Cognitive Design

Much of the value that is generated in advanced economies comes from knowledge work and emotional labor. Learning, problem solving, innovating, empathizing and emotional control  is what we are getting paid for.  This puts a premium on understanding how people think-and-feel as they work, use products and experience services.   Studying how  minds work and using the results to improve knowledge productivity and customer experience is starting to come into vogue.

One surprise those  new to the field often get is  how messy real thinking is.  When you study how people actually reason in the wild (real world setting outside of a laboratory) you find they can  pull on a set of beliefs that are contradictory and strategies that are far from logical and sometimes not even  in their best interest. Naturalistic reasoning is very messy.

This is especially obvious when people grapple with so-called existential questions about the nature of life, illness and death. A recent psychological study found that when dealing with such questions more than 50% of subjects  (ages 5-75 ) mixed scientific (biological) and supernatural  explanations to develop answers. For example:

Among the adult participants, only 26 percent believed the illness could be caused by either biology or witchcraft. And 38 percent split biological and scientific explanations into one theory. For example: “Witchcraft, which is mixed with evil spirits, and unprotected sex caused AIDS.”  However, 57 percent combined both witchcraft and biological explanations. For example: “A witch can put an HIV-infected person in your path.”

 We normally take superstition, science and religion to offer  mutually exclusive modes of explanation. Yet they are being mixed together in naturalist reasoning on basic questions. This happens in other context too including the workplace. Cognitive designers must embrace this messiness. That is where the insights are.

Self control is a prized resource.  Most of my clients and many students are interested in what it is and how to get more of it.  To design programs, products and services that improve self control we must first understand what it feels like. More specifically, what are the unique mental states, frame of mind or thoughts and feelings associated with a state of self control.  Until we have insight into that, it will be tough to apply cognitive design to the challenge.

 So what does self control think and feel like? We can study the question with introspection, self reports, ethnographic observation and protocol analysis.  And hope for an articulation (narrative description) that is accurate and specific enough to provide design insights.  We can also study the question with neuroscience and brain scans.  While lacking an articulation of the psychological contents, a neuroscientific  study can never the less lead to interesting interventions.

As an example of the neuroscience approach, I recently found a TEDx talk, A Brain Computer Interface for Exercising the Self Control Muscle, by Jordan Silberman a PhD/MD student at the University of Rochester.   We might not always know what self control thinks or feels like but we do know what it looks like in the brain (image to the right). Knowing that it is possible to develop an neurofeedback training scheme (see below) that correlates the brain state of self control to an external training signal (a bar that moves up and down on the computer screen.

This simple device lets the user learn to put themselves in the mental state of self control through rapid trial and error. By inducing the state you exercise your self control muscle. The video shows one experiment where people that used the training are able to maintain self control far better than the control group.

This is an exciting result with a lot of implications for cognitive designers once the technology matures a bit. In the meantime  you have to wonder, do people that go through this training have a better insight into the think-and-feel of self control? Can it be articulated and used to drive design innovations now?

Interested to hear from readers – how do you characterize the frame of mind (intellectual, affective, motivational, volitional) for self control?

Cognitive design makes an unique contribution to improvement and innovation efforts by focusing on the workflow between the ears. By discovering and documenting mental processes and psychological needs cognitive designers bring important new requirements, constraints and opportunities to the table.   There are five ways to get at the workflow between the ears:

1. Search the literature and develop a hypothesis. If someone else has already developed a cognitive model of the domain you are working in make use of it. This can include general processes such as recognition-primed decisions making or something more specific such as threat detection in battle field management.
2. Do some fieldwork. This means going out and watching and making inferences about what people are thinking and feeling. Ethnographic methods and empathy mapping used in design thinking are popular examples.
3. Use lightweight modeling techniques. These often include using validated psychological assessment instruments to measure individual’s strengths, weaknesses and needs against a known model. For example, two instruments that are very useful for cognitive designers are the learning style inventory that gives insights into how individuals learn from experience and the sensory profile that provides a measure of how sensitive an individual is to sensory stimulation.  Both these instruments are very useful when you are designing for behavior change.
4. Use heavyweight modeling techniques.  These are cognitive engineering and artificial intelligence techniques and include for example cognitive task analysis and protocol analysis.   With these techniques experts are sometimes asked to  think-aloud while they are doing the mental work of interest. These verbal reports are treated as data and are analyzed and scored to develop a model of the mental process.  Another technique is the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique  that focuses on the collection and analysis of images that users provide to infer the mental models and metaphors that are guiding their thinking.  While the use of these heayweight techniques requires considerably more expertise than the previous techniques, they are essential for many application of cognitive design.
5. Lab and Clinical Modeling: These are often the most expensive and complex to use and include for example eye-motion. EEG and brain scanning studies.  The idea is to directly measure brain states or related psychological states to understand how people think-and-feel when interacting with a product or other artifact.  Usually this happens in a cognitive or neuroscience lab but over the last few years companies have formed to make the techniques more accessible especially in advertising, marketing and brand management.  See NeuroFocus for example.

It is best to work these in order as each provides context and insights for how best to scope the next one in line.

While many current innovation methods stress field work and rapid prototyping with users, it is often necessary to use light-and-heavy weight modeling methods to generate real insights into how to move hearts and minds.

Nearly 40 million people in the US suffer from intractable and chronic pain at a cost of approximately $600 billion (yes billion) a year. Chronic pain is intractable when the injury is not enough to account for the continued pain.  There is something else at work – a brain state or psychological process. But what?

Researchers at Northwestern University might have an answer. After 10 years of work they now have compelling evidence that

… chronic pain develops the more two sections of the brain — related to emotional and motivational behavior — talk to each other. The more they communicate, the greater the chance a patient will develop chronic pain.

This means that if two people develop a similar injury, say a back injury, the person with higher levels of activity between two brain regions  (frontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens) will be more apt to develop chronic pain.  They also found:

“The more emotionally the brain reacts to the initial injury, the more likely the pain will persist after the injury has healed”

Both these findings are important for cognitive designers working on chronic pain applications.  A brain/psychological state versus an injury is a proximate cause in longer-term chronic pain. This means improvement is possible through psychological design and therapy versus just clinical medicine.  Ideally, the brain will be able to unlearn the pain.

Source: 2012 Science and Engineering Indicators, Chapter Seven

Four recent experiments suggest:

“People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as waiting for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate’s favor by doing good deeds proactively.”

We naturally do good rather than act selfishly when we want something important that is outside of our control.  The idea is that by doing good we are more deserving of a favorable outcome and the fates will smile on us.

The are many implications for cognitive design. For example, presenting options to invest in Karma (do good) when people are in this mental state could be an effective  way of managing individual anxiety and creating social value at the same time.

Check the psychological distance of the decision-maker.

When making decisions about purchases, jobs, vacations or just what to do with free time we  like to have a choices.  Cognitive designers often worry about how to make such decisions not only easy but enjoyable and part of the value the decision-maker experiences. After all, anticipating and planning can create positive psychology, savoring and even Dopamine release!  On the other hand it can lead to confusion, irritation and choice overload.  So I am always on the lookout for new scientific studies that examine how the number and framing of decisions or choices can create a positive think-and-feel experience.

For example, researchers at Washington University in St Louis have found evidence that psychological distance impacts our preference for assortment size.  If what we are making a decision about is spatially far away or pushed into the future we naturally prefer fewer choices.  If it closer in space-and-time we get value from having additional choices.  In a news release the researchers explain it this way:

“Psychological distance is common concern when consumers are making decisions related to the future such as vacation, insurance, or retirement planning. In such instances, consumers tend to focus on the end goal and less about how to get there. When planning a vacation that is months away, a consumer would probably prefer to hear about fewer dining options in the city they will be visiting than if their vacation was coming up in less than a week.”

While this  in-the-future effect should not be a surprise to readers of the Cognitive Design blog, the researchers also claim it happens we make decision about far away locations.

A generation ago cool was typified by characters that were rebellious, tough, emotionally controlled and thrill seeking.  Individualistic and counter cultural – the James Dean type.  Not so today, at least according to research done by the University of Rochester Medical Center.   The results, published as Cool: An Empirical Investigation in the Journal of Individual Differences, include:

“A significant number of participants used adjectives that focused on positive, socially desirable traits, such as friendly, competent, trendy and attractive.”

Cool is warm, friendly, competent, trendy and attractive. That’s a big change. The research was extensive (1000 participants) but focused on the Vancouver British Columbia area.

Feeling cool is a unique and often highly valued mental state.  So understanding people’s mental model for cool is important for any (cognitive) designer that aspires to create such feelings through their works. The Rochester  study challenges the stereotype for cool. While I am not ready to adopt the model the study suggest, it does signal there could be generational differences in what counts as cool.

Sensory perceptions often trigger affect. That is, when I see, hear, smell, touch or taste something, I find it pleasant or unpleasant to some degree (valence) and that in turn activates other mental states (arousal).  It is generally thought that affect is partially determined by the objective nature of the sensory experience but it is also strong shaped by what I expect to perceive or the encodings of the mental model I use to interpret the experience.  Affect as valence (pleasantness) + activation (arousal) has been studied for extreme states such a love, fear, joy, hate and so on.   This leaves open the question of the role of affect with everyday objects or those with little valence and/or activation.  Does affect play an important role in our mental processes and behaviors with everyday objects?

According to recent research  from the Center for the Neural Basis for Computation at Carnegie Mellon University the answer is yes – there are so-called micro valences that do in fact shape our decisions and behaviors.  Interestingly, these micro valences are an intrinsic part of our mental representation of objects, they are not judgments or values we attach after perception.

“Much in the same way that we automatically perceive the shape, size, or color of objects, we cannot help but perceive the valence in objects. In this sense, valence is not a label applied after the fact to perceptual entities, but rather is an intrinsic element of visual perception with the same mental status as other object properties.”

This has important implications for cognitive designers.  It suggests that low activation events are still driven by affect (i.e. a micro valence) even though there are no obvious emotions involved. Everyday objects are boring. And small differences can change the outcome of a decision.  Also, micro valences can expand our understanding of the higher-level object properties that inform the construction of mental models (see figure). This could be important for psychographics.

Imagine being able to shape choice and modify behaviors around the use of everyday objects by making a very small change to features and functions. In principle this should be possible if we understand the micro valences at work.

Understanding and meeting deeply-felt psychological needs is the primary goal of cognitive design.   So I am always on the look out for studies that reveal how we think-and-feel in everyday situations in enough detail to have implications for designers.

Take for example, the recent research done at the University of Alberta on  Pleasure, pain and the satisfied customer. They studied emotional reactions to  service experiences and purchases and found significant difference between consumers that are primarily promotion-focused or pleasure seeking and those that are prevention-focused or pain avoiding. The bottom line:

Pleasure seekers have a stronger emotional reaction when things go well or bad while those that avoid pain have a more muted emotional response.

This has clear implications for experience and service designers looking to leverage emotional energy. Focus on pleasure seekers!

While over generalized, the researchers go on to suggestion that men and younger people tend to be pleasure seekers while women and older people tend to try and avoid pain.  They offer some practical advice for service recovery and word-of-mouth marketing:

“To some extent, they can tell front-line people that, as older people approach them, they’re going to be more prevention-focused, they’re not going to be as extreme either way,” said Murray. “But when something has gone really wrong with that 21-year-old’s game console, they’re going to be a lot more upset and more likely to tell their friends.

“On the flip side, when they take it home and it works well and they really enjoy it, they’re more excited and happy, and more likely to tell their friends about it.”

The pleasure-pain psychographic is strong enough to warrant a review of your product designs, service processes and even internal employee programs.