Cognitive Design

In an earlier post, we explored PatientsLikeMe, a unique site for crowdsourcing patient data in great quantitative detail.  The idea is that patients share tons of personal health data by tracking symptoms, lab results, interventions and the outcomes produced in quantitative form. This creates a river of data for helping each other and is invaluable for researchers, insurers, drug companies and medical device companies looking to develop better health solutions.   An exciting and potential disruptive way to crowdsource health innovations.

But will an open source approach to clinical research catch on, especially will all the concerns about privacy?  It looks like it is. Check out CureTogether. They have 13,000 members in 112 countries contributing 1.2 million data points on 600 conditions.  All the data is supplied by patients. They are actively leveraging that it in 6 university-based studies. It is interesting to note that the most active area is anxiety with some 2000 members.

Patient sourcing (patients working on cures through a crowdsourcing model), especially when it is quantitative can change the time, cost and quality of clinical research by a factor of 10. As they point out on the website capturing quantitative is the key:

“CureTogether is about quantifying the collective patient experience. While most other patient support sites have focused on stories or information from experts, we focus on quantitative data across over 600 patient-contributed conditions. Individual data is kept private, but the anonymized aggregate data is shared openly to maximize discoveries that can be made.”

Obviously this involves considerable work for patients.  But the return on effort is outstanding.  Members get unique advice, daily encouragement and the opportunity to contribute to something of major importance. Powerful cognitive design.

Reading is a powerful and much used cognitive process.  We use it to communicate, learn and have fun. It involves perception, pattern recognition, language comprehension and other mental processes. The experience of reading is strongly shaped by how knowledge is structured – story, book, memo, billboard, etc.

We can improve how well and fast we read through training. Much has been learned about the cognitive science of reading over the last 25 years.  A number of technological innovations ebooks, e-readers, Google books and tablet computers has finally positioned the book for reinvention.

For example, IDEO has presented three interesting iPad-based concepts in The Future of the Book:

Nelson – Topic content is organized in information layers including time, impact, fact check, discussions and recent media coverage

Coupland -  Reading materials is organized around who is reading what in your social or professional network

Alice – A narrative reading experience that is shaped by user interaction.

Each of these concepts satisfies a different cognitive need by changing how I read.  Nelson satisfies my need for completeness, Coupland my need to know what others know and Alice my desire to co-create the story.

There are other ongoing attempts to reinvent thn e book to change how we read and satisfy cognitive needs in new ways. For example,  Flatworld offers the remixable textbook so instructors cacustomize content and students can engage in social learning.   Knowledge cards (my own effort) seeks to reorganize the content of books into a set of linked cards designed to translate concepts into new habits and accelerate behavior change.

No matter, the timing is right to rethink how we structure and deliver knowledge in books to support, accelerate and even integrate with the psychological (intellectual, affective, motivational and volitional) needs of readers.  Given the central role it plays in our mental life, even a small improvement in the cognition of reading could have strong society-wide implications.

Looking forward to hearing from readers that have cognitive design ideas for shifting how we read books to change the world.