Cognitive Design

The field of design psychology tries to understand why we make the design choices we do. What causes me to prefer and choose one interior design over another, one architectural/home style over another? The basic argument in the excellent book, Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places, is that it is early childhood experiences in your father’s den, grandfather’s workshop and grandmothers kitchen that are the root cause of your design choices.

Not only does this strongly determine consumer choice but also the decision making process of architects and other professional designers.

Talk about probing the mind of your customer! Of special interest to cognitive designers is the toolkit (see environmental autobiographies) and the emphasis on designing for positive change.

On the website, they claim the drink will enhance your cognition:

“ In addition, it is well documented that L-Theanine increases mental awareness, helps in relaxation without causing sleepiness, reduces stress and anxiety,  improves cognition, concentration and sleep quality.” 

I wonder what they taste like?  Can’t be as good as a Red Bull.

                  [Source: Idea Sandbox Blog]

Speakers from the leading edge of the Science of Decision Making that provide a clear and compelling explanation of what is going on. Certainly worth listening to in the background as you do other tasks, like work on your cognitive design problems.

In cognitive design we can model human-artifact interaction as a conversion of mental energy. We put mental effort into artifacts to use them and we get mental energy out in terms of how they make us think and feel.  In this way interaction converts the mental work we must do to access functionality into the psychological lift – meaning, emotion and hardwired thinking – we get out of it.

So I am always on the look out for new insights into the nature of mental energy.   Fortunately, there has been a lot to look at. With the discovery of mirror neurons there has been a small flood of studies that suggest we get/burn almost as much mental energy by observing a thing as we get from doing a thing.  Consider the common experience of feeling exhausted after watching a emotionally-stirring movie.  High engagement, high empathy observation burns/delivers nearly as much mental energy as the direct experience.

One recent scientific study that illustrates this is effect is, You Wear Me Out: The Vicarious Depletion of Self-Control.   The researchers found a depletion in self control for those that observed others exerting it. They also found that reading about positive instance of self control (versus reading about failures to exert it) can increase the capacity for self control in subjects. If you don’t want to wade through the paper check out the excellent post, Being in Someone Else’s Head is Exhausting on the Neuronarrative.

These findings suggest that our psychological distance from an event – thinking/reflecting, observing/emphasizing or participating/doing strongly determines the mental energy that flows from the experience.  The relationship is not simply linear. Empathizing and doing for some things are nearly the same.   Whereas the difference between thinking and doing can be opposite – one creating mental energy, the other burning it.  This might explain why for example, vicarious experiences will produce behavior change (empathizing) when verbal persuasion does not (thinking). Further it may explain why some people with emotional intense jobs become remote – they increase their psychological distance to avoid the constant mental energy depletion associated with observing others in pain.

No matter, psychological distance and mental energy are fundamental to taking a systematic approach to cognitive design.

A great design is something that deeply resonates, energizes and even enlights you.  Often the most powerful designs are found in our personal artifacts, family heirlooms and sacred spaces.  Such designs deeply reflect not only who we are but the best that we can hope to be. They work because they reflect our character strengths.

Designs that leverage our character strengths will naturally have high cognitive impact.  I see myself, I see the best of myself, I see what I have worked hard to become all reflected in the features, functions, interaction and experience that the designer provides.  This is especially important when you are designing for behavior change.

A good tool for understanding character strength (for design purposes) is the VIA classification of character strengths. It includes five core elements – wisdom & knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. It does not take much work to figure out which dominate the psychographic profile of the people you are designing for.  The neat thing about the VIA classification is it goes beyond values to include cognition and mental states in the characterization. For example,

“Humanity - Interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others

• Capacity to Love and Be Loved: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people
• Kindness [generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love, "niceness"]: Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them
• Social Intelligence [emotional intelligence, personal intelligence]: Being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick”

This provides plenty of hooks for the cognitive designer interested in tuning features and functions to invoke and think-and-feel of “humanity”.

Check out the website, VA institute on Character, for additional background and tools. A potential goldmine for cognitive designers interested in designing to leverage character strengths.

The folks at Carnegie Mellon University are creating a new interface technology called “inflatable buttons” that combines the cognitive features of physical three dimensional buttons with those of touch or flat screen controls.  Sounds like a tweak but it could significantly change the cognitive load and therefore the chance for  human error in many applications.

             [Bubble Buttons, Source Popular Mechanics]

Check out their two minute YouTube video, Providing Physically Changeable Buttons on a Visual Display.

Recently asked a group of cognitive design students to tackle the texting while driving problem.  I know a few are still working on it. Check out the excellent article in the NY Times, Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cell Phone Risks.  They confirm it is as bad as DWI and that going hands free does not help. More interestingly, they put cognitive science right at the center:

“Scientists are grappling, too, with perhaps the broadest question hanging over the phenomenon of distracted driving: Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues. And there also is the neurological response of multitaskers. They show signs of addiction — to their gadgets.”

Serious clues for the cognitive designer.

Also check out this game that measures your change in reaction time while distracted.  Would such a device be useful for changing the mental model of texting drivers?

From time to time I blog about the role of design, especially cognitive design, in resolving the US healthcare quality/cost crisis. My basic argument is always the same – most costs flow from otherwise avoidable health behaviors (poor eating/drinking habits, inactivity,  ineffective self-care, etc.)  and so solving the problem means designing programs for achieving and sustaining individual behavior change.  

One firm that seems to be making impressive progress along these lines is Safeway. Check out the post,  Incentivizing Health Behaviors, on the Healthcare X Prize Blog.

“Safeway’s plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.”

Very similar finding to Halvorson’s argument  in his book Healthcare Reform Now!.

The Safeway program uses the same model as auto insurance which has been very successful in changing driver behavior via financial incentives.  At Safeway, the cost of health insurance to employees is behavior-based (tobacco, weight,  blood pressure, cholesterol) and achieving top scores can mean a reduction of $1560 in annual premiums for a family. They offered this level of incentive and achieved a 40% reduction  in cost (at the same premium level) over four years.

Lesson for designing behaviors change: Link real $$ to vital behaviors to create value for all parties.

Something about realigning incentives that changes behavior almost every time.

A major theme in cognitive design is that we don’t design things to fit how we think-and-feel very well.  The lack of cognitive fit generates some serious problems and creates major innovation opportunities. But sometimes it can be extreme.  

Many of the extreme cases (see above) are caused by the fact that my brain function evolves at a much slower rate than culture does.  The brain of a hunter gatherer does not fit the cognitive task environment of a knowledge worker.  The classic example is the inappropriateness of the fight-or-flight response we experience while disagreeing with our boss over a performance review.

Books, articles and posts that illustrate this extreme lack of cognitive fit abound. Two recent examples (thanks to Gina Farag) are given below.

An article in the New York Times, Yes Looks Do Matter,  on how stereotyping has evolutionary roots:

  ”Eons ago, this capability was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds.”

And an opinion piece in LiveScience, Losing It: Why Self Control is not Natural, claims lack of self control may have had an evolutionary advantage:

Apparently, it’s human nature to be out of control. Imagine our early ancestors roaming the savannah looking for food. They might bring down a gazelle, but that meat was probably not enough for some of the group. As soon as they wiped their mouths, those lacking self-control were probably off again on the hunt because they could not deny themselves anything. 

Of course many brain functions, the so-called higher brain functions, have evolved specifically for the purpose of adapting to the modern information age. Right? Well it seems even the nobel function of reason has come under the assault from an evolutionary perspective. Take a look at the book Kludge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind as an example.

Flight-or-fight, self control, stereotyping and reasoning are powerful forces in society today.  Yet in many ways, our hardwired approach to these is wildly out of step with the cognitive task demands of today’s culture.  The effects are quite visibile – a tsunami of unwanted behaviors – discrimination, poor health choices, workplace violence.

Our technology-fueled culture will continue to advanced at an accelerate pace. It seems clear the only way our poor old slowly evolving brains will manage is via excellence in cognitive design.