Cognitive Design

Check the psychological distance of the decision-maker.

When making decisions about purchases, jobs, vacations or just what to do with free time we  like to have a choices.  Cognitive designers often worry about how to make such decisions not only easy but enjoyable and part of the value the decision-maker experiences. After all, anticipating and planning can create positive psychology, savoring and even Dopamine release!  On the other hand it can lead to confusion, irritation and choice overload.  So I am always on the lookout for new scientific studies that examine how the number and framing of decisions or choices can create a positive think-and-feel experience.

For example, researchers at Washington University in St Louis have found evidence that psychological distance impacts our preference for assortment size.  If what we are making a decision about is spatially far away or pushed into the future we naturally prefer fewer choices.  If it closer in space-and-time we get value from having additional choices.  In a news release the researchers explain it this way:

“Psychological distance is common concern when consumers are making decisions related to the future such as vacation, insurance, or retirement planning. In such instances, consumers tend to focus on the end goal and less about how to get there. When planning a vacation that is months away, a consumer would probably prefer to hear about fewer dining options in the city they will be visiting than if their vacation was coming up in less than a week.”

While this  in-the-future effect should not be a surprise to readers of the Cognitive Design blog, the researchers also claim it happens we make decision about far away locations.

Source of infographic-  Healthcare Reform: Center Stage 2012

A generation ago cool was typified by characters that were rebellious, tough, emotionally controlled and thrill seeking.  Individualistic and counter cultural – the James Dean type.  Not so today, at least according to research done by the University of Rochester Medical Center.   The results, published as Cool: An Empirical Investigation in the Journal of Individual Differences, include:

“A significant number of participants used adjectives that focused on positive, socially desirable traits, such as friendly, competent, trendy and attractive.”

Cool is warm, friendly, competent, trendy and attractive. That’s a big change. The research was extensive (1000 participants) but focused on the Vancouver British Columbia area.

Feeling cool is a unique and often highly valued mental state.  So understanding people’s mental model for cool is important for any (cognitive) designer that aspires to create such feelings through their works. The Rochester  study challenges the stereotype for cool. While I am not ready to adopt the model the study suggest, it does signal there could be generational differences in what counts as cool.

The Design and Emotion Society is holding its 8th international conference in London, September 11-14.

The conference theme is out of control or how the design community should respond to the “crisis and chaos” that appears to be engulfing the globe.  The organizers see two general responses. The first is to approach design as problem solving where we try and manage and mitigate the crisis and chaos. The second is to approach design as opportunity mapping where we leverage crisis and chaos as ways to a positive future.

While this is a bit lofty, the design community does have the opportunity for major impact if emerging innovations such as sustainable design, design thinking, design for the base of the pyramid and design science get legs around the globe.

I hope to hear from readers that attend the conference.

The BrainArt project has a call out for submissions that use art and design to compellingly illustrate the neuroscience of pleasure.    They are looking for explorations or reactions to the theme “Life Pleasures & the Brain” cast in media that ranges from illustrations and digital art to sculptures or music and that are grounded in the neuroscience of the reward circuit and dopamine.

The contest includes a top prize of $5K, participation in an exhibit and other benefits.  Innovators keep the copyrights to their work the deadline is September 1, 2012.

This is a natural contest for cognitive designers as it seeks to translate the neuroscience and psychology of pleasure into the construction of an artifact. The reward circuit and attending cognitive psychology plays a fundamental role in savoring, wanting, liking, learning, habit formation and many aspects of motivation, decision-making and behavior.  If you are a bit rusty on the scientific background, I recommend  The Compass of Pleasure.  It is an easy read, provides nearly complete coverage and is current.

While this contest is more about art than design, there are several media categories of special interest to cognitive designers, most notably the one on communication design:

“Identify an opportunity, and envision a complete rethink, or new approach, to a campaign or consumer experience in relation to this year’s theme “Life Pleasures and the Brain”. Create an emotionally driven brand that is visionary and disruptive in its thinking. It’s about generating a journey that is unique, rational and that has the energy and drive to transform opinions and to allow people to make a deep connection which will in turn incite participation.”

Consider for example, designing an experience to ignite a movement to improve brain health, achieve positive behavior change or celebrate the existential pleasures of work.

Other media categories of interest to cognitive designers include the written word and space design.  Of course this contest is a great opportunity for cognitive designers to partner with artists or visual designers and compete in any of the 10 media categories.

Judges are looking for how well you communicate a concept with respect to the contest’s theme (life pleasures & the brain) but are most interested in unique personal experiences and expressions. That is where a lot of good design and art comes from.

I’m often asked for good examples of cognitive design.  Some of the best are:

Powerball (multi-million dollar jackpot lottery tickets), Angry Birds (a mobile game), the Dom Zu Kohn (cathedral in Germany), your favorite piece of art, using the placebo effect to heal, pictures of cute baby animals, the alert tone on a cell phone and magic tricks you can’t see even after they are explained.

The success of all of these artifacts turns on the fact that they generate far  more mental energy than it takes to interact with them. They deliver a powerful think-and-feel experience because features and functions are optimized for how our minds actually work.  Said another way, they reveal the secret sauce for how to design for psychological impact . They are a laboratory for applied cognitive scientists and a potential design pattern for innovators.

 So far our attempts at applying the lessons learn from these artifacts to other design problems has seen little success.   For example, serious games (i.e. application of game mechanics to education, health and and business) have yet to produce a block buster and lottery-based savings products have yet to make a dent in our need to prepare for retirement.

Cognitive design needs to mature.  One strategy is to get much better at translating the results of cognitive science and engineering into innovations that authentically move our hearts and accelerate our minds.  What we need are scientific studies of artifacts with high cognitive impact that are specific enough to offer design insights. For example, actionable research on the visual neuroscience of magic has come out of the Barrow Neurological Institute. In a recent press release they shared these  findings:

“The researchers discovered that curved motion engaged smooth pursuit eye movements (in which the eye follows a moving object smoothly), whereas straight motion led to saccadic eye movements (in which the eye jumps from one point of interest to another).”

“They studied a popular coin-vanishing trick, in which King tosses a coin up and down in his right hand before “tossing” it to his left hand, where it subsequently disappears. In reality, the magician only simulates tossing the coin to the left hand, an implied motion that essentially tricks the neurons into responding as they would have if the coin had actually been thrown. “

These have very specific implications for designers.  For a deeper dive into the neuroscience behind magic check out Sleights of Mind and the Best Illusions of the Year Contest.

It is interesting to note that magic was developed through experimentation and tradecraft.  Neuroscience is trying to catch up but once it does we should see a new type of magic emerge. The same it true for games, art and much of architecture, marketing, education and entertainment. Tradecraft trumps science’s ability to generate breathtaking think-and-feel experiences but for how long?

Sensory perceptions often trigger affect. That is, when I see, hear, smell, touch or taste something, I find it pleasant or unpleasant to some degree (valence) and that in turn activates other mental states (arousal).  It is generally thought that affect is partially determined by the objective nature of the sensory experience but it is also strong shaped by what I expect to perceive or the encodings of the mental model I use to interpret the experience.  Affect as valence (pleasantness) + activation (arousal) has been studied for extreme states such a love, fear, joy, hate and so on.   This leaves open the question of the role of affect with everyday objects or those with little valence and/or activation.  Does affect play an important role in our mental processes and behaviors with everyday objects?

According to recent research  from the Center for the Neural Basis for Computation at Carnegie Mellon University the answer is yes – there are so-called micro valences that do in fact shape our decisions and behaviors.  Interestingly, these micro valences are an intrinsic part of our mental representation of objects, they are not judgments or values we attach after perception.

“Much in the same way that we automatically perceive the shape, size, or color of objects, we cannot help but perceive the valence in objects. In this sense, valence is not a label applied after the fact to perceptual entities, but rather is an intrinsic element of visual perception with the same mental status as other object properties.”

This has important implications for cognitive designers.  It suggests that low activation events are still driven by affect (i.e. a micro valence) even though there are no obvious emotions involved. Everyday objects are boring. And small differences can change the outcome of a decision.  Also, micro valences can expand our understanding of the higher-level object properties that inform the construction of mental models (see figure). This could be important for psychographics.

Imagine being able to shape choice and modify behaviors around the use of everyday objects by making a very small change to features and functions. In principle this should be possible if we understand the micro valences at work.

Imagine being able to design an experience that is so powerful it transforms  someone with a deep fear of spiders into someone that could touch a tarantula.  Now imagine this designed experience is only 3 hours long and creates lasting effects on the brain regions associated with fear that can be detected with a brain scan 6 months later!

That is exactly what researchers at Northwestern University achieved in a study of 12 adults with lifelong debilitating spider phobias.   Participants went through a single  3-hour session of exposure therapy as described below.

“During the therapy, participants were taught about tarantulas and learned their catastrophic thoughts about them were not true. “They thought the tarantula might be capable of jumping out of the cage and on to them,” Hauner said. “Some thought the tarantula was capable of planning something evil to purposefully hurt them. I would teach them the tarantula is fragile and more interested in trying to hide herself. “

They gradually learned to approach the tarantula in slow steps until they were able to touch the outside of the terrarium. Then they touched the tarantula with a paintbrush, a glove and eventually pet it with their bare hands or held it.

“They would see how soft it was and that its movements were very predictable and controllable,” Hauner said. “Most tarantulas aren’t aggressive, they just have a bad reputation.”

The cognitive and behavioral features of this experience design are clear. The question for innovators is will they work to produce rapid, deep and lasting behavior change in other contexts?

More generally, is exposure therapy a reusable design pattern for shifting mental models and producing lasting behavior change?

Too good to be true?

It drips with cognitive design possibilities. Check out the video and product website.

With a mountain of behavior-based health problems, ethical concerns and spending problems that answer is no!

There are lots of demands on our time but even more demands on our mental energy.  Watching, thinking, learning, deciding, stressing and controlling our own emotions, impulses and behavior all take a tremendous amount of mental energy.   As we start to run out of mental energy our cognitive performance and willpower begin to slip.  If our supply of mental energy runs too low our attempts to stick to our goals, resist impulses, manage biases when making decisions, learn deeply and other attempts at conscious self-regulation fail.

Mental energy is a limited resource.

Mental energy appears to be more than biological energy and brain sugar. There are subjective components including a sense of vigor and motivation.  This means our attempt to manage mental energy should include both psychological and biological interventions.  This point is illustrated well in a recent post of the science of willpower blog that look at temptations that actually boost our willpower. The temptations  include psychological tactics such as watching others pursue goals (e.g. reality TV) or a humorous or cute video as well as biological tactics including naps, snacks and caffeine.

From a cognitive design standpoint these are great tactics because they can be integrated easily into daily life, are science-based and avoid the paradox of using willpower to build willpower (we naturally want to do them).

Interestingly, the science behind some of these claims (those focused on glucose) have recently come into question.   For example, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania claim that the  Brain’s Willpower is not Fueled by Glucose.  This might signal a larger role for psychological tactics or even a powerful placebo effect.

Understanding the nature of mental energy and how to manage it through scripted interactions and experience is of central concern to cognitive design. How else can we create effective behavior change, learning and innovation programs? At the very least we want designs that avoid wasting mental energy and in fact seek designs that maximize mental energy on both a biological and psychological basis.

I am interested to hear from readers about what you do to keep your mental batteries charge on a daily basis. What advice do you have for creating, maintaining or otherwise managing mental energy?

Source of Image: Futurity