Using Technology to Improve Cognition

We all have cognitive biases. Mickey McManus shares his team’s efforts to use technology to counteract those biases in the design process.

Humans naturally suffer from more than 200 cognitive biases. They make us think our first idea was best, accept given presets, talk more about what we know than what we don’t—the list goes on and on. Cognitive biases are natural, developed through evolution, and we all have them. But they limit us when it comes to creativity and design. At the same time, we face regular and varied distractions that drain our cognitive abilities—social media being an important new one. Mickey McManus of Autodesk explores a few of these biases and cognitive drains and explains the work of his team within the Autodesk Office of the CTO to use technology to help designers tune out both the internal and external factors that limit design.

About the speaker

Mickey McManus is a research fellow in the Office of the CTO at Autodesk as well as principal and chairman of the board at MAYA Design, a technology design and innovation lab. He is a pioneer in the fields of collaborative innovation, pervasive computing, human-centered design, and education.

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