Cognitive Design

All cognitive designers and change managers should check out the work by Dr Neff, an associate professor of human development and culture at the University of Texas at Austin on Self Compassion.  The site includes assessment instruments, exercises, research articles, videos and more.

The concept of self compassion is straightforward  - having a mindful and open hearted or kind reguard for yourself especially when faced with your shortcomings. But according to the latest research it can have a big impact on how well we adapt to change. For example, a recent study showed that even a modest self-compassion intervention could significantly impact eating habits.

Including specific self-compassion interventions (positive self-talk, journaling, best/worse trait analysis, mindfulness training, etc.)  in your next organizational change program could improve outcomes. This is especially true since our traditional approach to organizational change tends to emphasize what is wrong and implicitly encourages people to be self critical.

Interested to hear from readers that have used self-compassion interventions in change programs.

Works of art have a unique and powerful cognitive impact.  Ideally, we could reverse engineer them, figure out what key features make them tick and then use the key features to artify other objects.   Of course people have been trying to figure out what makes a work of art a work-of-art for a long time.  Most attempts have come from philosophers, artists or critical theorists. Now neuroscientists are getting into the act. Some of the work could be useful for designers.

Take for example the early work (1999), The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of the Aesthetic Experience. The authors offer 8 key features that we find pleasing in works of art including the peak shift effect, isolation, grouping, contrast, symmetry, generic viewpoint, perceptual problem solving and art as metaphor. For a quick overview watch the 10-minute video on the 8 Laws of Artistic Experience.  After watching the video you will notice that at least 50% of the features work because they engage our brains in the active construction of the perceived object (e.g. grouping, perceptual problem solving, metaphor) in a way that results in reward rather than frustration or boredom.

There are many (and more recent) studies in the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics. Very interested to hear from readers about other studies especially ones with implications for how to art up the design of other artifacts.

Brainstorming is the most commonly used technique for attempting to generate new ideas. Unfortunately, it often fails to produce interesting results. It rests on dated science about how our brains really work. It is played out. That is one of the conclusions argued in the must-read article, How Aha! Really Happens, on the Strategy + Business website.

The authors suggest we replace dated thinking about left brain versus right brain and instead formulate our approach to creativity on the theory of intelligent memory. Intelligent memory is one model of dynamic memory proposed by cognitive neuroscientists over the last 20 years.  In the new view, memory is dynamic and constructed rather than static and retrieved. Intelligent memory includes content or what the memory is about, links and connections between content and mental processes that mix and match the links and content.  It is our native ability to dynamically construct memories that is the seat of creativity.

To be creative we need to intelligently remember by finding relevant patterns and mixing, matching, deleting, adding or otherwise combining the various components in novel ways. We can incubate, generate and test various permutations until something sticks.

Although not mentioned in the article, The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and various simplifications such as Systematic Innovation Thinking (SIT) work on this principle. TRIZ was developed by studying the variations and patterns of features and functions in some 200,000 patents that described various innovations. TRIZ is complex and difficult to use but produces amazing results.

Patents are one public way we document innovations.  The lessons of history, legal precedent, business case studies, best practices databases and many other repositories exist.  Opportunities for patternstorming –  or generating new ideas by systematically modifying patterns of what has proven useful in the past- are strong.

One example, covered in the article comes from GE:

“Here’s how it works. At the top of the matrix, write down your current understanding of the situation (always as a provisional draft, because your understanding might change). Then comes analysis: List in rows what actions you think you might need to take to succeed in the situation (these too are in draft form, because they also might change). Then ask the most important question you can ever ask to solve any problem of any kind: Has anyone else in the world ever made progress on any piece of this puzzle? List sources to search for an answer to this question, across the top, as columns (in draft again). The team then starts a treasure hunt. They search the sources for elements that might apply to the list of actions, trying to find a good combination.”

I am not sure how widely used this method is but I have seen several variations of it in practice. It does work.

Very interested to hear from readers that use of patternstorming techniques.

We have covered retro design, or creating artifacts that trigger/satisfy nostalgia, many times in the Cognitive Design blog. And why not? As our population ages a “yearning for the past” will naturally increase. Meeting that yearning through cognitive design is an important source of innovation that has been tapped in many product and service lines ranging from suits and cars to Coke bottles and office equipment.

 So I am always on the lookout for new insights into why or how nostalgic designs work. Recently found a post on the blog innovation playground that provides some insight into how Nostalgic Clues Create Emotion Connections.  My favorite part:

“A nice surprise for me is now I can download a McIntosh app for my iPad. It is very smart idea, not that the app will upgrade the sound from my iTunes, but the skins with the big blue VU meter brings moments of joy even when I am not in front of my McIntosh. Now I can listen to and playback music from my iPad within the classic McIntosh experience. I can now access to my digital music library in a simple elegant interface inspired by the line of McIntosh audio equipment. Genius idea!! And it is free too!!”

High-end (and old school) stereo amplifiers use to sport big blue meters to display information. They got burned into many peoples’ brains. This example also illustrates how we can wrap existing artifacts in a retro skin. A powerful technique.

Many product and some service innovators have embraced retro design but few if any organizational or workplace designers have.  A clear opportunity. For example, how might we retain talent or improve knowledge worker productivity by satisfying a yearning for the past on the job?

New psychological research shows that encouraging the use of hand gestures improves spatial visualization.  When trying to mentally manipulate an object,  using hands to “see” the shape and behavior of the object improves our ability to make judgments and learn.

 We have known about this in science education for a while. For example,  in my physics classes I always teach specific hand gestures and pencil gestures to use to think clearly about forces, fields and vectors.

This finding has clear implications for teaching in every field (e.g. design) and thinking in the workplace.  Hand gestures are natural and spontaneous but are sometimes discouraged in more formal workplaces.  We often teach people to minimize the use of their hands during presentations. This finding suggest it might be far more effective for both speaker and listener to learn to use topic-specific hand gestures, especially when mental or spatial visualization is required.

Interested to hear from readers that have specific hand gestures they use individually or in groups to stimulate thinking.

There is an art to simplification. In the ideal case to simplify X you:

1. Compress X without loss of information

2. Render X so that it can be experienced with a lower cognitive load or greater mental stimulation.

In my leadership class at Northwestern students practice simplification all quarter by taking a draft deliverable that is 7-15 pages of rich ideas and data and rendering it as single page document that meets the criteria above.   To get a good result they must find deep patterns – semantic, graphic, temporal, etc. in the content and use that to compress the complexity of their deliverable.

It is interesting to note that the best results are not just easier to understand they are striking (mental stimulating), a bit like a work of art.  Indeed, works of art may generate an aesthetic experience in part because they present sensory complexity that is easy for our brain to compress.  For example, BMC Research Notes recently published, Musical Beauty and Information Compression.  The key idea:

“Deep cognitive insights are reported as intrinsically satisfying, implying that at some point in evolution, the practice of successful information compression became linked to the physiological reward system. I hypothesise that the establishment of this “compression and pleasure” connection paved the way for musical appreciation…”

The experiments done found that random noise, rock music and Beethoven’s 3rd symphony compress to 86%, 60% and 40% of their original information content respectively. This implies that musical masterpieces present compressible complexity.  I have seen similar studies about the visual arts.

Perhaps the key to the high art of simplification is not to simplify at all but instead to express complexity in a compressible form.

Leaders and innovators are keen on creating intangible value – happiness, meaning, emotional engagement, loyalty, passion and even the WOW factor.  And why not, these mental states drive top performance, sales and marketplace success in the short and long haul.   So there is growing interest in understanding how employees, customers and partners feel or will feel given some proposed change in product, work practice or business model.  Knowing the emotional impact of a proposed change is savvy when it comes to creating, leveraging and protecting the intangible value of the firm.

Care should be taken when asking people how they will feel in the future.  Recent research indicates that we systematic neglect our own personality when predicting how we will feel about future events.

“Quoidbach and Dunn call this phenomenon “personality neglect,” which they tested in connection with the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In early October 2008, a large sample of Belgians predicted how they would feel the day after the U.S. presidential election if Barack Obama won and how they would feel if John McCain won. Then the day after the election, they reported how they actually felt, and completed personality tests. Nearly everyone in the study supported Obama, so most predicted they would be happy if he won.” 

But it turns out supporters with a grumpy disposition remain so despite the happiness they predicted for themselves and the fact that their candidate won.  They failed to factor their grumpy personality into an emotional forecast.

Care should be taken when designing surveys that involves emotional forecasting.  Much better to empathize rather than analyze or swing the other way and collect physiological data rather than verbal reports when it comes to understanding emotional states.

Analytics involves using data and math to make decisions and run the organization.  With current technologies, oceans of data and advanced simulation and statical techniques what analytics means for all aspects of business – strategy, marketing, product development, innovation, customer service and real time operations – can be profound. That is one of the key findings in a new report, Analytics: The New Path to Value,  from MIT’s Sloan School of Business and IBM. The study emphasizes that top performer see analytics as a differentiator and they achieve value, not so much by mastering data and technology but by doing good design.

“The adoption barriers organizations face most are related to management and culture rather than being related to data and technology. The leading obstacle to widespread analytics adoption is lack of understanding of how to use analytics to improve the business, according to almost four of 10 respondents. More than one in three cite lack of management bandwidth due to competing priorities. Organizations that use analytics to tackle their biggest challenges are able to overcome seemingly intractable cultural challenges and, at the same time, refine their data and governance approaches.”

Developing the shared mental models needed to crank value from analytics is a cognitive design challenge.  It requires a keen understanding of how managers really think including the cognitive biases involved in decision-making. It also means skill in using visualization, scenarios and other techniques to lower the cognitive load of data complexity.  If we don’t shape the practices of analytics on the basis of how minds really work there is little chance of creating value from it.

When it comes to memorizing new information, learners that take active control of the process do a better job. At least that is the finding from research at the University of Illinois recently reported in Nature Neuroscience.

Subjects were asked to memorize the location of specific objects found at different points in a window on a computer screen.

“The “active” study subjects used a computer mouse to guide the window to view the objects. They could inspect whatever they wanted, however they wanted, in whatever order for however much time they wanted, and they were just told to memorize everything on the screen,” Voss said. The “passive” learners viewed a replay of the window movements recorded in a previous trial by an active subject.”

The active learner significantly outperformed the passive learner. Brain scans revealed that the hippocampus plays a more significant role during active learning and is likely responsible for improved memory performance.

From a cognitive design perspective, having control means increased mental work or effort. The subject makes more decisions and exercises more self direction. There is likely more emotional uncertainty to manage.   Fortunately, this increased mental effort is translated into a better learning outcome.  Less task structure more deeply engages the brain in learning.

This should be no surprise to many educators that already promote active learning. What is interesting though is the specific definition of what constitutes the cognition behind “being active”. In this case control over the  stimulus environment engages the hippocampus.    This likely makes (and I am speculating) memorizing something secondary or incidental to a more natural whole-brain activity.

Deep and lasting learning happens automatically as we engage our brains in problem solving, planning and other activities of daily life. The learning process becomes problematic when we make it our primary focus or de-contextualize it and engage in formal learning in a classroom. Active learning changes our cognitive priorities and gets other brain regions involved and produces better outcomes. As we move to the base of learning pyramid (shown above) we are engaging student’s in “designed experiences” rather than formal learning exercises and retention increases dramatically.

Reading, lectures and other devices of formal learning are still important, especially as they set up the designed experiences of learning or to help debrief them.   If we want to optimize educational processes for how student’s minds actually work we must design and deliver experiences not lessons.

Organizations are very interested in the ethical behaviors of leaders, employees, customers, suppliers and everyone in the value chain.  Significant time and money is spent on ethics training and programs designed to enhance compliance – often without achieving the desired results.

Clients and students ask, how can we use cognitive design to enhance the effectiveness of ethics training and programs?

The key is to approach it as a behavior change challenge and understand the underlying moral cognition that drives it.

For example, consider the research just published in Social Psychological and Personality Science by the University of Toronto on the Cognition of Moral Behavior.  

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