Addressing Cognitive Challenges in Design – A Review on Existing Approaches

Insufficient design often causes challenges to users on a cognitive level, hindering them from interacting with products smoothly. There is a lack of effective design tools and supporting materials that can help designers to understand human cognition and how it affects the way that users experience and use products and services. This paper aims to identify current approaches that can be applied to address this issue, and to examine their strengths and weaknesses. This helps to identify future directions for developing and improving cognitive design supports. A literature review was conducted of research publications in the fields of both design and cognition. Four key approaches are identified: cognitive design principles/guidelines, the demand-capability approach, cognitive walkthrough and cognitive modelling. Their strengths and weaknesses are analyzed from a design standpoint. The paper also analyses the underlying causes of the insufficient uptake of cognitive design approaches by designers.