Our software company is called CogSci Apps for a reason: our software is designed with cognitive science in mind. Following Donald Schön, we recognize that one cannot directly infer engineering (or psychotherapy) from science—but one can design better systems by using science as a guiding resource.

So it is that our two apps are based not only on vanilla cognitive science, but integrative design-oriented (“IDO”) cognitive science. We’ve published A Manifesto for an Integrative Design-oriented Approach to Understanding Humans as Autonomous Agents here on CogZest. Our apps are:

• mySleepButton is an unusual sleep app designed to help you fall asleep using the cognitive shuffle. Over 100 major media articles and interviews about this app have been published since it was first released in May of 2014. Just this month it was covered in BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Le Droit. Online you can find hundreds of testimonials from people who have used the app.
• Hookmark is an unusual productivity app designed to help you contextually retrieve information that is most relevant to your current task.

These are not just single-purpose apps: they are platforms containing multiple cognitive “packs” based on IDO approach. For example, mySleepButton includes several distinct packs designed to modulate pre-sleep cognition in ways that facilitate sleep. mySleepButton, for example, has several “packs”. We are working on mySleepButton 2.0 which will contain another highly innovative pack. You can read about it on my substack: Sleep Starts Before Bedtime. Hookmark contains integrations with dozens of other apps.. It even contains a script editor to extend its functionality.

Human’22 workshop keynote

For a deeper look at the idea behind IDO innovations, read this Substack article of mine, published today: On Applying Integrative Design-Oriented Cognitive Science to Hypertext: A Framework for Cognitive Productivity. It contains materials from my 2022 Human’22 workshop keynote address:

• a youtube video of an elaborated version of the keynote.
• a PDF of a published article on the keynote.
• the article’s abstract.

This integrative design stance—treating cognitive science as a resource for constructing systems rather than merely describing them—is what makes these apps fundamentally different. This approach is also described in Cognitive Productivity: Using Knowledge to Become Profoundly Effective.