Cognitive Design

IBM and the University of Cambridge are getting a little buzz from a 30-page report they published on succeeding through service innovation.  The report points out that nearly 80% of the  US’s GDP comes from services yet only a third of our R&D dollars go to services. Services are big globally as well with 2007 marking the first year that more people worked in the services industry than any other around the global.  The report calls for doubling the investment in service science and retooling a dated academic curriculum that is too focused on manufacturing.

  The whitepaper does an excellent job of listing the vast number of disciplines that must be utilized to take a systematic approach to service innovation. Cognitive science is called out but the paper fails to mention the central role that cognitive design (or any of its close cousins) will play.  Cognitive design, or the ability to support, enhance or even create a specific “frame of mind” in users, should act as a lens to focus the myriad of issues that must be worked through when designing a service.  

   High touch services and those based on advanced skills, knowledge and experience are especially sensitive to creating and maintaining a “frame of mind” in the customer.  For example, studies have show that surgeons that use a respectful tone of voice with their patients are far less likely to be sued for malpractice when they make a serious mistake.  Gallup has exhaustively studied customer-employee interactions and found that it is emotional states that drive the encounter.  Meaning, trust, co-creation of value, mutual learning and other “high cognition” activities have all been called out broadly in the literature on service design and innovation.  

This is the stuff of cognitive design.

Perhaps the best place to start the service sciences revolution is by learning to design for how minds work.