Internet Marketing Blog

Considering Cognition in Your Interaction Designs

September 3, 2008 – 11:11 am

Last month Gamasutra went into detail about the importance of cognitive interaction design.

Last week Mary Brandel wrote in NetworkWorld, “Students from CMU’s HCI Institute are much in demand.”

Knowing how to measure the success of a great interaction design in terms of usability, cognitive facilitation, user adoption rates and ROI could all be considered success factors in a successful interaction design. Although there are many factors, cognition is worth a closer look even to the generalist when engaging and creating win win experience in your designs.

Usability is the ability of the user to do things like navigate to the content while cognitive skills actually dictate the user’s ability to process the data as they navigate and therefore during a chosen task.

LearningRx writes, “Key point: It’s not how much you know (the information that has been crammed into your head), but how effectively you process the information you have received. Cognitive skills are the processors of this incoming information.”

So it’s also important that you present the information in a timely fashion guiding your users or visitors in a way that helps facilitate or even improve their ability to process the incoming information.

This “incoming information” is coming from your website or other interactive presentation or video.

The next paragraph states,
“In other words, cognitive skills are the learning skills used to 1) attend to and retain information; 2) process, analyze, and store facts and feelings; and 3) create mental pictures, read words, and understand concepts.”

Creating that mental picture can help your users associate a positive experience with a brand, logo or lead someone towards a buying decision.

The Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest writes on their website, “Cognitive skills are any mental skills that are used in the process of acquiring knowledge; these skills include reasoning, perception, and intuition.”

We’ve all felt intuitive interfaces. It’s a great experience when the mouse seems to almost take you on a guided tour of an application.

Increasing a user’s cognitive ability also helps them become process the “value” you’re offering. Rising adoption rates can be a sign of potential rise in ROI and this sets the stage for an HCI pro to earn a great income connecting the dots between users and ROI for clients and employers.

Keep Reading…

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods (must see for Interaction Designers)
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

and another table related to gaming:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3738/emotion_engineering_a_scientific_.php?page=3

NCREL Home
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/midwest/index.asp

Cognitive Skills
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li1lk23.htm

LearningRx
http://www.learningrx.com/cognitive-enhancement-faq.htm

IT schools to watch: Carnegie Mellon University
By Mary Brandel , Computerworld , 08/18/2008
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/081808-it-schools-to-watch-carnegie.html?page=1

Design Versus Cognition: the Interaction of Agent Cognition and Organizational Design on Organizational Performance
http://ideas.repec.org/a/jas/jasssj/1998-7-1.html

Interaction Design Papers and Resources
http://www.interaction-design.org/references/publishers/acm_press.html

Visualisation Periodic Table, 2nd Irish HCI Conference, HCI in 2020 & Science 2.0

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