Psychonomic Design
I would like to coin this new term called Psychonomic Design that gives proper focus on designing for the state of mind or to create a psychological effect on users. It rhymes and pairs well with Ergonomic Design. For over a decade, I have been pushing the possibility of evolving a separate body of knowledge that would focus on the psychology of users or design psychology. User-Centric Design has become a common practice but we seldom come across such examples wherein the theories of psychology are directly applied to design. The psychologists have been trying to interpret user behavior as a part of design research but, I wonder how much of this research gets ploughed back into actual design. Therefore, I would like to envisage “Psychonomic Design” as a new paradigm to consciously implement the theories of psychology into the object of design. One should be able to compare the products designed based on one theory of psychology versus the other. It would not only generate evidence for the psychological theories but also improve the level of user centricity. But, this is unlikely to change, unless the designers are taught psychology in a formal way. After all, the user centricity is incomplete unless we capture the user’s mind!
I would refer to my past experimental work in 2005 (https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1068781) that focused on designing teacher-like behavior of an e-learning system that directly applied Transactional Analysis (TA) by Eric Berne in the design of software functionality, user interface, and dialogues to shape the interactions between the tutoring system and learners. The system was designed based on the study of ego states of the teacher (tutoring system) and learners (children and adults). The resulting behavioral patterns were designed into the tutoring system as below -
Accusing behavior (I am OK, He is not OK)
Guiding behavior (I am OK, You will be OK if you followed the guidelines)
Idolizing behavior (He is OK, You are not OK)
Scaring behavior (I am OK, You won’t be OK if you did not follow the guidelines)
Polite behavior (I am OK, You are OK)
I would call this example a kind of “Psychonomic Interaction Design” as it directly adopts and implements the theory of “Transactional Analysis (TA)” into the experience design.
Difference between Psychonomic design and Ergonomics
By definition, ergonomics is expected to apply the knowledge of human physiology and psychology to engineering and product design. But, it appears that ergonomics has greatly evolved in the direction of physical human factors and cognitive factors relating to memory constraints. Many devices are already developed for measuring the stress, focus, position, limitations, impact, and use of the physical human factors into design. However, it has not evolved much in the direction of incorporating the psychological body of knowledge into design.
Beyond Cognitive ergonomics
A limited number of researchers seem to apply cognitive science to design and engineering. Cognitive Ergonomics guides you in designing as per the working and limitations of memory. However, cognitive ergonomics by its definition itself has a limited focus on perception and comprehension.
Need for Psychonomic Design
On the contrary, the increasing focus on user-centricity of design requires you to apply all the psychological knowledge that is there to decipher the user’s mind. It is quite possible considering the availability of computational tools to track and analyze user’s mind by deploying the theories of psychology. The research on mind-machine interface has just begun to show some results. Similarly, it is possible design and engineer products and systems to invoke the desired mental response from users.
Examples of Psychonomic Design
1. Psychonomic design that would cater to your state of mind
The design of a system or a feature or a functionality, which dynamically and intelligently caters to the changing state of user’s mind or designing for the mental capabilities of the user or designing for the user’s mindset or implementation of psychological theories and principles in the design to create a certain kind of effect on users can be considered as Psychonomic Design.
This would require the systems to use artificial intelligence for predicting the mood or the state of mind of the user. For example, a mobile app paired with a smart watch predicts the depressed state of mind and therefore it begins to flash inspiring quotations or jokes or humorous videos for cheering the user.
2. Virtual mind versus user’s mind
The behaviors and interactive response of virtual avatars or robots could be modelled as per the trained behavior of a sales person or an air hostess or a nurse. Thus the virtual avatars could be designed to behave and interact in a cordial and helpful manner. Virtual sales persons could be designed to effectively persuade a customer to generate business. The trained politeness of the virtual avatar will have to be crafted by designing a response library in the form various emotions, gestures, actions and reactions for catering to the dynamically evolving situations. Psychologically designed Avatars could have a virtual mind that would dynamically respond to the user’s mind.
3. Psychonomic design to cure mental disorders
In the near future, we would have Artificial Intelligence (AI) based psychonomic systems / applications, games and learning systems for treating some of the mental disorders.
4. Possible misuse of psychonomic design
The psychonomic design of a system could dwell upon the user’s psychological profile, personality type, behavioral patterns and the past data as the fodder for Machine Learning (ML) and training the strategy engine. It could very well be used for manipulating and misleading the user in a hazardous way. Of course, this would trigger new debates on ethics and privacy as the Psychonomic design directly intrudes into your mind.
