Cognitive Design

Pattern recognition, framing and sense making are fundamental to cognition or how we think and feel.  All of these cognitive activities have one thing in common, they are geared towards creating order from sense perceptions, beliefs and even conflicting ideas. When we create order the pleasure center in our brain is activated. We are rewarded with a natural high – literally.

Herein lies the secrete sauce to many successful games and puzzles.  They exploit our hardwired need to see and create order.

Wired magazine hit this theme well in a recent article that aruges Bejeweled and Bejeweled II are masterful examples of simple and addictive games that “exploit our desire for order”.

The idea is you swap the position of adjacent stones to create chains of three or more identical gems (a little bit of order).

With players investing $300M and 6 billion hours there is a powerful effect here.  

OK maybe you don’t like that one but what about Solitaire or Sudoku sometimes referred to as “the crack cocaine for the brain”? Or perhaps you just doodle or organize the socks in your underwear drawer.

No matter, the lesson cognitive designers is clear.  Creating order is a key way we generate mental energy. No matter what your design problem, consider adding features and functions that let users see and make order in a way that is natural given the context.