If you think about why people think, feel, and behave in certain ways, you probably think about what’s going on in their brains. You might not realize how much people’s bodies influence their behavior. The field of “embodied cognition” is gaining more ground in cognitive science, psychology, and design. It’s the idea that people’s bodies—their size, shape, and movement—not only contribute to how they think and their behavior, but also actually drive their thinking and their behavior.
Catching A Fly Ball
The classic example to explain embodied cognition is the example of how a baseball outfielder catches a fly ball. Let’s say you’re the outfielder and a fly ball is coming toward you. It’s your job to catch it. How do you get to the right location at the right moment to catch the ball?
It’s a difficult task. You’re very far away from the batter and the ball will appear very small until it gets close to you. It’s all going to happen very quickly. You have to move from wherever you are on the field to the exact location where the ball will land at some point in the future. You don’t know exactly when that will be, or exactly where it will be. A regular cognitive science brain model to explain how you catch the ball goes like this:
You have a mental representation of the motion of the ball, information about the speed with which it might be traveling, and information about direction. You predict the future location and timing of the ball using physics. Since the ball is being thrown near the Earth’s surface, it moves in a curved path. The only force acting on it is gravity. If you know the size, mass, direction, speed, and angle, then you can use this information to predict the location of the ball. Your brain does these calculations and then gives commands to your motor system to move you to the right location in time.
Interestingly, if this were really what you would do, you’d move in a straight line right to the location. How many times have you seen outfielders move in a perfectly straight line from where they are to where the ball is going to be? They usually start in one direction, but then pause or speed up. They move backward, forward, or sideways. They rarely, if ever, move in a straight line right to the ball.
The embodied cognition explanation is different. The brain doesn’t have to calculate anything. According to the embodied cognition viewpoint, if you were really mentally computing physics calculations, you’d make too many errors. The ball is so far away that you could barely perceive it. You wouldn’t be able to get the data you need to make the calculations.
The embodied cognition viewpoint says that you would use “kinematic” information—information about how things are changing over time in relation to your body. The physics of the ball make it at first rise and then gravity makes it slow down. It reaches a peak height and then accelerates as it starts to fall on the other side of the arc. You see this motion and use the “kinematic” information it communicates.
It turns out there are two strategies you can use within the embodied cognition explanation:
- If you’re in a direct line with the arc of the ball, then you can use your eyes and your muscles to move you. If the ball appears to move at a constant velocity (speed and direction), and if you keep adjusting your location and movement so that it still appears to move at a constant velocity, then you’ll end up in the right place at the right time.
- If you’re not in a direct line with the arc of the fly ball, then you use your eyes and your muscles to move in a way that makes the ball look linear. The trajectory of the ball is actually curved, but as long as you keep moving in a way that the ball looks like it’s moving linearly, then you’ll be at the location where the ball is when it arrives.
Experiments designed to see if people actually move in these paths when catching a ball show that they do (and so do dogs when they’re catching objects thrown at them).
The Proof Is With The Robots
If the baseball thought experiment didn’t convince you about embodied cognition, then perhaps these robot comparisons will.
The ASIMO robot was built from a traditional cognitive science approach. It has programs that control its movement. It can walk and (sometimes) climb stairs. But any disruption that doesn’t fit this programming causes disaster (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTlV0Y5yAww). It does fine until something unexpected happens—something it hasn’t been programmed for.
Compare ASIMO to Boston Dynamics’ BigDog (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQr6U3RWzVg). BigDog is built from the embodied cognition viewpoint. BigDog was built to walk on uneven ground. Instead of complicated software to control movements, BigDog responds to what happens in its environment through feedback from its “legs.”
The more designers understand how people move and interact with the world, and then apply that knowledge to the design of machines, the more the machines come to resemble people in terms of how they interact with the world.
Designers have a tendency to focus on the visual aspects of design. It’s true that vision is a critical sense, but what happens if you start to include the implications of the body for design? People are moving all the time, and their movement is part of their decision-making. If you design a product that’s visually appealing and fits the context only visually, you could end up designing a product that’s unappealing or unusable.
People are more satisfied with a choice when they engage in a physical act of closure
Imagine that you’re sitting in a tea shop looking at the menu, deciding what tea you want to order. You make your choice and close the menu.
What you may not realize is that because you closed the menu after making your choice, you’ll be more satisfied with the choice than if you hadn’t closed the menu. It’s a version of embodied cognition: the physical act of closure changes your emotional response.
This tea experiment was actually conducted by Yangjie Gu (2013). Gu told the participants in the experiment that once they decided, they could not change their minds. Participants who were told to close the menu were more satisfied with the tea they chose than those who didn’t close the menu.
Takeaways
- When you design products and product interfaces, keep in mind the body and muscle movement required and the context in which the product will be used.
- When you do user research, include research on how people are moving when they use your product.
- When you storyboard and sketch your design, include information in the storyboard on how people are moving while they use your product.
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