When Designing for Mind Don’t Forget the Body
How we perceive the world, learn, think, plan, emote, imagine the future and perform other mental activities is strongly influenced by our physical bodies. In short, cognition is embodied and as designers we need to factor that into our work.
The Association for Psychological Sciences has an excellent article on their site, The Body of Knowledge: Understanding Embodied Cognition that is written in a designer friendly way. There are a number of scientific insights loaded with design implications including how:
- Physical sensation of temperature is related to judgments about friendliness and other social relationships.
- Perceptions of environmental cleanliness and color is related to our judgement about morality. Or as the authors point out “Just as feeling distant from other people makes us feel cold, feeling immoral makes us feel physically unclean.”
- Our bodies sway back and fourth as we reflect on the past or project into the future.
And many more. Seemingly small bodily effects with big mental impact. Just the stuff a cognitive designer wants to leverage.
