Cognition, germane
Indigo Branching, a pattern by me
If there was ever a time to pause and assess our understanding of cognition, we’re here. Conversations about how we can design products and services that adapt to humans’ natural aptitudes, rather than forcing humans to adapt, give me pause.
Social media algorithms that serve users more of what they like and less of what they don’t like are an excellent cautionary example of what could possibly go wrong. And what would happen to your brain and your humanness (given that we are constantly redefining what that is) if you are no longer expected to adapt to new things?
A lot of the conversations about design for better experiences revolve around reducing cognitive load. We look for ways to remove distraction and smooth processes so that the person using our product or service can focus on their task. This thinking—that we must minimize cognitive load—is a big part of what drives us to look for more intuitive human-computer interfaces. Valid and valuable.
But keep in mind that according to theory there are three types of cognitive load. Anne-Laure Le Cunff at Ness Labs breaks it down in her article, Productive cognitive load: make the most of your working memory (I’m adapting her definitions to this context):
Intrinsic cognitive load, the inherent (and therefore fixed) level of difficulty associated with a specific task.
Extraneous cognitive load, the way the information or task is presented, and often where the design of things both physical and digital is focused.
Germane cognitive load, the result of how the brain constructively handles information, and something we want to increase in order to improve our learning, decision-making or problem solving.
.
Are we as designers of products and services giving sufficient attention to point #3?
Less struggle, more effort
Even as we smooth adoption of current and new technologies, there are times we need to make sure we are also providing the tools for productive and engaged thinking. Learning and research activities, where the user’s attention is focused and decisions need to be made, are a good scenario to consider. In our idealized device-free world, learning and research follow us wherever we go, and so do shopping, banking, route planning, and other activities that shouldn’t necessarily rely on muscle memory alone, much less erase them from our awareness.
New interfaces, increasingly blended into our everyday environments, are being explored, and of course, there’s a balance to find between the distraction of having to adapt to an interface and the problem-solving engagement that adaptation could cultivate.
I explored this in the experimental AR app collaboration, Who Am I?, introducing a creative dimension: the user constructs a personal symbolic “monument” to a story as it is being told. We effectively increased the germane cognitive load by encouraging listeners to actively engage in what might otherwise be a passive listening experience. The specific tactic employed here is known as a “third thing”, which refers to the introduction of some external third thing, like a topic or activity, to the two people present. You can learn more about it in the post linked at the beginning of this paragraph, but in the meantime here are some other ways people improve outcomes by loading up on germane cognition:
Instead of (or in addition to) predetermined steps, some applications invite users to curate their own experience, for example by selecting resources to assemble their personal library. A favorite blog post of mine dives into the power of self-curation; You can read it here.
Other applications grant agency, and an increasingly unrestricted range of paths toward completing a task as users demonstrate proficiency. Motivated learners tend to have a goal in mind when beginning a solo learning session; Get out of their way. Learners with less certainty can still benefit from setting a goal, but may need understandable options to choose from. Learners with little or no motivation may benefit most from monthly “challenges” and other pre-canned goals.
Similarly, some applications gradually reduce guidance. Beyond onboarding tips for first-time users, there is often a longer term process of gaining mastery, say when learning to play an instrument, a game or a sport. Level thresholds are a common way technologies assess how much guidance someone needs. Advancements in technology can potentially do away with this by sensing expertise, beyond speed of response and improvement in accuracy to subtler signs of mastery. Providing this kind of tiered guidance in a banking app would be a project I would personally love to tackle.
Facilitating community is a powerful way to foster conversation, which gets people formulating questions, answering questions, and engaging in other types of conversation that invite attention and considered decision-making.
Conversely, it can’t be overemphasized that we need to watch out for ways we may be inadvertently removing opportunities for increased germane load; auto-curation and narrow learning guardrails are two practices to reconsider.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of both the needs and the nuances of designing for appropriate types of cognitive load, and I’ve purposely avoided naming any specific applications (besides the Who Am I? project), because so much is evolving so quickly. I also owe more thought and discussion to a key point: how seamless should emerging interface experiences seek to be?
On the other hand, I’ve learned a lot by fleshing out this post, which involved a lot of my own germane cognition. I hope it gets you thinking, too.