The Mind of the Patient
Cognitive design is about understanding how the mind works and adding features and functions to products and services that support, enhance and even create it. As such, cognitive designers are students of how minds work in a wide variety of domains.
Take for example a study on back surgery, covered in Mindhacks, that demonstrates Seeing the results of surgery impacts the outcomes. They found:
“Patients given a ‘souvenir’ of their operation reported greater improvement in sciatic nerve pain, lower back pain, less pins and needles sensations, less leg weakness and a reduced use of pain killers.”
The souvenir in this case is bone fragments from their back!
The hypothesis is that seeing the fragments lowers anxiety and increases the belief that a good job was done. These mental states in turn impact the manifestation of symptoms. This is a great example of designing for how the mind of the patient actually works and takes engaging the patient in the healthcare process to an entirely new level.
