COGNITION AND CONTEXT IN THE DESIGN OF EXPERIENTIAL ELEMENTS

The relation between Cognition and Context is dynamic, opposed to the idea of something fixed and stable; it changes in time, and depending on the type and intensity of the interaction between these terms. The central theoretical concept of Practice, then, of people acting in a setting, captures the inter-relationship of context and cognition. The concept of “Practice” allows joint research of cognition and context by observing the activities of persons acting in a setting. By monitoring practices, managers would examine institutional norms, constrains, and the way these constrains influence organizational reasoning and decision making: how experiences are constructed (both by employees and customers) in the process of cognitive and non cognitive activities, how individuals are constrained in their activities and how their thinking is shaped in social interaction. Traditionally, customers are assumed to have a fixed set of preferences and expectations regardless of the context, and the provider tries to meet those preferences with specific attributes in a product or a service. But while people enter in a setting, their cognition interacts with the context, originating practices, that depend on many different an complex factors, as their cultural background, education, knowledge about the activity, memories, expertise, etc. [1] Firms (or its managers or designers) are able to observe these practices and, as a consequence, to act through their design decisions, on the context or on customers’ cognition. From firm’s observation of practices, context could be modified, adapted. Firm can act on cognition by assessing or educating customers. As a consequence, practices could change, but depending on customers’ free decisions and preferences. [1] The resources and constraints determined by the physical and social circumstances that guide the activities are crucial to the actor’s interpretation of the context; at the same time cognitive and physical activities of the actor form the social context. As a consequence, customer’s preferences are not static but dynamic and shaped in the context. The objective of the service provider is to shape customer’s preferences actively by designing a setting in which the meaning of the experience is created in a favourable way. This view is developed in the Situated Action Theory.