When You Design Don’t Forget To Prime!
Priming is a simple technique that psychologists (and other scientists) use to put subjects in a particular frame of mind to set the stage for doing an experiment. They expose subjects to a primary stimulus to see how they will react to a secondary stimulus. Priming can have a huge impact on how we perceive, remember, decide, learn and emotionally react when presented with the test conditions of the experiment.
Priming of the mental pump is also fundamental to success in cognitive design for two reasons. First, using a priming effect helps us realize a basic goal of cognitive design namely, creating specific mental states through interaction. Second, the fact that priming has such a pronounced effect on the follow-on cognition means that enhancing cognition is achievable through design manipulations!
An excellent example of priming in action can be found in the recent post Arranging for Serenity by Wray Herbert. He shows how a simple priming task of plotting two points either close together or far apart on graph paper can create a mental state of feeling open or crowded. This in turn effects judgements about embarrassment, emotional danger and personal security. In the author’s words:
”What’s remarkable is that this all takes place unconsciously, out of awareness: The spatial distance between two arbitrary objects (in this case, two mere dots on a graph) is apparently powerful enough to activate an abstract symbol of distance and safety in the brain, which in turn is powerful enough to shape our responses to the world.”
This has clear implications for any designer interested in creating artifacts that enhance how we think-and-feel. Be sure to design in specific features and functions to prime the mind.
