Cognitive Design

Two miltary contracts worth $11M have been awarded to develop binoculars that work directly with the brainwaves of soliders. The idea is that the brain often “sees” things before the mind can recognize them and objects “far a field” might not be recognized as threats in time.  

The goal, as reported by MSNBC is:

“Electrodes on the scalp inside a helmet will record the user’s brain activity as it processes information about high-resolution images produced by wide-angle military binoculars. Those responses will train the binoculars over time to recognize threats.”

I have argued many times in this blog that design thinking is not only an innovation method but also a powerful general purpose management method.

Jeneanne Rae in a recent post on design thinking in BusinessWeek, talks about the success P&G is having with this approach as a management model. To quote: 

In his new book, The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation, P&G CEO A.G. Lafley explains the difference between the two methods: “Business schools tend to focus on inductive thinking (based on directly observable facts) and deductive thinking (logic and analysis, typically based on past evidence),” he writes. “Design schools emphasize abductive thinking—imagining what could be possible. This new thinking approach helps us challenge assumed constraints and add to ideas, versus discouraging them.”

For the cognitive designer then the question is how do we rethink leadership programs, management processes and other aspects of organizational design to support or even inspire abductive inference?

What happens when we move the design function forward in the innovation process and use it as a way to  empathetically understand deep customer needs and collaboratively test ideas via inexpensive prototypes? The answer, according to Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) in a recent HBR article is that you “transform the way you develop products, services, processes and even strategy”.