Cognitive Design

Simple devices that use head phones and goggles to blast your brain with pulsed light and sound in the hopes of shifting your brainwave patterns for positive effects are called by many different names – mind machines, psychowalkmans, audio visual therapy and brain wave entertainment (BWE).

Various devices and protocols have been created to accelerate learning, lower stress, help with depression and headaches and so on.  Clearly fringe activity but do they actually work?

In a just published article, Comprehensive Review of the Psychological Effects of Brainwave Entertainment, Drs. Huang and Charyton offer a guarded yes as an answer.

To quote the authors:

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 A new article in psychological science suggests a neural connection between self control and intelligence.

“The results show that participants with the greatest activation in the brain region known as the anterior prefrontal cortex also scored the highest on intelligence tests and exhibited the best self-control during the financial reward test. “

“The authors suggest that greater activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex helps people not only to manage complex problems, resulting in higher intelligence, but also aids in dealing with simultaneous goals, leading to better self-control. ”

So intelligence might be a proxy for estimating a capacity for behavioral self control. This is a useful insight for cognitive designers that need to understand individual differences in users as they fail or succeed with products and programs that require self control during use (e.g. wellness, savings and self-care programs).

Including game features in non-game products is a powerful cognitive design technique. Check out this great example from Expresso Fitness.

They have infused a powerful social gaming experience into a stationary exercise bike.

You can pick a route, friends or a ghost to ride with and compete or train.  Variable resistance in the pedals, terain specific feedback in the handlebars and a host of information in real-time makes the interactive experience highly effect.

You can play a movie that illustrates the chase mode.

Their motto – “cardio systems that engage your mind” is no stretch.