Cognitive Design

The annual meeting of the cognitive science society starts on the 11th in Portland, Oregon. There are some workshops and tutorials that look to be of special interest to designers including an introduction to agent-based computer modeling for cognitive research and several others that deal with Bayesian inference. There are also many relevant (but highly theoretical) papers with designable insights into education, decision making and social cognition.  A fairly complete version of the proceedings are already available online. (select the HTML version and scroll down to see links to abstracts and papers).

One thing that is notably missing from the entire program (as in years past) is focused attention on cognitive design. As this is a scientific conference on cognition, sometimes spilling over into cognitive engineering, the lack of focus on design is likely a programmatic decision.

No matter, I am planning to submit a proposal for tutorial or workshop to next year’s meeting focused on design thinking for cognitive scientists.

The goal is two fold. First to demonstrate that cognitive scientists can make a much bigger impact by directly contributing to innovation efforts involving the design of socio-technical systems to improve organizationation performance, products and services that impact mental processes and programs for improving brain health and enhancing cognitive performance.  Second, cognitive design is ripe with many worthy research problems that are scientifically hard and hold great commercial potential. This session will be an undisguised attempt to accelerate the development of cognitive design by enlisting more direct participation of the cognitive science community.

If you are interested in developing and possibly co-presenting this type of workshop please contact me at mark.k.clare@gmail. com.

Quickly building low-cost prototypes is a great way to test design concepts especially early in the innovation process.  I’ve seen robust insights developed from on-the-spot mock ups created from simple materials. One of my favorite materials for doing this is Play-Doh. That’s why the 1 hour design challenge: Play-Doh kicks on Core77 caught my eye.

“Your task is to recreate or reinterpret your favorite pair of shoes in play-doh, in one hour or less. Cut loose and give your imagination a stretch. Maybe you’ll create a miniature tribute to your favorite sneaker designer of all time. Or, honor your humble, beat up kicks by sculpting their likeness, busted soles and all.” 

Grand prize includes a $100 gift certificate.   If nothing else you get to practice your prototyping skills to see if you can demonstrate the soul of a shoe in clay in a hour or less.

I received 10+ emails and even some phone calls on an earlier post, Cognitive Design for the Smart Grid? Lots of interesting views on how we can apply cognitive design to the mega makeover our power generation and distribution system is getting.  Perhaps the most interesting feedback came from a colleague at GE that shared her firm is sponsoring a $200M ecomagination challenge to come up with ideas to improve how we create, connect and use power on the Smart Grid.

 ”GE’s Ecomagination Challenge is a $200 million call to action for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, and students to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world’s toughest challenges – building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century.”

 Of the three areas (create, connect, use),  use seems to be most relevant to cognitive designers:

What new technologies, processes or business models can help consumers use energy more wisely and improve our energy balance?

They are offering $50K to the idea that gets the most public votes, $100K to five ideas that illustrate innovation and entrepreneurship and the $200M to those ideas they may want to invest in to commercialize.  Entries are being accepted now and must be in by September 30th.  

My guess is that most of the ideas will be technology/gadget oriented. A team that is able to propose high-value service designs and consumer experiences that make the most of the emerging Smart Grid to improve the environment will really stand out. Just the stuff for ambitious cognitive designers.

Making decisions well when you have just been diagnosed with a serious condition is very difficult, especially in today’s healthcare system.  Even making decisions to insure wellness or prevent illness can be tough. What is needed is improved patient-clinician teaching, social and emotional support systems and technology and local resources for managing information and understanding conditions. If you have solutions for meeting these cognitive design challenges you might want to enter the new Changemakers contest (sponsored by Amgen) on Patients | Choices| Empowerment. The site is open for entries now, the deadline is September 29th and the top prize is $10K and a  chance to go after a much larger grant.

Even you don’t want to enter still check out the site and review the creative ideas, leave comments and vote! Interested to hear from readers that make a submission.

Imagine you sit down to enjoy some TV and discover the remote control is across the room. Can you design a way/device to fetch the remote without getting up? If so you may want to submit your idea to the Grab the Remote Contest and try to win a 3-D TV. Be sure to check out the ideas that have already been submitted on YouTube.

Met yesterday with an ASTD professional development network (PDN) on cognitive learning.  A great group of people very much focused on cognitive design issues:

“The Cognitive Learning PDN focuses on the rapidly expanding field of Cognitive Neuroscience: How do people think, learn, master skills, and gain competencies?” 

I gave a brief talk,  Redesign Your Knowledge Blobs to Accelerate Behavior Change!  If you are in the Chicago area check them out.

Core77 has a post on the results of the betacup competition. A $20,000 open innovation design contest to develop a way to eliminate paper coffee cup waste.  According to the post we generate some 58 million cups a year which tend to end up in landfills.  The goal is to design something to change our behavior from using paper coffee cups to doing something else that still gives us coffee but avoids the environmental impact. The tag line is to drink sustainably.

The winner is the Karma Cup - “A chalkboard sitting by the register. Every guest who uses a reusable mug marks the chalkboard. Every 10th guest receives a free item.” 

A great example of an attempt to use ordinary materials to create extra ordinary behavior change. But will it work? From a cognitive design perspective do you expect the Karma cup to produce lasting behavior change in coffee drinkers?

Check out all the top rate illusions here.

The 28th International Conference of Human Factors in Computing Systems or CHI 2010 was held in Atlanta this April.  The proceedings are filled will provocative innovations will strong cognitive design implications. Three examples are given below.

1. Emotichair which allows you to directly feel the emotional content of music.

2. Skinput a new interface technology that turns your hand, arm or other parts of your body into an input device!

3. Using Health IT to help construct identities through storytelling and improve diabetes management.

Interested to hear from readers than attended or just know about cognitive-design relevant findings from CHI 2010.

Scientific American is running a World Changing Ideas Video Contest.  You need to enter a 2-5 minute video that demonstrates  how you can help build a cleaner, safer healthier world by June 14th. No prize money just fame!  

There will be a winner, two runners up as well as a viewer’s choice award in each of the following categories:

1. Energy

2. Transportation

3. Environment

4. Electronics or Robotics

5. Healthcare or Medicine

I hope to see many cognitive design ideas. Please leave a comment here and share a link to your submission video.