Cognitive Design

A New York Times journalist interviewed 200 design experts and wrote a book on design thinking, titled Glimmer: How design thinking can transform your life, and maybe even the world.  It is an interesting piece of work that is distilled into 10 design thinking principles.  Check them out. I have used variations of all of them in many settings. They work.

Although design thinking is certainty entering its hype phase, it won’t get any real traction as a management problem solving or innovation tool until there is a simple, proven and differentiated methodology to make it go. This is how lean, six sigma, process re-engineering and other management innovations got traction. The lack of such a methodology is why other management innovations such as knowledge management and systemic thinking failed. Where is the DMAIC (define, measure, analyse, improve, control) for design thinkers?

Check out David Rock’s new book,  Your Brain at Work. The format is perfect for cognitive designers looking for potential insights into the needs of psychologically overtaxed professionals. It is in story form and infused with basic brain and cognitive science.  The book offers an array of tactics for copying with uncertainty, conflicting priorities, difficult relationships, information overload, unfairness, ego, the constant flow of emergencies and so on. The tactics are interesting but the real value for designers is the psychographic read-out of some deep, unmet cognitive (intellectual, emotional, motivation, volitional) needs in the workforce. This is a potential goldmine (or at least a good starting hypothesis) for those interested in remaking organization to fit how our minds work.

I will blog later offering a taxonomy of cognitive needs I extract from the book. I also plan to understand his research methods and do a literature search to seek supporting or countering views.

A small volume from a true design thinking master. For a video from the author, reviews and free chapters click here.

The field of design psychology tries to understand why we make the design choices we do. What causes me to prefer and choose one interior design over another, one architectural/home style over another? The basic argument in the excellent book, Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places, is that it is early childhood experiences in your father’s den, grandfather’s workshop and grandmothers kitchen that are the root cause of your design choices.

Not only does this strongly determine consumer choice but also the decision making process of architects and other professional designers.

Talk about probing the mind of your customer! Of special interest to cognitive designers is the toolkit (see environmental autobiographies) and the emphasis on designing for positive change.

A slogan in an advertisement for potato chips that has burrowed its way into our culture.   A great slogan from a cognitive design standpoint but according to a new book by David Kessler (Harvard trained MD and head of the Food and Drug Administration) there may more powerful forces at work.

His new book,  The End of Overeating, argues that food scientists have learned how to tap into our brain chemistry to stimulate our desire to eat more even when we are not hungry.  If you don’t want to go after the book, check out the review, How the Food Makers Captured our Brains, in the New York Times.   Here is a taste (pun intended):

“When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full.”

This is an important perspective for anyone designing weight management programs.  You will have to design interventions that can overcome visceral effects far more powerful than normal hunger. Yikes.

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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One question I am often asked is, does your approach to cognitive design also include emotion? My answer is empathetically yes!  I believe the classic distinction between cognition (i.e. intellectual or rational) and affective (i.e. emotional or irrational) has been shattered.

This is key point for cognitive designers. If we aspire to design for how minds actually work, we must understand the basic interplay between intellectual and emotional processes. Assuming they are separate and distinct, when in fact they are not leads to bad designs.

There is a lot of recent evidence that supports rejecting the long-standing distinction between cognition and affect. For a great overview check out the article (on the Dana Foundation website), Discovering that Rational Economic Man Has a Heart. While you are there, also check out Cerebrum 2009: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science. All the chapters are free online and several promise some useful insights for cognitive designers. 

A book on how neurotechnology is ushering in a new era on the scale of the agricultural, industrial and information revolutions. Not out until July 2009 but being a fan of the authors blog, I expect it to be an outstanding read for cognitive designers. 

The modern designer has challenges at four levels. She must design things that work (engineering design), are easy to use (usability), delight our senses (sensorial design) and move our hearts and minds (cognitive design).   For example, you can design a:   

1.      Multi-function office chair

2.      Multi-function office chair that I can adjust with ease

3.      Multi-function office chair that I can adjust with ease and is beautiful to look at

4.      Multi-function office chair that I can adjust with ease, is beautiful to look at and makes me feel like a “master of the universe” and stimulates bold thinking.

All four of these levels overlap, especially when it comes to

sensorial and cognitive design. After all, perception is a

cognitive process.  A solid scientific understanding of

perception is essential for excellence in cognitive design.

The book I have recommended in the past to students that are very serious about gaining a scientific level (physics, chemistry, physiology, biology) on this topic, Foundations of Sensation and Perception, has just come out with in a second addition.   There is a free sample chapter on the website for the book that clearly illustrates how the author treats the subject.

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Last month I blogged about the new version of Ruth Clark’s book on Building Expertise. She reviews what we know about the cognitive science of learning to provide an evidence-based approach to instructional design. I believe her lessons are of general value to cognitive designers dealing with issues of learnability.  

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