Cognitive Design

Exercise bikes integrated with video games have been growing in popularity.  They offer a great platform for cognitive designers looking to shift the exercise experience.   Found a recent article, Predicting the Effects of Interactive Video Bikes on Exercise Adherence that suggests they may help us exercise more consistently by making it enjoyable.

 You have to pay to access the article but the research blog has a good summary post. The research was done using GameBikes an interactive video bike created by a small firm in Texas.

“The bottom-line: the men who trained on the GameBikes were more likely to stick to the exercise regime. They attended an average of 77 per cent of the sessions compared with 42 per cent of participants in the low-tech control condition. “

That 33% difference was attributed to the experience on the GameBike being more pleasant, enjoyable and exciting.  In cognitive design terms that means that exercising with the GameBike produces more mental energy (positive affective and emotions) than just cycling on a stationary bike.

Managing diabetes often calls for significant lifestyle and behavior change. Creating programs to help patients and family members make these changes requires a sophisticated understanding of how minds actually work.   Diabetes management is a major cognitive design challenge so I am always on the look our for fact-based insights into how the minds of diabetics work.

Late last year the IIT Institute of Design held a Diabetes Innovation Fair including three sessions on platform strategies, persuasive technologies and wellness experience research. They just released videos of each session.

All three sessions offering valuable insights for cognitive designers.

Clients often ask for advice on how to apply cognitive design to the challenge of group decision-making.  A common request is for interventions that get individuals to contribute more and avoid group think. How can we productively unleash the individual?

One approach is understand the individual and social cognition of conformity and design interventions and interactions that soften it.

For specific evidence-based clues on how to do that check out, Conformity: Ten Timeless Influencers. The author does an excellent job summarizing some of the literature.  Key point have clear design implications including, for example:

-  Avoid groups sizes of 3-5

- Plant a competent dissenter in the group

- Make authority less visible

- Deemphasize opportunities for winning group approval

Of course dialing-down the impact of conformity is just one of several things we can do with cognitive design  to improve group dynamics.  I am interested to hear about other approaches from readers.

Fast Company has a great article on The 10 most Addictive Sounds in World.  Here is how they were found:

“Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts, a sound identity company in New York, wired up 50 volunteers and measured their galvanic, pupil and brainwave responses to sounds using the latest neuroscience-based research methods. We learned that sound has remarkable power. This may not be surprising for many, but it was certainly surprising to realize just how many commercial brands over the past 20 years have made their way into the world’s 10 most powerful and addictive sounds–beating some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature.”

I won’t spoil any surprise by listing the sounds in this post, especially since the article includes a section for those that want to take a QUIZ . Be sure to listen to the sounds and ask yourself – can you ignore many of these? I think not.

The lesson for cognitive designers is simple, be sure to go beyond the visual when doing sensorial design. We often forget about the cognitive power of sound.

Be sure to read Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience and Brand Value.  It is an edited collection focused on service and experiential design. It offers keen insights and practical tools. Unfortunately, it is lacks the introduction to applied cognitive science for designers that I believe is necessary to really crack the code in service and experiential design efforts.

I especially like the definition they offer of design thinking:

“.. is essentially a human-centered innovation process that emphasizes observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualization of ideas, rapid concept prototyping and concurrent business analysis which ultimately influences innovation and business strategy. “

Chapter 20: Will Meaningful Brand Experiences Disrupt Your Market? is of special interest to cognitive designers. The author David Norton shows how firms such as Dyson, Linux and Whole Foods are disrupting their respective industries by delivering powerful customer experiences by clearly standing for something.  A good example of how meaning produces significant and sustained economic returns.

As the author states: “The opportunity for design today is to go beyond making things convenient for people and start making experiences people care about.”

And to do that in a systematic and repeatable way we first must understand how their minds work.

The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in  New York City is offering a six-week Summer intensive for experienced designers interested in creating social change.  The SVA is well known for being on the cutting edge yet having a practical focus. This is a unique opportunity to develop as a design activist.

Procrastinating or putting things off when it is not in our best interest to do so is a common problem. According to research reported on Psychology Today:

“Everyone procrastinate sometimes, but 20 percent of people are true procrastinators. They consistently avoid difficult tasks and deliberately look for distractions, which, unfortunately, are increasingly available. Procrastination in large part reflects our difficulty in regulating emotions and to accurately predict how we will feel tomorrow, or the next day. Procrastinators say they perform better under pressure, but that’s just one of many lies they tell themselves. Since procrastinators are made and not born, it’s possible to overcome procrastination—with effort.”

This makes procrastination a major cognitive design challenge. As with all such challenges the first step is to understand the underlying cognitive processes and needs.

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The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) provides a formal classification system for understanding the many ways in which our minds don’t work properly. It is published by the American Psychiatric Society and is widely used in the US as a standard tool for psychiatric diagnosis.  The fifth version of the manual (DSM-5) has been under development for the last 10 years and is due out on May 2013. An advanced look at the DSM-5 has been officially released and generated considerable reaction. For an overview of the changes and potential implications check out the reviews in the Psychiatric Times and The World of Psychology.

A website from Philips, GetInsideHealth, offers an interesting TEDMED video summary of some of the innovative products that are designed for behavior change. You may need to register to get access to the video.

An excerpt from the transcript:

“The exponential rise in chronic disease associated with obesity and a sedentary, modern lifestyle is exerting unsustainable demands on health budgets world-wide. But, whereas public policy initiatives, aimed at prevention, are slow to take hold, a raft of recent technological innovations appear to be having a real impact in terms of shifting people’s behaviour and nudging them toward a healthier and more active lifestyle. This video focuses health-related technology advancements, such as DirectLife, and includes interviews with Tim Brown, President and CEO of IDEO; David Pogue, Technology Columnist of the New York Times; and Deepak Chopra, Chairman and Co-founder of Chopra Center for Wellbeing.”

Waiting in line, on the phone, for the doctor, for your flight or in any other service delivery situation often leads to unhappy customers,  increased costs and loss of business. Redesigning operations to minimize wait times can be costly and complex. One alternative that is commonly practiced is “pleasantly distract them” while they wait.

But does that really work?

A little evidence supporting the effectiveness of distractions was reported in, Distracted Customers Wait Times Fly:

“He wanted to know how we subjectively perceive waiting time. So 50 people in one group were asked to wait, with absolutely nothing to do. Another 50 were also asked to wait the same length of time—but they could watch TV. Then both groups were asked to estimate how much time had passed. The ones who watched television thought they waited on average only half as long as the ones with zip to keep them occupied. “

A 50% decrease from a pleasant distraction is a very powerful effect.