Cognitive Design

Earlier this year I described a design contest sponsored by the BrainArt project that looked especially relevant for cognitive designers. They wanted submissions that use art and design to convey the neuroscience of everyday pleasure.  There were many entries and the results can be viewed in a virtual gallery. 

I was especially proud that my son, Maxim Clare won a special mention for his piece on:

VIRTUAL IMMERSION, REAL REWARD

“Video games are akin to the mind in that they create worlds. Immersion is when we find ourselves lost in these worlds. To be lost in these worlds is to free of what was once possible. The physiology responds with bursts of neurotransmitters from the reward and attention centers. The process drives us deeper. A cycle is born, we are immersed.”

His graphic illustrates Mario, a well-known video game character morphing into a dopamine molecule.  He developed this in part as a response to: An argument against immersion in video games.

Immersion is just one concept developed during the BrainArt contest that is relevant to cognitive designers.  I am interested to hear from readers that see others.

Machines are getting smarter and that good news for cognitive designers. It increases the range of options we have for offloading mental effort from people to machines. Lowering the cognitive load on individuals and groups during work or play is an important trend in technology.  Google helps us search the world’s information, eharmony helps us find a mate and our mobile phone helps us navigate.  So I am always on the lookout for insights into the limits and trends of artificial intelligence that might be useful for designers.

Take, IBM’s 5 in 5 for example. They provide a short introduction into how machine perception will develop over the next five years. They look at emerging machine capabilities  in all five human senses – vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste – in video and story map form.   They offer predictions within the broader view of cognitive systems.

Bottom line – cognitive designers need to be up to speed on the costs, risks and functional capabilities of current and emerging capabilities in artificial intelligence. How else can we design for how minds (people and machine) really work?

Image Source:  Innovations that will change our lives in the next five years.

Bad things tend to have a bigger impact on our thoughts, feelings and actions than good things do.   Recent research suggests, Greed Not Generosity is More Likely to be Paid Forward.

“In five experiments involving money or work, participants who received an act of generosity didn’t pay generosity forward any more than those who had been treated equally. But participants who had been the victims of greed were more likely to pay greed forward to a future recipient, creating a negative chain reaction.”

While this is not a “happy finding” it is important for cognitive designers.  Generosity is less a contagion than greed just as bad news spreads much faster and farther than good news.  While this is likely tied to survival and rooted in our evolution it can limit cooperation and cultural development.  You can access the full paper for free HERE.

An interesting study from Northwestern University suggests the answer is yes, at least when it comes to losing weight. One interesting thing about the study is its level of rigor – a randomized clinical trial.  Another is that the App had the greatest impact when combined with an existing education-focused weight loss program:

“People who used the mobile phone technology and attended 80 percent of the health education sessions lost 15 pounds and maintained the loss for one year. The average weight loss for the mobile phone group — including those who did not attend the education sessions — was 8.6 pounds. The control group — which received the education sessions but no mobile app — did not lose weight.”

The success of the App stems from  how it supports the cognition of self-regulation and learning from experience on a daily basis.

Focusing on small-step behavior changes and providing feedback on calories and activity it helped participants make better on-the-spot decisions about food and exercises.  There was also a behavior coach in the loop. The coach provided weekly calorie and exercise goals and received data from the App and could schedule 15 minute calls twice a month to advise. Researchers believe that someone “watching and caring” created a positive sense of accountability in participants.

This is an important results especially since participants were older (average 58 years) and some with no prior experience with Apps.

For the full story check out: Integrating Technology into Standard Weight Loss Treatment. or consider participating in the make better choices follow-up study.

Scientific American has a short article that does a good job summarizing the Three Critical Elements that Sustain Motivation.  While we have covered the elements  extensively on the Cognitive Design blog, it is worthwhile to review. The elements that sustain motivation include self-determination, value and competence.    To keep going on tough tasks it is important to feel in charge, that the activity is worthwhile, you have the skill to get started and those skills improve with time.  This helps to explain why some children avoid math and spend hours on video games.

While this seems simple, a complicating factor is that many of the challenges we face are forced on us by external factors.  There is a change at work that requires we learn new skills or the doctors tells us its time for a lifestyle change.  In both cases there is no sense of autonomy, a differed sense of value and a perception of incompetence.   Many of the motivational remedies offered seem straight forward but take considerable skill to use in practice, especially on groups.

For example, to help me feel like I am setting direction  my boss puts me on a team to help define the details of  the change or my doctor lets me select a plan of exercise and diet.  The hope is I will become engaged in making critical decision and develop a sense of ownership.  After a while I might even think it is my idea. Of course I need to have enough motivation to work on the team or make the lifestyle decisions.  And unfortunately,  I was assigned the task, won’t see the immediate value to it nor feel particularly competent at it.  Not much motivation for doing the task that is suppose to help me get motivated. A bit of a regress.

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Writers that use specific adjectives that vividly invoke our senses sell more books. At least that is the result from research at Purdue. The finding holds for children and adult books as well as classic works and contemporary best sellers.  The title of the study playfully attempts to illustrate the finding - A Ridiculously Unbelievably Preposterous Conclusion: Use of Adjectives in Best-Selling Book.

Sensory adjectives are those that are directly connected to taste, touch, smell, hearing or seeing. For example, grubby, tart, musty and immense are sensory adjectives.  The study found for example, that Mark Twain used approximately 17 adjectives in every 100 words written!

Source of image: EducationWorld

Basis has designed a small-steps health behavior change program meant to fit into our daily lives.  You wear a wrist tracking device that  looks like a stylish watch. The device records optical blood flow to measure heart rate, the number of steps you take, perspiration to measure intensity of effort and skin temperature. All of these variables are tracked throughout the day and night, run through some algorithms and displayed in your personal health dashboard.  The dashboard reveals calories burned and other calculated values as well as trends in the physiological measurements.   From the patterns you can spot opportunities to add small-steps into your daily activities to get healthier.  For example:

Adopting simple but powerful healthy habits, such as taking a walk during a coffee break instead of sitting at your desk, are scientifically proven to improve your health.

Definitely an exciting idea from a Cognitive Design standpoint. Modifying existing daily activities rather than making significant and abrupt lifestyle changes has a much lower cognitive load. Plus there is plenty of data and many small-step options that you can experiment with – two essential features of learning new behaviors from experience.

I am interested to hear from any readers that are using Basis.