Cognitive Design

Yesterday I wrote on how ebooks are making inroads to reinventing the traditional paper-based book. In response one reader sent me a link to Livescribe Inc.  The firm offers the Pulse Smart pen that electronically records everything you hear and write. It includes a camera, microphone, audio jack, speaker, LED display, ink cartridge and of course a USB connector all for $150-$250. What is neat is they have turned the pen into a platform for “pencasting”, linking to social networks and many other apps that a growing community of developers is busy creating.

 They have sold 300,000 pens in less than 18 months!

 I wonder how this will impact the cognition of writing, note taking and otherwise documenting observations?

Electronic books, or e-books are finally making real inroads to reinventing the book.   Clear evidence comes from an Amazon press release that claims on Christmas they sold more Kindle edition books (electronic books on Amazon’s e-reader called Kindle) than physical books.  And Amazon is not the only one pushing e-books hardware and software. I just read that Ray Kurzweil will unveil a new e-book “platform” called Bilo at the Consumer Electronic Show on January 7th.

The cognitive design challenges and opportunities are significant.   e-Books are highly-networked and dynamic knowledge structures versus the static standalone knowledge encapsulated in a traditional book. This will change the cognition of reading. But how, and what e-book features do we need to really leverage that opportunity? The visceral experience and finger-level human factors are very different with e-books.  This could, for example, impede speed reading techniques but accelerate quick reference and look up.  Perhaps it would enable an entirely new class of speed reading techniques.

E-book innovators will bring us many features – color, the ability to annotate, embedded links, automatic language translation, text to speech and so on. The real question to ask is what cognitive processes are we trying to support and enhance?  More generally, how can we design an e-book optimized for how minds work best?

Here is a classic cognitive design challenge

ScienceDaily’s, Of Girls and Geeks, reports on research done at the University of Washington that claims stereotypes about computer scientists/students are keeping many women and some men away from the field. They report:

“The stereotype of computer scientists as nerds who stay up all night coding and have no social life may be driving women away from the field, according to a new study published this month.”  And there is more: “When people think of computer science the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science fiction memorabilia and junk food,” said Sapna Cheryan, a University of Washington assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “That stereotype doesn’t appeal to many women who don’t like the portrait of masculinity that it evokes.”

The research is interesting in its emphasis on the supporting artifacts and environmental factors (all the stuff computer geeks are surrounded by) and the role it plays in driving an “ambient feeling” of belonging or not.  A real clue for the cognitive designer.

The challenge for the cognitive designer is to create a mental model and supporting artifacts that gives computer science a “new brand”. One that is true to the field but that resonates with, or even accelerates, the thinking of female students.

About 58 teams recently competed in DARPA’s network challenge:

“The DARPA Network Challenge is a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems. The Network Challenge winner will be the first individual to submit the locations of 10 8-foot balloons moored at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.”

The winning team, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  used the following  incentive scheme:

“To recruit people into their network of balloon spotters, the MIT team offered to split the prize money, so that if the team won, the person who correctly identified a balloon’s location got $2000. Finder fees were also offered, so that whoever referred a successful spotter would be given $1000; $500 went to the referrer of the referrer, $250 to the referrer of the referrer of the referrer, and so on, with any remainder going to charity.”

An interesting application of classic network marketing incentives to rapidly grow “a crowd” in a 21st century crowdsourcing model.

There have been many recent studies highlighting the important role of mirror neurons  in generating empathy. Now there is more evidence that chemosensory information may be key.  Chemosensory processing has to do with the sensing of chemicals through smell. Chemosensory ability is an important but often neglected sense from a design standpoint unless of course you design fragrances or foods.

 Finished reading a study on chemosensory abilities that demonstrates using brain scans that we can detect the chemicals associated with fear/anxiety even though the sweat given off is indistinguishable from the smell of other sweats, such as sport sweat. Induction of Empathy by the Smell of Anxiety finds:

In sum, the processing of chemosensory anxiety signals engages significantly more neuronal resources than the chemosensory processing of sport sweat. The odors were hardly detectable and the odors could not be differentiated regarding their intensity, pleasantness, unpleasantness or familiarity. Accordingly, it is concluded that the human brain automatically guides physiological adjustments to chemosensory anxiety signals, without being dependent on conscious mediation. However, in contrast to other modalities, the physiological adjustments in response to chemosensory anxiety signals seem to be mainly related to an automatic contagion of the feeling. In other words, smelling the feelings of others could be termed as an incorporation of the chemical expressions and thus the feelings of others.

For the cognitive designer the implications are clear, don’t forget the nose when you are creating artifacts meant to inspire empathy in users.

I was sharing a story the other day about how I found that shower board from Lowes ($15 for a 4′x8 ‘sheet) can be used to make super cheap and giant white boards and a friend told me about IdeaPaint.  IdeaPaint is  a coating you can apply to any surface you would normally paint and turn it into a dry-erase surface.  It is a bit more expensive than my solution but far more interesting. Check out the photos below.

(more…)

Wireless neural implant translates thoughts directly into speech as fast as in a normal speaker.   Read the story here.

Patterns play an important role in how minds work at many levels.  For example, our ability to recognize patterns is key in perception, thinking and creativity.  So it is no great leap to claim that designing for cognition requires an understanding of the patterns that turn our mental wheels.

But what is a pattern, where do we find them, and which types have the most cognitive impact and why? One answer I give in my cognitive design class is to look to nature – body curves, the golden ratio and crystalline structures invoke powerful cognitive effects. But why is that?

An intriguing explanation, at least for the golden ratio, has just been proposed. The golden ratio or divine proportion (because it appears everywhere) is a geometric relationship that invokes aesthetic pleasure and even awe. It shows up in nature (seashell spirals), art (Mona Lisa) and architecture (pyramids).   According to Adrian Bejan, a professor at Duke and father of constructal theory, we can most easily scan objects shaped after a golden ratio rectangle.  Those patterns are optimized for perception. Furthermore, the golden ratio is inherent in a deeper pattern in nature that unifies perception, cognition and locomotion so that it becomes more effective over time.

 “It is the oneness of vision, cognition and locomotion as the design of the movement of all animals on earth,” he said. “The phenomenon of the golden ratio contributes to this understanding the idea that pattern and diversity coexist as integral and necessary features of the evolutionary design of nature.”

You can find his paper here. The bottom line for cognitive designers is creating artifacts that are optimized for how the minds work will  in some cases turn on the golden ratio.

One research group reports that we have a distinct pattern of neural activity approximately 30 seconds before making a error in a routine or monotonous task. As the authors point out:

“Our findings provide insights into the brain network dynamics preceding human performance errors and suggest that monitoring of the identified precursor states may help in avoiding human errors in critical real-world situations.” 

If this holds up it is great news for designers of augmented cognition applications. 

[click image for enlarged view & the link below for more info]

Making Meaning