When You Design Don’t Forget To Prime!
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Priming is a simple technique that psychologists (and other scientists) use to put subjects in a particular frame of mind to set the stage for doing an experiment. They expose subjects to a primary stimulus to see how they will react to a secondary stimulus. Priming can have a huge impact on how we perceive, remember, decide, learn and emotionally react when presented with the test conditions of the experiment.
Priming of the mental pump is also fundamental to success in cognitive design for two reasons. First, using a priming effect helps us realize a basic goal of cognitive design namely, creating specific mental states through interaction. Second, the fact that priming has such a pronounced effect on the follow-on cognition means that enhancing cognition is achievable through design manipulations!
