Cognitive Design

The May/June 07 edition of Technology Review was focused on design. The lead article introduces the idea of a beautiful machine as something that is minimally complicated. You may need to set up a free account to get access.

Watch the video and listen to the editor’s description of his new Apple computer. Wow has Apple mastered the ability to create specific mental states in users (one of the goals of cognitive design).   Just in case you don’t get to the video here is some of the narrative:

“I love my MacBook Pro because its broad but slim body seems luxuriously solid yet also gracefully light. I love how the resistance subtly increases when I press a key, flattering my touch. I love the crisp definition of the graphics on its large, luminous screen. Most of all, I love how all my Macintosh software shares an elegant iconography and navigation scheme, and how all my Apple hardware works together uncomplainingly.” 

The concept of minimally complicated is an intertesting design principle.  Another  quote from the editor:

“That is, they should have no more functions than is reasonable given their form; every function should be no more complicated than it needs to be; and the way each function works should be intuitively easy to understand. As Albert Einstein may have said, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” ”

This advice is especially relevant as we try and repackage existing functionality into new forms as is the case with many mobile devices.  For example, email as something engineered for a desktop PC, needs to be de-functioned a bit to fit the form of a handheld. So I still have the complicated functionality of email but it has been minimized to fit the new form.  Presto minimal complication.

Of course there is the aesthetics of this too…..

 Augment cognition (AC) is another rapidly emerging field that is a close cousin of cognitive design. Like NeuroErgonomics it is focused on creating artifacts that integrate with human cognition to amplify or accelerate it (5th level of cognitive design). More specifically,  the goal of AC is to develop closed-loop human computer systems that increase cognitive capabilities by an order of magnitude.

There have been four international conferences held on the topic and an International Society has been formed so the field has traction. So far no killer app.

DARPA has a strong interest in AC has has even prepared a video on the future of augmented cognition. Must warn you it is a bit long but they are trying to breath some realism and design detail into the scenario.

We will track AC closely in this blog.