The bottom line is that health  data and advice will change behavior if it is personalized, presents a new view on health,  relates to an immediate concern (e.g. how I look) and is presented in a comparative and visual way.

Devices like Zeo’s have another important feature for changing behavior. They close the loop quick enough to hold my attention. They use sensors, devices and software to measure my behavior and then show me how the adjustments I make produce a change I want or not. If this happens in a fast and visually stimulating way (like it does in video games or speed limit signs that display my driving speed) then behavior change is more likely to take place.

How are you using personal data to drive behavior change?

This is an important effort for many reasons. As they point out in the preamble to the challenge:

“There is a growing recognition that there can be no peace, security, or sustainable economic development without women’s equal participation in all spheres of society.”

You need to register with Innocentive and electronically sign an agreement to see the details of the challenge.  I signed up as a solver and suggested an approach (copied below) based on knowledge cards and NewHabits.

I hope you too will take up the challenge.

Leadership Knowledge Cards for Women and Girls

Include tools on the platform to enable women and girls to author, share and use knowledge cards designed to master the skills and habits of effective leaders.

Background

Knowledge cards encourage action, experimentation and the learning from experience necessary to achieve behavior change and develop new skills.  Each card (roughly the size of a 3×5 card) includes a title, a motivating quote, a single idea or thought and a single behavior or technique to practice.

 A sample card is shown below.

This card teaches a positive influence technique based upon sharing emotions.   The card’s title provides a simple description of the leadership technique to practice with and the motivation for doing so. The quote is an opportunity to build energy or refer to authority to strengthen motivation for using the card.  The title and quote also reflect the attitude or value that stands behind the card. The THINK section lays out the basic idea or technique to be practiced. The DO section describes exactly what to try out.  Knowledge cards tightly couple motivation, thought and action into a single concise micro-lesson designed to improve performance.

This card is one of many potential cards focused on the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership. Effective leaders are able to spot, assess and manage emotions in themselves and others.  The knowledge card not only signals to women and girls that it is ok to show emotion but it teaches them how to use emotion for leadership effectiveness.

Now imagine many such cards not only about emotional intelligence but for communication, team building and all the skills necessary for being an effective leader.  Women and girls could access such cards and play them on a daily basis to master the skills of leadership while they are effecting change in their organizations and communities.   They can easily learn to author such cards and use them to share experience and advice with each other. Working together the network of women leaders could quickly author many cards on a wide variety of leadership topics at no direct cost. In this way, knowledge cards can be used to rapidly develop and unleash the leadership capacity of women and girls.

Proposed Tool for Platform

Include tools for authoring, sharing and using knowledge cards as part of the empowerment tools and “just in time” resources in the global library section of the platform.  The functionality of the proposed tool is briefly outlined below.

• A web form that makes it easy to author a knowledge card.  Authors would select a template and then type in the title, think and do sections. The platform would suggest a quote to include in the card as well as provide easy access to quote sites so authors could select their own. The tool would automatically find related cards.   Key words could be applied to help categorize the card and link it to other content on the platform (e.g. case studies and stories). This would work much like a blog editor.
• Allow participants and institutional members to customize knowledge cards with color, graphics and by-lines.
• Participants can post a request for a specific type of card or deck to help them solve a problem or develop a specific leadership skill
• Participants can form on-line groups to work on specific decks
• Participants can browse cards visually by leadership skill category (e.g. active listening, influencing others, etc.) or by using a search engine.  Cards of interest can be saved or bookmarked and configured into decks.
• Participants can download a card or a deck of cards for use on their smart phone, tablet or other mobile device.  An app will be used to play, organize, manage and share the cards directly from the mobile device.
• The cards can be shared via email, Facebook, texting and other electronic means.

 Example

I have implemented this approach in a graduate class on the foundations of leadership for the last several years.  This involved training hundreds of students on how to write, share and use knowledge cards. Two thirds of the students (including emergent women leaders) that take the course have reported that knowledge cards had a high or very high impact on their learning.

 We use Ning the social networking site as the platform for authoring and sharing the cards and the free iPhone and iPad App NewHabits for playing the cards from mobile devices.

 For additional information see the Ning screen walk through and the NewHabits screen walk through.

 Ning is a low-cost platform that scales and NewHabits will publish decks of knowledge cards for free or on a royalty sharing basis.

Meet the Challenge?

Knowledge cards provide an engaging and effective way to capture and share insights into the vital behaviors and skills of effective leaders.   They provide a structure for participants to share advice with each other in a way that is both fun and optimized for learning and behavior change.

Groups naturally form around different leadership skills and topics.

Participants play a card daily from their mobile device to experiment with and eventually master a proven leadership practice. Cards are designed to fit into everyday routines and take minutes to use.  These small improvements accumulate over time into significant new leadership skills.

In addition, leadership experts can author decks of knowledge cards and use the tool as a means to disseminate best practices.

The avatars we select or create can impact how we think, feel and behave in cyberspace.  The effects can be pronounced.  For example, recent research at Penn State suggests that when we customize our avatars we impact our perceptions on the virtual environments we are in. More specifically:

“A group of students who saw that a backpack was attached to an avatar that they had created overestimated the heights of virtual hills, just as people in real life tend to overestimate heights and distances while carrying extra weight…”

This leads to the belief that you would have more difficulty climbing a virtual hill.

Students that were assigned an avatar with a backpack did not feel this way. This suggest we are really putting ourselves into our avatars (agency) as we customize and design them.

Bottom line for designers-    tuning when and how people can customize their avatars may produce specific cognitive effects.

By connecting all  of these things to the internet we enable direct machine to machine (M2M) interactions.  That means one machine controlling or at least communicating with another via the internet. This will also create a river of big data the likes of which we have never seen and enable new services, marketing opportunities and even business models.

Take for example, Budweiser’s Red Light. This device links to the internet via your WIFI and monitors the games of your favorite hockey teams. When a goal is scored it goes off. This enhances the experience of watching the game. A nice example of cognitive design- creating experience value and building brand.  To quote:

“Our mission to get every Canadian closer to the game one goal at a time”

How can you build brand on the emerging internet of things? More generally, what new service and business opportunities does it present?

Internet of Things graphic: IEEE Communication Society Blog

Red Light image: The Classic Install

“The results of this study suggest that online interventions based on small changes have the potential to gradually lead to clinically significant weight loss, but high attrition from publicly available or “free” programs still remains a challenge.”

More specifically, 42% of the participants lost about one pound during the program. Approximately 7% of the participants saw a significant weight loss of 5% or more.  Some gained weight. Impressive results when you realize how small the changes are. Examples that participants found most effective include:

1. Don’t eat directly from a package,  always eat from a dish
2. Put down utensils between bites
3. Keep food out of sight except for healthy items.

These types of changes are easy to make but not for everybody. As pointed out in a Science Daily blog post:

 ”Common barriers that prevented people from making changes included personally unsuitable tips, forgetting, being too busy, unusual circumstances such as vacations, and emotional eating.”

I am working with a physician to develop a solution that addresses most of these barriers.  The solution is a deck of 24 knowledge cards that document  the small changes you can make to achieve healthy weight loss.

You use the cards through a free App called NewHabits.  You can browse through the deck picking the cards that best fit your circumstances. That way the tips are always suitable.  Because the cards are on your iPhone or iPad it is much easier to remember to use them. Cards are designed to fit everyday activities as well as special circumstances (e.g. vacations) and take just minutes to use. That way you can use them no matter where you are or how busy you might be.

Three sample healthy weight loss cards are available in NewHabits.  One is shown above. Download the App (it is free), go to the store and look in the coming soon section for Healthy Weight cards. Give them a try and let me know what you think. We expect to publish the rest of the deck in June.

There is a call for a crowd-funded project to reduce tobacco consumption worldwide. P&G  has requested proposals for disruptive new products in multiple categories.  There is $2000 prize for the best idea on how to use data about the state of your house (from utilities, devices and sensors, etc.) to create useful and exciting consumer services. And another $2000 prize for figuring out how the PC should evolve in the next 3-5 years.  Entries are due late in May.

Focusing on design concepts that are optimized for how our minds naturally work (as cognitive designers do) will lead to strong entries in each of these areas. I hope you are up for the challenge!

There is a lot of noise, some jewels and of course the fundamentals still hold true and dominate the game.  One fundamental, often overlooked, is that innovation flows from specific skills and habits of mind.  Innovators have a calling, think flexibly, experiment and are able to influence others to act on their ideas.  These skills serve the innovator well even if they lack funding, organizational support or external incentives.

The best way to develop innovation skills is to practice them regularly until they become habits. Innovation is not a special technique or method, it is a habit of mind and way of viewing the world. For example, the knowledge card to the right provides a simple way you can practice a habit of highly effective innovators.   Innovators engage the world in a robust way. One way they do that is by using all of their senses.  Getting in the habit of using all of your senses in a way that opens up creativity is not hard but it does take practice.  Try playing this card  five or six times or until you have built up some good notes on products and services that really delight your sense of touch.  Not only will you have new experience to draw on for thinking creatively about features and functions you should be well on your way to using your hands in a more robust way to know the world.  A very good dividend for a modest amount of effort.

To  scale this approach we will need many knowledge cards covering the core skills and habits of highly effective innovators.

I have compiled a starter set of the cards into five decks including:

Calling Cards: Find challenges that stir your heart, mind and soul
Reframe Cards: Master advanced techniques for boosting creativity
Observation Cards: Use all five senses to drive deep learning
Interpret Cards: Learn to make sense of experience
Influence Cards: Convince others to act on your ideas.

Each deck includes 25 cards for a total of 125 innovation cards, all backed by research. Decks script a small-steps learning experience that accumulates over time into new innovation competencies and habits.

For a brief description of each deck and list of all card titles see the table of contents.

All five decks are available through NewHabits, a free iPhone and iPad application that makes it easy to use, organize and share cards.  You can play a card daily or every few days from your mobile device to experiment with and eventually master a proven innovation practice. The App is designed to make it much easier to catch the innovator’s habit.

I hope you give the innovation cards a try and share your experiences.  You can play them by yourself, with a colleague or on teams. They make excellent supplements to training and coaching material. Let me know if you have questions or would like to discuss how best to implement innovation cards in your situation.

You speak to the glasses to take pictures, record video and send text messages. Even better you get information from the web that is projected into the transparent rectangle (mini-screen?) on the glasses  about location, directions, flight times and facts (e.g. how long is the golden gate bridge).  You can even do language translations.  To see them in action from Google’s perspective check out How it Feels and from the users perspective these customer videos.

They appear to be very tough and come in a variety of colors including tangerine, charcoal, shale, cotton and sky.  You can’t get a pair yet. They did an early release to 7000 explorers that paid $1500 each. They are slated to be in wide release later this year.

Google ventures has teamed up with several other venture capitalists to form the glass collective. The goal is to provide funding and accelerate the development of  ”new experiences” based on the glass platform.  A major opportunity for ambitious cognitive designers.

Source of images: Glass

Now attention is turning to the democratization of leadership. Scholars have long recognized two general types of leaders. We have the formal or assigned leader such as the CEO or VP that carries the title, power and budget of leadership.  But we also have the informal or emergent leader that wields influence and is driven by passion to change how things work.  The question is, how do we develop and unleash these informal or emergent leaders? 

If you have a good answer, you might want to submit it as a story or hack (disruptive idea) to the Leadership Everywhere Challenge. This is the latest M-prize being sponsored by the Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Consulting.   A snapshot:

“In the future, a company that strives to build a leadership advantage will need an organizational model that gives everyone the chance to lead if they’re capable; and a talent development model that helps everyone to become capable.”

In my teaching at Northwestern University I have been fortunate enough  to work with emergent leaders from across the US. They are driven to lead without formal authority because they have an authentic insight into how to make things better and the natural influence skills to get others to act on their ideas.  The skills and habits that make up informal leadership talent are developed very differently from those of formal leaders.   They are developed through a micro or day-to-day learning from experience rather than elaborate and macro leadership development programs.

I’ve captured this micro approach to developing emergent leaders in a free mobile learning app called NewHabits. Check out the modules or decks on innovation. They teach you how to find a cause, think flexibly, experiment and get others to act on your ideas.  While the modules are focused on innovation these are just the skills and habits that drive emergent leaders. Best of all they can be practiced daily without formal authority, a training budget or the need to change your organization.

A good way to democratize leadership? Give the App a try and let me know what you think.

The conference will cover games, therapeutic games, investing and trends. In addition, eye tracking, brain monitoring and others tools that provide a robust but cost effective way of measuring mental states are covered.   For example, Advanced Brain Monitoring will be at the conference. They offer a wireless medical grade EEG monitoring unit (shown directly above) that should be useful for all sorts of cognitive design studies.  Check out a short video on how it is being used to help uncover the neuro-correlates of strong leadership. 

Best of all you can directly experience the games and tools on the expo floor.

I hope readers that attend the conference will share their impressions and photos. I am especially interested to hear if you believe neurogames offer a 10x improvement in the gaming experience.