Cognitive Design

David Rose gave a very interesting talk on how to change behavior at Transform 2010: Thinking Differently About Healthcare.  He found (through 10 years of work) that if we scrap the right information off the screens of our computers, smart phones and tablets and make it available in everyday objects behaviors will change.  This allows us to monitor things we are interested in – stock market, weather, our health- more frequently with very little cognitive load. It also means creating a special purpose device or remaking existing objects so that they are capable of information display. He calls these enchanted objects:

“The best metaphor that’s really driven me over the last 10 years or so is the idea of the “enchanted object.” This is the next logical step from Ishii’s “Things That Think” concept of ubiquitous computing: the functionality of computation and the representation of information and of communication will be embedded in many everyday objects. They will seem to be a little bit magical—delightfully easy to use and adding value to our lives a little bit at a time.”

One example, covered previously on the the Cognitive Design blog is GlowCaps or remade drug bottle caps that flash and play a ringtone when you need to take a med, automatically reorders and sends email alerts and reports to doctors and family members all designed to maximize medication compliance.

Other examples include – displays at bus stops that shows when the next bus is due to arrive, umbrellas that beep when rain is likely and a personal orb that glows to deliverable a signal the is customized to your behavior change needs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Examples, Service Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.