Cognitive Design

Thinking about the future is a very emotional experience at least according to Eugene Caruso, a behavioral scientist at the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago. More specifically, in a new paper Dr. Caruso reported on experiments that suggest contemplating future events evokes far stronger emotional responses than reflecting on related past events.  For example, thinking about potential future insults as compared to past transgressions or contemplating giving  to charity in the future versus a donation given in the past.

The work is summarized nicely in EurekaAlerts:

“Why then is the future more evocative than the past? In general, people respond to future situations with heightened emotions as a way to prepare themselves for action, Caruso said. Thus, even though they do not actually have control over something that is about to happen — as the study’s experiments show — this “overlearned” response to the future persists.

Moreover, people seem to be good at rationalizing and making sense of emotional experiences. Once these events have passed, they become ordinary and the emotions associated with them less extreme.”

This is an important finding for cognitive designers. Retro designs are used to trigger reminiscing and the emotions of the past. Perhaps there is more mental energy to be found in what-if designs that trigger futurizing and emotions yet to come.

Effective disease management programs are a cornerstone for any serious attempt to improve the cost and quality of healthcare in the US. These programs target chronic conditions such as congestive health failure and diabetes and provide services to insure compliance with best practices by clinicians and patients alike. The goal is to improve outcomes, avoid hospitalization and eliminate unnecessary cost.  As most of our healthcare dollars are tied up in chronic conditions, effective disease management programs are a must have.

But how do you design an effective disease management program (DMP)? That question was asked and answered in a recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly.  The researchers studied programs that worked and programs that failed in several countries and found:

“Five traits seemed to be the most important in ensuring that DMPs meet their goals: program size, simplicity of design, a focus on patients’ needs, the ability to collect data easily and analyze results, and the presence of incentives that encourage all stakeholders to comply with the program.”

Although these traits seem basic (and they are), there  are some details especially relevant for cognitive designers.

For example, decreasing cognitive load is key. Under simplicity the cognitive load is decreased in the program by avoiding complicated care pathways that have been customized for multiple sub-groups of patients.  While under the patient need trait it is lowered by avoiding the use of complex technologies to monitor and report results.  Also under patient needs care was taken to support the cognition of self-regulation:

“The patients are given ongoing, disease-specific coaching to maximize their ability to care for themselves”

A careful reading of the article reveals other cognitive factors that help drive the success of disease management programs.   It is not surprising that cognitive factors play a key role but it is very useful to see the details revealed in a empirical study.

In cognitive design we must make every effort to understand the psychological needs of others. These include emotional, intellectual, motivational and volition or those involved in making active conscious choices. Discovering deeply felt yet unrecognized cognitive needs is often enough to light the way to block buster designs.

So I am always on the lookout for interesting new ways to probe the mind and uncover new cognitive needs.  A colleague recently shared a link to a site that catalogs a growing movement around expressing with picture and text why you do what you do or WYDWYD for short.   The main site it here and an interesting collection of responses is here.

According to Wired, WDYDWYD started in 2004 and has been growing since. This signals a clear existential need people have to express their purpose in life to others. Take note cognitive designers. It is also interesting as technique to probe cognitive needs. Clearly each purpose statement reveals specific inclinations and associated needs and wants at the psychological level. WDYDWYD might be a simple, low-cost and fun way to help surface deep cognitive needs!

Over the last 30 years we have learned a lot about how minds really work. One of the major findings is that how we use our physical body during a mental process can strongly determine the outcome.  Cognition is not just in our minds it is literally embedded in the rest of our bodies.  We say cognition is embodied for short. Walking to think things through,  tossing the football between study sessions and explaining things with our hands are all commonly practiced acts of embodied cognition.

So I am always on the lookout for new scientific studies on embodied cognition that hold insights for designers.  Take for example the article in the Journal of Consumer Research, From Firm Muscles to Firm Willpower: Understanding the Role of Embodied Cognition in Self-Regulation. The authors report on a series of five experiments that demonstrate, for the first time as far as I know, that self control is embodied. Specifically they found:

“Across our studies, we triangulated on our premise that muscle firming facilitates self-control by firming willpower in several ways. We used multiple operations of muscle firming, ranging from clenching a fist, to stretching one’s fingers, to tightening one’s calf muscles, to firming one’s biceps. We also employed different kinds of self-control tasks, ranging from those that required a person to take on immediate pain for future gain (e.g., to consider immediately disturbing information, put a hand in an ice bucket to improve blood circulation, and consume a nasty but healthy vinegar tonic; experiments 1-3) to those that required avoiding immediate pleasure for future gain (e.g., avoiding tempting food in a snack bar, choosing a healthy apple over a chocolate bar, experiments 4-5). This effect was found to work only when subjects were trying to exert will power.”

Said another way, simply clenching or firming muscles does not create willpower it only enhances it.

Bracelets are the rage when it comes to cognitive design. I can get a bracelet to show solidarity with a cause (e.g. cancer awareness), help me change my behaviors and habits, to act as a reminder, to provide medical alerts, to friend someone and assist with other cognition intense goals and activities.

A reader recently sent a link to a story about how the Braille Bracelet won the 2010 People’s Choice design award.

The bracelet is designed to support the process of learning to read braille. Each tile has an engraved letter of the English alphabet on one side and the corresponding braille symbol on the other side.  It is a wrist-side guide for translation that is also very stylish.

One of the more recent findings in cognitive science is that metaphors run deep. We use metaphors to make sense of the world, come up with new ideas, decide, learn and perform any number of mental activities.   Metaphors sit at the center of art, science, religion and culture. Invoking a metaphor can trigger a cascade of automatic associations and thoughts and even influence behavior. Metaphors are powerful primes. From a cognitive design standpoint, we work hard to understand the controlling metaphors operating “between the ears” or our clients.

 I am always on the look out for new scientific studies that provide designable insights into the nature of metaphors. Take for example, the recent article in Psychological Science, Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths, that studied the moral-purity metaphor.  In this metaphor, as in all others, we seek to understand an abstract concept in terms of something more sensory or concrete.  In the case of the moral-purity metaphor we try and make sense of mortality (the abstraction) by linking it to concrete behaviors involving physical cleanliness.  We “wash away our sins” or we threaten to “wash out your mouth” when you use profanity.  To quote:

“These findings indicate that the embodiment of moral purity is specific to the motor modality involved in a moral transgression, making purification of the “dirty” body part more desirable than purification of other body parts.”

For example,  verbally lying would make the use of mouthwash more desirable.   The flip side also appears to be true:

“Note, however, that people not only avoid physical contact with morally tainted people and objects, but also seek physical contact with virtuous ones (Rozin & Nemeroff, 1990). Hence, they may not only attempt to remove the metaphorical residue of immoral acts, but also avoid removing the residue of virtuous acts. In this case, people would find mouthwash particularly unappealing after conveying a virtuous message in a voice mail and hand sanitizer particularly unappealing after conveying a virtuous message in an e-mail.”

The moral-purity metaphor has clear implications for designers working on ethics issues and programs.   Very interested to hear from readers working in ethics that are using this or other metaphors.

Priming is a powerful psychological technique.  It involves exposure to a specific stimulus (often repeatedly), a short delay and then the completion of a task. How you complete the task is influenced by the stimulus which “primes you” to act in a certain way.  You have an implicit memory of the stimulus which is used to complete the task. It can be surprising powerful especially when the priming stimulus is carefully selected and we are doing the task in automatic mode.

For example, a recent research study from the University of Pennsylvania found that priming can influence how we decide to spend our time.  For specifics see, Thoughts About Time Inspire People to Socialize:

“A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the people in their lives while people who think about money fill their schedules with work, work, and—you guessed it—more work.” 

Being primed to think about time influences a decision to socialize versus a prime about money which influences a decision to work. This effect was found in both a lab and real world setting.

The psychological need to share is a powerful force, especially when it involves trust.   Cognitive designers that are able to create new ways of sharing or more shareable products, services and experiences are achieving success.  To see how this is working in some detail check out the new book and website, What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption.The book illustrates a mega shift from hyper consumption to collaborative consumption driven by peer-to-peer sharing networks enabled by the Internet. We can now efficiently share everything:

“From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa) and car sharing (Zipcar), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume.

New marketplaces such as Swap.com, Zilok, Bartercard, AirBnb, and thredUP are enabling “peer-to-peer” to become the default way people exchange — whether it’s unused space, goods, skills, money, or services — and sites like these are appearing everyday, all over the world.”

We have looked at many of these sites on the Cognitive Design Blog before but not as an emerging design pattern.   Designing for shareability (collaborative consumption) not only satisfies deep cognitive needs it is a powerful way to tap underutilized capacity, dramatically lower costs, shift behavior patterns and bring people closer together.

Very interested to hear from readers that have insight into how we can transform traditional products and assets into something that is collaboratively consumable.

Check out the new game on Facebook called Healthseeker.  It was designed to use the psychological power of social game play to encourage healthier eating habits and lifestyle choices. 

The picth is that getting healthier (more specifically managing diabetes risk) can be fun and happen with a little help from your friends.  You select goals, chose a mission, earn experience points, give kudos, win badges, send challenges to friends and all the other social network dynamics that move heart-and-mind so well for hundreds of millions of people.  The game is new. It has approximately 4000 members and 400 fans.  The best description I have found so far is on Technology Review:

The challenge of this kind of game isn’t to convince people of something but to get them to act. “People are already emotionally committed to their health,” says Michael Fergusson, the founder and CEO of Ayogo. “They know they need to eat better and exercise.” But approaching that challenge all at once can seem overwhelming and thankless. “We pay them to take healthy actions,” says Fergusson. Reinforcing those small actions could turn them into habits that add up to better health.

They also discuss how other social games are changing behaviors.  Healthseeker is an important experiment. We need more like it.

How can we use the features and functions of online interaction (social networks, online 3D worlds, etc.) that have proven cognitive impact to encourage behavior change for individual and social good?

When creating designs optimized for how minds work it is important to recognize that any solution can include five types of minds – individual, extended, group, emergent and machine.  An emergent mind includes any group of minds where collective intelligence develops. But is there really any such things as collective intelligence that makes emergent minds functionally different than just a group of people working together?  Recent examples such as prediction markets and various crowdsourcing models clearly imply the answer is yes but no one has demonstrated collective intelligence scientifically – until now.

A recent article in Science, Evidence of Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups, not only demonstrates a general collective intelligence for groups (much like we have already demonstrated a general intelligence for individuals) but the results have strong implications for cognitive design.   You can get a good overview of the work from an MIT press release.

“We set out to test the hypothesis that groups, like individuals, have a consistent ability to perform across different kinds of tasks,” says Anita Williams Woolley, the paper’s lead author and an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. “Our hypothesis was confirmed,” continues Thomas W. Malone, a co-author and Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “We found that there is a general effectiveness, a group collective intelligence, which predicts a group’s performance in many situations.”  

Further they found that the strength or amount of collective intelligence:

*  did not correlate strongly to the individual intelligence found in the group

*  correlates strongly to the average ability of group members to recognize emotional states (social sensitivity) and how well the opportunity to make conversation was shared amongst group members.

There should be no surprise that groups that work better together will have a higher collective intelligence. What is useful is the empirical evidence that suggest to get that effect you need higher individual emotional intelligence on average and a mechanism that promotes a broad distribution of conversational turn-taking. This is very different than other architectures that support collective intelligence such as prediction markets and certain types of  crowdsourcing.