Cognitive Design

I’ve been asking many students that question lately. 

This semester I am a visiting instructor of physics at Indiana University Purdue University in Fort Wayne (IPFW). I love physics and teaching it is loaded with fundamental challenges in cognitive design. In many ways, the physics classroom is a cognitive design laboratory.  I’m hopeful the lessons I learn there will transfer to my consulting efforts in the workplace.

One of the challenges involved in helping others learn physics is correcting deeply held misconceptions about how the world works. From seemingly simple ideas about position, velocity, force and acceleration to more basic assumptions about the nature of space and time, our common sense is loaded with conceptual mistakes. We have the same challenges in the workplace only they have to do with how employees think about innovation, customers, quality and other basic notion that drives performance.

So I am always on the lookout for new scientific research into the memory of deeply held but false beliefs.  For example, Duke University just published some interesting research on the hypercorrection effect.   They found student’s confidence in their answer plays a big role in how they correct misunderstandings.  The higher the confidence the more readily the student makes a correction but without reinforcement the effect lasts about a week. More specifically:

“Although high-confidence errors may be easily corrected in the short-run, our findings suggest that one presentation of feedback is not enough to produce a long-lasting correction of deeply entrenched false knowledge,” Butler said. “Without further practice, high-confidence errors seem to be more likely to return over time.”

This means that some deeply held beliefs might not really be that hard to change, at least initially. From a teaching standpoint there is a premium on knowing  which errors occur with high confidence.  Such topics require additional work even if the initial error appears to be corrected.

How can we collect and use confidence-in-response information in the evaluation and learning process?

Image: Mark Master’s Laser Lab at IPFW.

MISSING:  Enough physical activity during the school day to help avoid childhood obesity. REWARD offered to any party (school program or technology developer) that can find it by April 2, 2012.

There is a $100,000 reward for the school programs that do the best at engaging kids in quality physical activity and a $50,000 reward  for technology developers that can deliver innovative ways to motivate daily physical activity at school at beyond.

This a national innovation contest with a total of $0.5M in prize money.  Definitely a cognitive design challenge.

Image:  Physical Activity – the best medicine?

When you get sick  how you think about your illness strongly determines the decisions you make and how you behave.  Do you believe you will get better? How long will it take? Is the cause mysterious? Is the treatment plan offered by your doctor worth following?

Beliefs shape decisions and decisions shape behaviors. This is no surprise to readers of the cognitive design blog. What is a bit surprising is how big an impact your mental model about an illness can have on the speed, quality and cost of recovery.   Consider a recent meta-study on patient perception of illness:

“The authors find that people’s illness perceptions bear a direct relationship to several important health outcomes, including their level of functioning and ability, utilization of health care, adherence to treatment plans laid out by health care professionals, and even overall mortality.”

The good news is:

“Research confirms that brief, straightforward psychoeducational interventions can modify negative illness beliefs and lead to improvements over a range of different health outcomes.”

This means a little cognitive design in clinician-patient communication can directly translate into strong medicine.

Image: Medfest 2012

The best communications and media turn on excellence in cognitive design. So I am always on the look out for scientifically grounded work on the psychology of advertising, marketing and new media.  One very useful source for designers is Media Effects. Also just read an announcement that a new version of  The Psychology of Entertainment Media has been released.

I am reviewing these materials and looking for others to include in my cognitive design class for the Summer of 2012 at Northwestern.   Interested to hear from readers that have good design-oriented references on the psychology of new media.

Emory university reports on a recent brain scanning study that reveals we are using different cognitive processes to make decisions involving sacred value versus those that involve cost-benefit logic. Sacred values run the deepest and involve as sense of self and culture as determined, for example,  by ethical principles, national identity or belief in God.

This is important for designer involved in creating behavior change. As the authors point out:

“Our findings indicate that it’s unreasonable to think that a policy based on costs-and-benefits analysis will influence people’s behavior when it comes to their sacred personal values, because they are processed in an entirely different brain system than incentives.”

Sacred values require special handling.