A shipowner is caught in two minds. His ship is showing signs of wear and tear, and he knows that eventually it’ll need to get repaired, but it takes time and money, and it’s scheduled to depart for the seas. He manages to quell his concerns, coming to the sincere conclusion that it is fit…
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Metacognition is often described as ‘thinking about thinking.’ It’s about monitoring and controlling your mental processes. When you’re learning something, if you ask yourself questions like “how well do I understand this?” or “will I remember this?” you are engaging in metacognition. “It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of…
Leave a CommentHappiness is a result of effort, but effort that’s directed towards meaningful goals, not necessarily the goal of being happy. Daniel Kahneman makes a distinction between two selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. The experiencing self lives only in the present, and will be happy when you indulge in pleasures like a cold beer on…
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“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” —George Orwell It’s easy to have an opinion without fully understanding why we have it. We experience things and they imprint a certain feeling within us, a feeling we can express with a few…
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A psychologist, designer, and behavioural economist walk into a lab, and out comes a font for remembering more of what you read.
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What does colour have to do with the taste of your morning coffee? More than you might think
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Coloured words can cause us some problems
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Collecting digital memorabilia is cheap and easy, but we might be taking it too far…
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It’s more than a metaphor. The subtle scent of rotting fish raises suspicion. We don’t only become suspicious of the fishy smell itself, but to whatever task that happens to be occupying our attention. Researchers Norbert Schwarz and Spike Lee (not that Spike Lee) write in their paper: “… exposure to fishy smells is sufficient…
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Sometimes the role of design is to be invisible. Not literally, but in that it should be so easy to process that instinct alone can guide people. Everything should be so clear and obvious that thinking isn’t required. It feels good when we can get by on intuition. You push the door and it swings…
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