Cognitive Design

If you are faced with designing products, services, communications, events or other artifacts for those that are grieving it especially important to take a cognitive approach.  Your goal may be to help them make sense of a loss, find hope in the future or otherwise cope but the key is to understand the cognition of the grieving process.  Susan Berger has a new book that goes beyond the typical treatment (3-stages of grieving) and introduces types of grievers including the Nomad, Memorialist, Normalizer, Activist and the Seeker.  Each type has a specific set of cognitive needs or psychographic profile.  You can get more information from an interview she did for PsyCentral or check out her book, The Five Ways We Grieve.

I have yet to apply her theory to a design problem but will have a chance to shortly. I will blog what I find.

This month’s issue of Fast Company has a great example of how to use cognitive design to remake something that is essential to corporate performance (ethics-and-compliance training) but mind numbingly boring into something that employees can’t wait to see.   In How to Add Some Fun to Corporate Protocol, the consulting firm BearingPoint has transformed their traditional 3-ring binder training course into a video mini-series modeled after the sitcom The Office.

Using real-life drama in the office and characters that would play out “untounchable  issues” in an exaggerated and humorous form was a big hit.   New episodes are released every Monday and employees can’t wait to watch them. Can you say that about your ethics and compliance training?

One key to success in this approach is hiring an experienced film-maker to direct the work.  This increases the chance of producing real cognitive impact rather than just coming off hokey. Check out an example episode here.

Thank you Help Remedies!

Philip’s and ABM AMRO collaborated to create a unique way of displaying emotions in your home. The Rationalizer consists of a bracelet (EmoBracelet) that measures galvanic skin response (arousal level) and lights up a display on the bracelet as well as one on the surface of a bowl called the EmoBowl.

The number and color of graphical elements changes as your arousal levels increases or decreases. The initial application was designed for making online investment decisions at home. From a cognitive design standpoint, many other uses for this emotion sensing technology are possible.

The EmoBracelet+Bowl are meant as prototype concepts (versus commercial products) so the companies can learn more about the domain of sensing emotions.

Check out a high resolution imagine of the bowl and bracelet here.

The 2010 D&E conference is scheduled for October 5-7 in Chicago. It is a key event for those interested in cognitive design. This year’s theme is “emerging societal issues in our lives and living environments.” Topics include:

*Design for Wellbeing : Healthcare; Elderly Living; Food, Health and Culture; Universal/ Inclusive Design

*Design for Environments: Sustainable Lifestyle; Product and System Life Cycle

*Interaction and Context-sensitivity: Human-Robot Interaction; Product Adaptation; User Learning

*Service Design: Modeling Experiences; Retail Design

*Strategic Design and Business: Decision-Making; Business Models; Branding

*Foundation for Design and Emotion: Temporality, Uncertainty and Polarity of Emotion; Affordance, Semiotics, Value and Emotion; Research Methodologies; Design Methodologies

*Theoretical Foundations: Philosophical Foundations and Implications to Design 

Submissions for cases, workshops and papers are due February 15th. I am interested in collaborating with others on a submission.

175 slides by Stephen Anderson that show how web designers use psychology to seduce (deliberately entice) users into various interactions. All of the devices revealed (e.g. challenges, points, levels, feedback loops, visual imagery, playing hard to get, ownership bias, social spoofing, etc.) will be familiar to cognitive designers but some of the examples may be new. I especially like his deconstruction of the social music site iLike.

Slide 85 will be of special interests to cognitive designers. He lists a dozen or so  ”Things we know about people” including that they are curious, lazy and want to be in the hero of the story. Although these description may seem mundane, they are actually a very good list of powerful cognitive needs that if met will produce very seductive designs.

One reason the Weight Watcher’s program is successful at helping people lose weight is that it provides point-based guidelines for daily consumption. The system is more comprehensive than anything else you will find and it helps you avoid making substitutions that accidentally undermine your goal.

 The point system provides a measurable way of staying on track on a daily basis.  Sounds simple but it is a powerful cognitive design technique.  The system once learned provides a “mental budget” or a low cognitive load way of self-regulating.  I can quickly determine if I am on target before I eat the food – a leading indicator, rather than just weighting myself to see if I am track – a lagging indicator. Further, I only have so much mental energy during the day to control my emotional and behavioral reactions and everything is pulling on it. The point system or mental budget uses very little of that mental energy compared to other programs for regulating my weight.

A mental budget by itself is not enough to make new behaviors happen.

(more…)

Check it out , make a contribution and be sure they cover all things cognitive!

The journal article, Age of Reason, is full of interesting data on age-related cognitive decline and performance. The primary focus is on personal financial decision making.  The authors found a “U shaped” relationship between age and the quality of financial decision making involving the cost of credit (e.g. home equity loans and credit cards). Peak performance happens around age 53.

Of special interest to cognitive designers is the section that looks at how various policies can help mitigate sub-optimal decision making.  The article is worth a look by anyone designing to support consumer cognition in the use, purchase or understanding of financial products.

One of the challenges we look at in my cognitive design class is how to use the latest neuroscience to do a “cognitive makeover” of a room to support specific types of sleep – short but restorative cat naps,  a full night’s rest, stimulate lucid dreaming and so on.

 So I am always on the lookout for new designable scientific insights into sleep and various gadgets that help. A former student just sent me this link on Lightsleeper.  Here is how it works:

“When you turn on the device (and turn off the lights in your bedroom) LightSleeper projects a light on the ceiling above your bed. The light moves in a controlled, circular, and soothing manner. Follow the light with your eyes, while lying in bed. Gradually, your mind will relax and you’ll be ready to sleep well and enjoy a longer, better quality sleep.”

It is like reading only it does not stimulate the mind. The device shuts off after 30 minutes.