Design for Two Modes of Cognition
Our minds have two modes – automatic and manual.
In automatic mode we make instant decisions, take frequent and sometimes dangerous mental short cuts (cognitive biases) and run intuitively with very little conscious awareness and control. Manual mode on the other hand requires attention and conscious mental effort to exert behavioral control, weight options, manage emotions and the like.
As Blink and other recent best sellers on the nature of thinking have pointed out, we pretty much live in automatic mode. But as David Meyer’s claims in his book, Intuition: Its Power and Perils, we generally don’t believe that:
“The big idea of contemporary psychological science is that most of our everyday thinking, feeling and acting operate outside of conscious awareness is hard for people to accept…”
For a good summary of the book look here.
The implications for cognitive designers – or those that choose to design for how minds actual work – is two fold.
First we must come to understand the non-conscious thought patterns of the people we are designing for. In general terms that means understanding the principles that govern unconscious thought (e.g. see A Theory of Unconscious Thought). More specifically, it means understanding what biases, metaphors, heuristics, perceptual patterns and beliefs drive the unconscious thoughts and feelings of people as they learn and use the artifacts we design. Users may claim to know what they need, but most cognitive needs will not be articulated and must be discovered via observation, modeling or even scientific study (e.g. brain scans).
Second, does learning or using the artifact require any manual mode cognition? If so, why and what benefit does it deliver? Putting users in manual mode requires that they invest their most precious resource – mental energy – in our designs.
Designing for how minds work means the form, features and functions of our artifacts should leverage the automatic mode and make judicial use of the manual mode.
