Cognitive Design

Exerting mental effort to pay attention means bad design!

Distraction and multi-tasking are getting more attention as design problems. Distracted students, drivers, parents and workers appear to be less productive and even unsafe. More broadly, we think and live in the future or the past and fail to be mindful of the present.   We have been driven to such a high level of distraction in our daily life that some researchers and authors see a “coming dark age” and are calling for a national movement to regain our focus. I am alluding to Maggie Jackson’s book on Distraction:The erosion of attention and the coming dark age.  A great read for cognitive designers dealing with distraction and multi-tasking.

From a cognitive design standpoint, distraction and attention come down to how well we manage a user’s mental energy.

Causes of distraction and multi-tasking are many including boredom, task demands, mental health issues, new technologies and most importantly bad design. To understand it from a cognitive design standpoint we can view interactions as the exchange of mental energy.  We willing give our attention to that which provides mental energy – meaning, visceral effect (emotion, drive state, craving) or triggers mental processes(e.g. reminiscing, fantasy, metaphorical associations). Otherwise, it takes mental energy - vigilance, self control and conscious focus to stay engaged or to continue to pay attention.  To understand distraction we can compare the mental energy a task or situation gives to how much it requires.

If it takes more mental energy to stay focused then what the focus returns it will last only so long no matter how important the situation is.

So banning laptops from classrooms or texting while driving will not solve the problem of distracted students or drivers. We must redesign the primary experience to produce more mental energy or shift the burden of attention (mental work) off of the human being.

For example, can we make driving safer by using technology to deliver a rich stream of real-time information that engages the brain in a game-like or contest-like way?  Hypermiling where driver behavior, information and car design are tuned to maximize gas mileage may be the first good example of how to do that. Conversely, can we turn the need to pay attention over to the car rather than the driver? Cruise control, distance sensors and even self-parking automation are all steps in that direction but can we go all the way? According to this report, complete auto pilot might not be too far in the future.

Today, as part of an advanced economy I am free to chose how I engage the world physically.  I don’t need to toil in the fields for food, walk very far or lift heavy things. I should also be free to chose if I pay attention or not.  Having to exert mental control to stay focused on events and tasks that don’t naturally provide mental energy seems to be a case of bad design.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under Books, Cognitive Bias, Examples. 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.