Cognitive Design

SharpBrains, a leader in the emerging field of cognitive training published an interest report in 2008 on the Top 10 Brain Training Future Trends.  The report predicts we will see brain training emerge in physical exercise, corporate wellness and leadership programs.  

In other words, functionality that creates brain boosting effects (e.g. improved focus, memory, visual acuity, creativity) will begin to emerge in the design of other products and programs.  This is an important trend for cognitive designers. 

For example, would customers be interested in an organizer or reminder systems that not only helps them remember things but at the same time makes their memory stronger?  How about employees, would they see “cognitive enhancement” as a valuable perk or benefit?  

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About 20,000 new products will be announced at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)  that is kicking off in Las Vegas today. It is usually a hotbed of innovation and gadgets with special features and functions to delight our senses (sensorial design) and stimulate our thoughts and feelings (cognitive design). 

The announcement for the Mind Flex Game caught my eye.

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60 Minutes has a great story, How Technology May Soon “Read” Your Mind, covering the latest work in thought-recognition technology.

“As Lesley Stahl reports, neuroscience research into how we think and what we’re thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.”

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In service delivery it is important to be polite especially when things are tense. Politeness reflects respect and commands respect.  Being treated with respect puts customers and employees in a positive and productive mental state. Politeness is key to building and holding effective relationships.

Designing for politeness is good business and is a clear example of cognitive design or designing to create a specific “think and feel”.

Your services may be polite but what about products? Do they treat your customers with respect or are they rude?  We don’t normally think about products (versus services) that way but we should or so it is argued in the post, Designing For Politeness, on the Interaction Design blog. 

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Bruce Nussbaum has started an excellent thread on the importance of design thinking and how we may need to apply it to generate transformations rather than just innovations. Transformational impacts rather than incremental innovations are required in order to meet the dire challenges we face in healthcare, management, education,  global warming and other areas running on broken models.  And design thinking is the key!

For me, designs that look beyond usability and sensory delight to probe deeper into how our minds naturally work to create a specific “think-and-feel” (cognition) offer one approach to transformation.  

More boldly, designs that are optimized for how minds (people and machines) really work offer the best hope for transforming healthcare, management, education and our approach to global warming.  

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 Wishes reveal what we want to be true – something we long for or even covet but don’t really expect to happen.   When we wish for something we think about it or even plan for it but don’t ever intend on taking action. Wishes are different cognitive creatures than beliefs, expectations, feelings, goals and wants. Designers sometimes miss that point. 

Wishful thinking is a  cognitive bias or logical fallacy that is driven by interpreting things as we want them to be rather than how they are.  In its most naked form wishful thinking means wanting something to be true and therefore it is true. Catching people in acts of wishful thinking can provide interesting insights into their deepest cognitive needs.    

Wishes, no matter how fanciful, can play a key role in how we think and feel and are therefore a useful tool for cognitive designers.  This is true for children and adults.

Wishing is fundamental to how our minds work. 

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Self regulation includes the automatic and conscious mental processes we use to manage our emotions, drive states (hungry, thirst, need for sleep, sexual urges), cravings and thoughts in order to control behavior and reach a goal.  Self regulation is fundamental for success especially when we need to make and sustain behavior change. 

Designing programs, products and services that help people make behavior change is big business and it requires deep insight into the cognition of self-regulation if it is to be done effectively.  

Recent research from the University of Miami  sheds some new light on the issue by suggesting that religion may have developed, at least in part, because of it ability to help people exercise self control.  

But why would the religious be more inclined to self control?

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