Cognitive Design

Seed and the Council on Competitiveness recently convened a diverse group to discuss the future of innovation. It is an interesting read.   A sample for cognitive designers:

“Mullainathan said that this “last mile problem”—where people have all the information to act in an effective way but fail to do so—can be solved through innovations that adopt lessons from the social science of human behavior. As an example, Mullainathan used Clocky, a motorized alarm clock that jumps to the floor and rolls away while ringing, ensuring that users get out of bed to turn it off. An alarm clock has one piece of information to convey; adding wheels makes that information much more difficult to ignore. That kind of lateral thinking could be applied in many different contexts and at much larger scales, such as global health or poverty. “There are high returns to innovation in this kind of area because there are a lot of low hanging fruit—situations where behavior change can drive a huge return,” Mullainathan said.

Just in case you wonder what Clocky looks like,  I’ve include a photo. It is also interesting to note that “design” is an explicit part of the discussion on the future of innovation. Ten years ago that would not have been the case.