Cognitive Design

Imagine trying to design a program that convinces homeless youth to decrease binge drinking and marijuana use. How would you go about it?  The UCLA School of Nursing in collaboration with the California Institute of Art took that task on with a 154 drug using and homeless youth. One program they designed worked this way:

“The art messaging program gave participants the opportunity to create messages about health and drug use to influence other drug-using youths. Faculty from the California Institute for the Arts engaged the youths in an exploration of their thoughts and feelings through art, photography and video and encouraged conversations about good health, risky behaviors and ways to stay safe.”

After six months they measured a 25% reduction in alcohol use and a 20% reduction in marijuana use.  Exploring thoughts and feelings and using peer-produced multimedia messaging is powerful cognitive design!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Behavior Change. 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.