Cognitive Design

One of the challenges we look at in my cognitive design class is how to use the latest neuroscience to do a “cognitive makeover” of a room to support specific types of sleep – short but restorative cat naps,  a full night’s rest, stimulate lucid dreaming and so on.

 So I am always on the lookout for new designable scientific insights into sleep and various gadgets that help. A former student just sent me this link on Lightsleeper.  Here is how it works:

“When you turn on the device (and turn off the lights in your bedroom) LightSleeper projects a light on the ceiling above your bed. The light moves in a controlled, circular, and soothing manner. Follow the light with your eyes, while lying in bed. Gradually, your mind will relax and you’ll be ready to sleep well and enjoy a longer, better quality sleep.”

It is like reading only it does not stimulate the mind. The device shuts off after 30 minutes.  

Habits spreading like infectious diseases through social networks appear to be all the rage. Catching your eating, smoking, happiness, mood and hygiene habits from those you hang out with is under the microscope. For a quick overview and some interesting reader comments (that challenge) check out Eva Judson’s post in the New York Times on Social Medicine. Please note that is social (as via social networks) not socialized (as via single payer government system) medicine.

I have read the literature around this topic for some time in the hopes of gaining new scientific insight into how we form (or fail to form) habits.  The key question from a cognitive design standpoint is what is the social cognitive psychology behind behavioral contagions?  The answer unfortunately, is not clear.

 ”But then, how does something like obesity get “caught”? That’s not clear. One idea is that people judge their own weight by that of their friends — you think of yourself as thin if you are thinner than the people you know — and eat accordingly. Another is that friends mirror one another’s eating habits. Many studies have found that people tend to eat less when they are eating with someone who is not eating much. Also, people tend to eat more when they eat with friends rather than with strangers. Perhaps, too, a habit of eating, say, dessert when you are with your friends makes you more likely to eat it when you are alone. ”

Perhaps there is a mystery here because we are not looking at the entire picture.

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“unprecedented insight into how digital games can improve players’ health behaviors and outcomes” 

The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article outlining recently funded University research into the affect of video games on health. The questions is can we develop video games that help people change behaviors or self-manage chronic illnesses? The Robert Wood Johnson foundation is giving $1.8M to nine teams to find out.

If this research is productive it should throw off many insights into designing for how minds work.  Consider:

“For example, the research teams will delve into the popular dance pad video game Dance Revolution to see how it might help Parkinson’s patients reduce the risk of falling, or how facial recognition games might be designed to help people with autism better identify others’ emotions.

The studies will focus on diverse population groups that vary by race and ethnicity, health status, income level and game-play setting, with age groups ranging from elementary school children to 80-year-olds. The research teams will study participants’ responses to health games played on a variety of platforms, such as video game consoles, computers, mobile phones and robots.”

Hopefully the results will have implications far beyond the use of video games.

Exerting mental effort to pay attention means bad design!

Distraction and multi-tasking are getting more attention as design problems. Distracted students, drivers, parents and workers appear to be less productive and even unsafe. More broadly, we think and live in the future or the past and fail to be mindful of the present.   We have been driven to such a high level of distraction in our daily life that some researchers and authors see a “coming dark age” and are calling for a national movement to regain our focus. I am alluding to Maggie Jackson’s book on Distraction:The erosion of attention and the coming dark age.  A great read for cognitive designers dealing with distraction and multi-tasking.

From a cognitive design standpoint, distraction and attention come down to how well we manage a user’s mental energy.

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Crowdsourcing or the use of a volunteer group to work asynchronously through the web to design something or solve a problem for free or a prize is an important new production model.  It offers a unique position on a number of hard cognitive design problems like how to optimize the match between individual motivation and organizational task requirements. 

Answer – don’t try let highly motivated people self-select.

It is a radical and disruptive model – first we insource, then we outsource, eventually we offshore and now we crowdsource.  The field of design should be especially open to this type of approach. Fast Company disagrees. They have a recent blog post arguing that when it comes to design, Crowdsourcing is a one-way ticket to blah.  Further, they reference an earlier article where there was considerable professional backlash against a firm that used crowdsourcing to do logo design:

 ”To create a logo for the electric motorcycle start-up Brammo, they’re crowdsourcing the design, for a reward of $1000. The winner will be announced in six days, and over 700 people have submitted work. But no matter: To many professional designers, so-called “spec” assignments–that is, exploratory work, done for free–is taboo. Many designers think it undercuts them, and denigrates the profession.”

Yikes.  No matter, crowdsourcing will continue to grow. It has produced breathtaking results in many others instances. Our time in design will come. Ironically, it is just a matter of good design, of the crowdsourcing architecture that it.

One of the challenges I give students in my cognitive design class involves taking an existing product or service and giving it a “cognitive makeover” by reworking key features and functions to create s specific think-and-feel. Check out this Pediatric Imaging Solution from GE that remakes scary into an adventure.

And it is not all just for show. They report a significant decrease in the need to sedate kids before an MRI.

 From the works of designer Stephen Casico

I was invited to give a 2-hour workshop at the Design Research Conference 2009.  I focused on designing for how minds really work. My pitch:

A dash of cognitive science + design thinking = innovation breakthrough!

The workshop started with a personal example on how to make it rain.   A large insurance company had a few sales people that could really out produce (sell) the others. These were the rainmakers. The management of the insurance company wanted to create a “program” that could transfer the secret sauce of rainmaking to other sales professionals to increase their production.

A classic problem and many solutions were attempted – training, best practice databases, coaching, new incentive systems and so on.  Not much happened.

Finally, we tried a dash of cognitive science in the form of talk-aloud protocol studies. These were awkward at first but did uncover the secret sauce.

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I was recently asked to provide input on a new procedure and communication materials a hospital had designed to support family members when they were faced with a decision to discontinue life support for a loved one.  Clearly a serious issue and one that warrants a full-on cognitive design.  I was glad they asked.

One of the things we did was look to the literature and  found an excellent study, Tragic Decisions: Autonomy and Emotional Responses in Medical Decisions.  Click here for a full version (no diagrams) pre-publication copy. The researchers uncover the cognitive (intellectual, affective, volitional and motivational) needs of the decisions makers.  What they found was:

1. Guilt and self-blame, or the anticipation of it, generates more negative feelings than having the decision made by someone else.

2. High degree of ambivalence about decision autonomy or reports that family members were glad to have had the opportunity to participate in the decision but wish they had not had not.

3. Strong preference for information about the situation.  Even though there was ambivalence about making the decision there was none concerning the information needed to make it.

 As they point out:

“Consequently, participants disliked making decisions but also resented relinquishing their option to choose.” 

A difficult cognitive need to design for.  I am open to any ideas readers may have.

One of my favorite challenges to give cognitive design students  involves a bar of soap. They are tasked with redesigning soap so that we can have the viscerally rich experience of the bar but the convenience and zero mess of liquid soap.  Part of the project involves trying to get inside the head of soap users and understanding the mental models, emotions and sensory aspects of the experience and designing to achieve a specific mental state.  I don’t give much direction just turn them lose to see how they naturally approach cognitive design.

This problem is harder than it may seem and I am always on the look for excellent solutions to share with students.  I just found an exceptional solution that has been taken from concept to product by the multi-disciplinary designer, Stephen Cascio.

The solution involves pressing a metal cap into a bar of soap and then attaching it to a stylized soap holder that contains a hidden magnet.  There are six designs - Bloom, Humm (shown), Lean, Petal, Sunrise and Swing but there is no reason to stop there.

I asked Stephen to comment on his work from a cognitive design standpoint. Here is what he said:

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