works” in this new environment. A perfect problem for a cognitive designer.
One interesting thing has surfaced already is the demographics of their customers. Turns out your typical entrepreneur is near middle age, well-educated, married and with kids. That seems a bit odd but is backup by the literature. For example, Strategy+Business reports in The True Characteristics of Entrepreneurs that:
”The authors surveyed 549 company founders in a dozen high-growth industries — including health care, aerospace, defense, and computers — and found that their average age when they launched their business was 40. Contrary to popular perception, most entrepreneurs came from middle- or upper-lower-class families and were married with two or more children, in addition to being highly educated (less than 5 percent reported having a degree below a bachelor’s).”
Such individuals are likely to think-and-feel (have cognitive needs) very different than the 20 something, risk-taking, single, workaholic entrepreneur we hear about in the media so often.
Many people get considerable mental energy from boasting but don’t want to seem boastful. The question for the cognitive designer is how can we create experiences that give client’s the mental lift of boasting without the downside of appearing too self promoting? There is no easy way, but the literature provides some guidance:
1. Have the person who is hearing the boast prompt the telling of it with a question. This effect indicates “self promotion in response to a question is perceived more positively”.
2. Have a third-party, especially one that is neutral, do the boasting. This effect indicates that you are less likely to seem boastful if someone else sings your praises. For some, such reputational effects are even more psychological pleasurable (mental energy) than direct telling.
The question and third-party effects give hints on how to keep a positive valence to the mental energy/emotion that comes from boasting.
In previous posts we have examined how important fairness and reciprocity are when designing service recovery processes. Indeed, I argued that these psychological effects and the meaning states they create are far more important than the monetary factors involved.
A colleague recently shared material on the field of cognitive economics that provides an interesting scientific footing for this position and other aspects of cognitive design. An excellent reference site can be found here. A specific article on how we trade economic value for fairness and reciprocity can be found in: In Search of Homo Economicus.
Conspicuous consumption for men and conspicuous charity for women.
The New Scientist reports on an interesting series of studies that examines how being mating-primed shapes our behaviors. The study, Sex and Shopping – it’s a guy thing, reports:
“The results were dramatic: men in the mating condition said they would spend much more money than men in the non-mating condition – for example, they might take the European vacation rather than saving that money – but there was no mating effect on women’s consumption decisions. On the other hand, women in the mating condition said they would spend much more time volunteering than women in the non-mating condition. There was no mating effect on men’s volunteering. This study confirmed that conspicuous consumption (for men) and conspicuous charity (for women) can be increased by thinking about mating opportunities, and so can function strategically as a form of mating display.”
The seeming differences between men and women can be explained with costly signalling theory or the idea that “that animals, including humans, use costly, intricate and hard-to-fake signals to flaunt their biological fitness to potential mates and social partners.”
Look here for some interesting insight into how we perceive time. This is a technical article on short-time perception but the intro section is must reading for cognitive designers. It explains the neurological foundation for two built in clocks – one that runs on a 24-hour clock much like a wall clock and the other that runs like a variable speed stop watch.
Here is a classic cognitive design challenge
ScienceDaily’s, Of Girls and Geeks, reports on research done at the University of Washington that claims stereotypes about computer scientists/students are keeping many women and some men away from the field. They report:
“The stereotype of computer scientists as nerds who stay up all night coding and have no social life may be driving women away from the field, according to a new study published this month.” And there is more: “When people think of computer science the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science fiction memorabilia and junk food,” said Sapna Cheryan, a University of Washington assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “That stereotype doesn’t appeal to many women who don’t like the portrait of masculinity that it evokes.”
The research is interesting in its emphasis on the supporting artifacts and environmental factors (all the stuff computer geeks are surrounded by) and the role it plays in driving an “ambient feeling” of belonging or not. A real clue for the cognitive designer.
The challenge for the cognitive designer is to create a mental model and supporting artifacts that gives computer science a “new brand”. One that is true to the field but that resonates with, or even accelerates, the thinking of female students.
