If you have not seen this before check out Sribblenauts. A recent demo can be found on YouTube here. Any object you can imagine and type is injected into the game play. You can then use the object to solve problems, move about and otherwise advance in the game. There are of course limits to the objects the game knows about (20K+) but trying to test those limits is part of the fun.
The game was released today.
Many have argued that one of the root causes to the recent rout in the global capital markets was overtly simplistic risk models. Making them more accurate may require factoring in cognition. As pointed out in the New York Times:
“That failure suggests new frontiers for financial engineering and risk management, including trying to model the mechanics of panic and the patterns of human behavior.”
This means our new quantitative models of the capital markets will need to take into account how the minds of investors and consumers actually work. It may be possible to apply core ideas from cognitive design such as, people make decisions and behave to maximize their mental energy, to the development of a 21st century approach to the capital markets.
For all fans of work in brain-computer interfaces (and I am one because they will revolutionize cognitive design), you must check out this photo journal from the director of the Brain Computer Interface project at IBM’s Deep Computing Institute.
How do we decide what to spend our tax money on? Who should pay what level of tax to fund these public goods? This is a very hard problem. One thing that makes it hard is it is impossible to determine what people really want to pay for. If you ask tax payers how much they want to pay for a given service they will always low-ball it. Turns out we have a cognitive bias towards wanting to get a “free ride”. We have a built in need to take advantage of the natural incentive this type of question creates.
Interesting new research from the California Institute of Technology suggests we may be able to use fMRIs or brain scanning technology to determine objectively how much people value something. To quote:
“This is one of the first-ever applications of neurotechnology to real-life economic problems, the researchers note. “We have shown that by applying tools from neuroscience to the public-goods problem, we can get solutions that are significantly better than those that can be obtained without brain data,” says Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at Caltech and the paper’s principal investigator.”
This research opens up many cognitive design possibilities. As the author points out:
”… it is possible to imagine a future in which, instead of a vote on a proposition to fund a new highway, this technology is used to scan a random sample of the people who would benefit from the highway to see whether it’s really worth the investment. “It would be an interesting alternative way to decide where to spend the government’s money,” he notes.”
Looking to pitch a hard design challenge to an interested audience, work on a hard design challenge for $$ or pledge prize money to stimulate work on a cool design challenge? If so check out ChallengePost. The site offers an interesting implementation of the crowdsourcing approach to problem solving and innovation.
The site is new so still developing (only about 37 challenges) but some have a strong cognitive design element. For example, Newt Gingrich has posted one that challenges us to “Create a method to teach math and science that kids like, and that enables us to leapfrog India and China”. Rock and roll.
A small volume from a true design thinking master. For a video from the author, reviews and free chapters click here.
Want to design a non-pharmaceutical that nevertheless produces real clinical outcomes? Here are some guidelines:
1. Have a convincing beside manner when delivering the placebo (lie well)
2. Use the right color (yellow for antidepressants, red for stimulants, green anti-anxiety, white antacids)
3. Prescribe frequent doses (4 times a day is better than twice per day)
4. Stamp them with widely recognized brand names that correspond to the desired effect (Valium = chill out)
5. Use clever and suggestive names (Viagra = Vigorous + Niagara)
Source: Placebos are Getting More Effective.
Check out the Greater Good Science Center.
“The Greater Good Science Center is an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior. While serving the traditional tasks of a UC Berkeley research center—fostering groundbreaking scientific discoveries—the GGSC is unique in its commitment to helping people apply scientific research to their lives.”
This promises to be a treasure trove of insights and techniques for cognitive designers. For example, the article Changing our Minds, offers some intriguing suggestions for how to use Fiction as a technique for building empathy.
[Click on image for crisper view]
Cognitive design is about understanding how the mind works and adding features and functions to products and services that support, enhance and even create it. As such, cognitive designers are students of how minds work in a wide variety of domains.
Take for example a study on back surgery, covered in Mindhacks, that demonstrates Seeing the results of surgery impacts the outcomes. They found:
“Patients given a ‘souvenir’ of their operation reported greater improvement in sciatic nerve pain, lower back pain, less pins and needles sensations, less leg weakness and a reduced use of pain killers.”
The souvenir in this case is bone fragments from their back!
The hypothesis is that seeing the fragments lowers anxiety and increases the belief that a good job was done. These mental states in turn impact the manifestation of symptoms. This is a great example of designing for how the mind of the patient actually works and takes engaging the patient in the healthcare process to an entirely new level.
