Cognitive Design

The February issue of Seed Magazine has five stories of interest to cognitive designers including articles on a statistical theory of mind, using neurofeedback to enhance cognition and the application of behavioral economics to formulating policies to fight poverty. On top of that there are stories on the relationship between design and science and the need to go beyond gut feeling for good decision making.

Unfortunately, you cannot access the material without paying (online or at the newsstand). I will blog on a little longer than usual so you can decide if the issue is worth buying. 

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When creating training and development programs designers must pay special attention to cognition. Being frustrated during learning or stressed during a thinking task can be tuned to impede cognitive performance or actually accelerate it.  A recent neuroimaging study performed at Rockefeller University offers some specific advice.   The study found that prolonged stress (over a period of a month), as measured by perceived stress scale, sharply decreases performance on attention-shifting tasks but does not impair performance on response-reversal tasks. 

IDEO has launched an interesting blog that reveals some of the details of a design deep dive. 

“Welcome to the blog for an open project between Bug Labs and IDEO! Whether you’re a prototyping professional or amateur gadget enthusiast you’ve probably heard about the BUG hardware platform. We’re thrilled to be working with Bug Labs to make this great product even better. We are also prototyping a new, open way of working that we hope will combine the expertise of Bug Labs engineers, IDEO designers, and the BUG community throughout the design process.” 

To learn from it I suggest you learn a bit about BUGbase and then go to the first blog post and work your way forward.

One goal of cognitive design is to create artifacts (products, services, workflows, programs, events, etc.) that enhance mental processes such as perception, recall, learning, decision-making and even creativity.  The idea is to craft the features and functions of the artifact based on the latest cognitive science and best evidence from practice to measurably improve the mental process of interest.  Important stuff in a complex, knowledge-intensive minutes matter kind of world. 

So cognitive designers are always on the lookout for resources that describe the nature of cognition (how we think and feel) with authority and in enough detail to inform the selection of specific features and functions.  

For example, there is an urgent need to improve our designs to make them more learnable. This includes not only artifacts designed to teach (e.g. courses) but every artifact that requires some learning for use. Who wants to waste precious mental energy learning how to use something or sitting in a lecture hall when they are not designed for how we learn, think and feel?

Recently, I found a blog by Bill Brantley, Designing Knowledge, that appears to be a good source of sources on designing for learnability – or understanding cognition so that we can design more effective training and teaching materials.

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The Vancouver Sun has an interesting article on Brain Gyms a New Industry.  They speak literally not figuratively about Gyms.  Fitness centers for the brain, structured like those that we have for the body, are starting to pop up! 

 The article highlights vibrantBrains  a firm offering, among other things, memberships in a Neurobics Circuit Training that includes:

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A little over a year ago, ten scientists proposed a $4B research effort into the nature of the mind, similar to what was done in the 1990s for the Decade of the Brain.  They argue:

“A deep scientific understanding of how the mind perceives, thinks, and acts is within our grasp. Such an understanding will have a revolutionary impact on national interests in science, medicine, economic growth, security, and well-being. It is our belief that paradigm-shifting progress can be made now by establishing a major national research initiative called The Decade of the Mind.”

 I agree. This is a key reason why the time is now to work towards cognitive design or an approach to design based upon how minds (real and artificial) work.  

The research program they call for involves many disciplines and has four primary goals – modeling, understanding, healing and protecting, and enriching the mind.  

Realizing any of these goals will greatly accelerate progress in cognitive design.

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One major goal of cognitive design is to create artifacts that put customers in a particular frame of mind or mental state.  Such states include pleasure, excitement, flow, pride, fear, sorrow, feeling safe, awe, self confidence, in touch with the past and so on. Putting customers in specific mental states typically serves a larger purpose such as entertainment, learning or performance. They enhance the primary functionality of the artifact or act to differentiate it from competing designs.  

Cognitive designers are always on the lookout for features and functions they can add to designs that promise to create a specific mental state.  A recent article in the Chicago Journal of Consumer Research on Feeling Superior, explores the impact of the structure of loyalty programs on customers perception of status. It holds some interesting insights for cognitive designers.

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In my 3-day cognitive design workshop I ask participants to do a few short experiments using everyday objects  (ping-pong balls, radios, chairs, etc.) designed to cause vivid perceptual illusions.   During the debrief we talk about what the experiments reveal about how minds work and the implications for sensorial design. 

A former participant sent me a note yesterday describing a recent story in the Boston Globe on Hack Your Brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio.  

The brief article covers five good experiments with one of my favorites illustrated below. 

              [Click in the image for a more readable version] 

Try one of the experiments and let me know what you think it tells us about designing for how minds really work.

In my course on Designing for How Minds Work at Northwestern University, I draw on the concepts, tools and interventions of cognitive therapy. The New Handbook of Cognitive Therapy Techniques is a great introduction and a required course reading.  Who better to help us understand how minds work than a therapist focused on how thoughts and emotions cause behavior?

For example, it turns out that the Antecedent, Belief, Consequent or ABC therapy technique is a powerful tool for mapping interactions, rapid prototyping and discovering unmet cognitive needs especially in service design.  Check out these slides for more more detail. 

Cognitive behavioral interventions (CBI) are especially useful for designers interested in creating features and functions that assist users in thinking differently, changing behaviors, managing emotions and the like. Importantly, there is literature on the effectiveness of the various techniques. For example, a recent study on the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral training  in the journal Personality and Individual Differences demonstrated that CBI is able to show:

“Significant improvements resulted in employees’ attributional style, job satisfaction, self-esteem, psychological well-being and general productivity.” 

The intervention was a cognitive-behavioral training program delivered to financial services sales agents.

The bottom line for designers:  Want to create artifacts that move the hearts and minds of your customers?  Best study the tools, ways and insights of cognitive behavioral therapists!

Had an interesting conversation with a healthcare executive recently.  She is working hard to build a new hospital.  The design team is arguing about seemingly small things like how to decorate the lobby. Should we make it look like a library, should there be a piano, large fish tank, silent waterfall and so on? All of this cost money and in a time of great concern over the cost of healthcare does it even make sense?

This is a good question to ask especially as health systems around the US are trying to build facilities that are more like five-star hotels or luxury malls than traditional hospitals.  

We did some design thinking to explore the issue. Specifically I asked questions about the four levels of functional impact every artifact, including a new hospital, has including:

1.      Utility or core functionality (engineering)

2.      Usability or how easy the artifact is to use (human factors)

3.      Look-and-feel or how the artifact impacts the five senses (sensorial design)

4.      Think-and-Feel or how the artifact impacts the thoughts, emotions and frame of mind (cognitive design).

A  shortened and somewhat fictionalized synopsis of the conversation follows. It holds a couple of lessons for any complex design project.

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