Cognitive Design

Design a guided imagery experiment to reveal what people really think-and-feel 

 Figuring out what people really think and feel is the big problem in cognitive design. After all, most of what we know (memory) is implicit and cannot be readily called to mind and reported. Simply asking people what they think and feel fails to produce interesting results. That is why we do protocol studies, build prototypes and ask people to bring in pictures that resonate with them. All so we can play detective and try and infer what cognitive biases, mental models, metaphors and other implicit memories are beneath the surface driving thoughts and feelings.

 I was reading a post, Mind over Matter: Imagery in the Classroom, on the Eide Neurolearning Blog and it reminded me of powerful technique for getting at implicit or unconscious memories – mental imagery.  The post links to a chapter by Kosslyn and Moulton on Mental Imagery and Implicit Memory.  This is a must read for cognitive designers for several reasons.

 First, it provides ample scientific evidence for the claim that asking people to imagine doing something and reporting on the experience (a guided imagery experiment) is a powerful way to reveal how they really think about things.

More specifically, it argues how we simulate things in our mind (imagine doing and feeling things via imagination) provides many clues into the content of implicit memories. This make sense because in the absence of direct perception to guide our thinking we  must rely of what we assume to know, or what we know unconsciously to construct events, project behaviors and simulate feelings.

Second, the authors argue that not only does mental simulation reveal things about implicit memory, it also can be used to change these memories or learn. Mental practice or improving performance by imaging you are doing something rather than actually doing it is explored in some detail.  Imaging how a play will unfold on the football field, a presentation will go at work or how your fingers will move across a musical instrument if properly guided can improve performance.

 They discuss five factors that impact when mental practice works and share some design-actionable insights.  For instance, the optimal gap between mental simulation and performance is approximately 20 minutes and mental practice works best for performances that involve significant cognitive load – making decisions, categorizing information and so on.

 Finally, and most exciting for me, is the implication that we might be able to use guided mental imagery as a way to gain insight into cognitive needs or even test concepts for cognitive design.  Perhaps instead of building a high fidelity prototype we could build a vanilla one and take testers through a guided mental image experiment. Their implicit memories would fill in the details.  If we are clever, the way they fill in the details could reveal important clues about the cognitive biases, schema, metaphors, archetypes or other implicit mental structures working unconsciously to determine how they think and feel.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Memory, Related Fields, Technique. 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.