Designing Technology with the Human Mind in Mind: Part 1
Dual System Model Of Cognition
TL/DR: This is the first in a series of articles to discuss for product developers on what behavioural science knows about human cognition that is relevant to creating technology with a good user experience. This first article explains why product makers should understand human cognition and introduces the dual system model of cognition. Future articles will dive deeper into the specifics of the dual system model and how we can use this knowledge to create technology that delivers a great user experience.
Human Technology Interaction
47 years ago Sheridan & Verplank published an article describing 10 levels of automation from teleoperation to the singularity. These levels assumed that automation would take more & more of the workload until the human was completely out of the loop.
40 years ago Lisanne Bainbridge published “Ironies of Automation.” In this paper, she explored the fact that as automation increases, often it increases human workload and leads to lower total system performance. The latest Tesla recall is just one such irony.
What Sheridan & Verplank got wrong and Bainbridge understood is that technology doesn’t (yet) eliminate the human; it changes what the human does. Those in product development need to ensure that this change is a good value for the human. To do this they need a good grasp of the Human Factors associated with total system performance. In particular, they need an understanding of human capabilities & limitations that are well documented in cognitive and behavioural science.
Why should those developing technology understand human cognition? Because errors are rarely intentional. Often there is something in the design of the technology that led the user to think they were taking a correct action when it was not. By considering the knowledge of human cognition in the design of technology, these errors can be reduced. Thus resulting in a better user experience.
Human Information Processing
Kahneman (2010) and others have described human information processing as having two systems. One of these systems is intuitive and automatic; the other is deliberative. These two systems go by many names. For these articles I’ll call the deliberative system “working memory” and the intuitive and automatic system “the filter.” The reason for the name “the filter” is because everything a human senses passes through it. The filter decides if (1) a specific action should be taken automatically, (2) sensations should be passed on to working memory for more processing, or (3) the sensations should be ignored. The amount of sensations that are passed on to working memory for further processing impacts a user’s experience of cognitive workload. Both the filter’s “decision” and any processing in working memory are impacted heavily by pattern recognition (also known as heuristics, mental models, expertise, stereotypes, muscle memory, etc).
Future Articles
Future articles will
1. Amaze you with the human pattern recognition ability and explain it’s importance to a good user experience.
2. Have you understanding the importance of perceptual and cognitive salience to the design of user friendly systems.
3. Explain why low demand tasks (such as monitoring autonomous vehicles) can be incredibly challenging to do.
4. How stress and task demand interact to impact human-system performance.
5. Among other behavioural and cognitive science topics.
