Asking Questions to Reveal Cognitive Needs
One way to probe the mind of your customer and surface unmet cognitive needs is through instruments that assess styles. These take the form of questionnaires that can be used to categorize and interpret how people perceive, think, learn, make decisions, manage emotions and otherwise process information. For cognitive designers this is one way to build a psychographic profile.
Just found an excellence source on the web - the decision making individual differences inventory. They describe and provide materials for 15 major cognitive and decision style assessments.