Cognitive Design

Many times in this blog I have argued that designing for a specific think-and-feel is a major source of innovation across industries. I am pulling those thoughts together into a two-hour workshop, Designing for How Minds Actually Work for the 2009 Design Research Conference  to be held in Chicago this October.  The abstract follows.  

 ”We want products, services and experiences that are useful, easy to use, delight our senses and make us think-and-feel in a certain way. This last requirement, designing for a specific think-and-feel or set of mental states is an important innovation frontier for design researchers. The question is, how can we do it in a systematic and repeatable way?

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Found another competition that is ripe for the application of cognitive design, this one sponsored by the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Program  and Ashoka’s Changemaker Program.

The fuse is very short – entries are due April 1st.

Competition aside, this is a great site for cognitive designers.  There are 103 entries from 30 countries that you can learn from.  There is also excellent advice (decision types, flavors and dos and don’ts) on how to design nudges. Remember, nudges are seemingly small behavioral influencers that we embed in the environment that suggest an improved course of action but still respect the right of the individual to self determine. They are just-in-time “pushes” that help us make better choices and avoid failures in self-regulation.  

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To search for an event near you use the Dana Foundation’s international calendar.  There are 132 listed so far and I even found some in Indiana! If you attend an event please post a comment and share your learning.  

Designers make a contribution to society by translating the great revolutions in science into artifacts for all to use. This is the theme of a wonderful exhibit in 2008 on Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  You can listen to an interview with the senior curator here or better, navigate the exhibit itself here.  

In many ways, the entire exhibit is focused on how design impacts our cognition.  The key theme is how designers help us adapt to change (or not) via the artifacts they create. Another dimension, more germane to the purpose of this blog, is how  designers have translated the revolution in cognitive science into artifacts we can all use. Browse the catalog and let me know what you think.

Are there artifacts in the exhibit that clearly showcase the recent revolution in cognitive science? 

Core77 has an interesting post on the keynotes given at the recent Interaction 09 conference held in Vancouver. Of special interest to cognitive designers is Robert Fabricant (Frog Design) keynote on irrational behavior . His thesis is that interaction design is NOT about computer technology but about changing human behavior.

Could interaction designers be taking on the challenge of behavior change? 

For a reaction check and additional info on the conference check out the post by Frogs on the Road.

The paper I proposed to the Web Science 2009 Conference, Seeking Mental Energy On-Line, was accepted.  The conference is devoted to explaining “Society On-Line” or  the social behavior of individuals and organizations in cyberspace.  Not surprisingly, I apply the principles of cognitive design to the problem.

“In this paper we argue that to explain social behavior on-line we must understand and model interactions as the conversion of mental energy. Interaction as the conversion of mental energy is the principle that plays a special role in explaining and predicting on-line social behavior. In this context, mental energy involves the amount of cognitive work we must do to engage in an interaction compared to the psychological lift or drag we get out of it. We put energy into interacting on-line by, for example, searching, monitoring, deciding and communicating and we get energy out in terms of  meaning, emotion, triggered cognitions and other ways the interactions make us think and feel. The relationship between the mental energy that goes into the interaction versus what comes out determines the cognitive fit of the experience and our resulting frame of mind.”

I describe a 10-factor model  for mental energy analysis and show it can be used to explain a wide variety of on-line behavior. An extended abstract is available and the full paper will be shortly.

Let’s hope.

Low cost, wearable, reliable and real-time brain machine interfaces will trigger a revolution in cognitive design.  We will be able to remake products that directly interact with the brain and fundamentally change how we learn and develop by externalizing and manipulating hidden mental states. And other very exciting stuff.

How close are we? Check out the Emotiv Systems demo at the IBM partner booth at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Emotiv’s Chief Product Officer says they will be released in 2008.

 If you want to see something a bit cooler, check out this earlier video on playing video games with your mind.

The 29th annual meeting of the cognitive science society was held August 2007. The theme was applications of cognitive science in the real world.  The proceedings have several gems for cognitive designers including the section on Cognitive Science in the Design of Graphical Images and Interfaces.

An item of special interest is the emerging field of visual analytics which was explained as follows: 

“Visual analytics takes a cognitive approach to the design of the interactive visual interface. It is informed by graphical design and the perceptual and cognitive sciences. Its goal is to produce computer-generated graphical representations of complex data sets that support users’ innate “visual intelligence” to help them to understand the situations those data represent.”  The idea is to develop algorthims that can create visual displays of complex information sets as well as graphical designers and artist can. 

A broader definition is provided by James J. Thomas and Kristin A. Cook. They look at visual analytics as a field out to solve the information overload problem by developing a “science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces”. They offer a compelling call to action for in their 2005 book: Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics. I will do a blog review of the book and the 2006 and 2007 IEEE conferences on the topic and unpack the implications for cognitive designers later this month.

 If successful, visual analytics will provide  designers with techniques to lower the cognitive load associated with the graphical display of information on any artifact.