You can use the navigation bar to view and access our current research projects. These projects are highly intertwined:

1. Meta-effectiveness: Developing Oneself with Knowledge, Technology and Cognitive Science; AKA the Cognitive Productivity Research Project,
2. Hookmark— a CogSci Apps invention to help people rapidly retrieve contextually relevant information so they can stay in psychological flow while doing deep knowledge-work. I.e., this addresses the meta-access problem
3. “Contextual Computing” more generally. That is an expression that David Sparks coined which refers to something Beaudoin has been working on for about a decade (without that apt name), and in which the concept of meta-access problem is inscribed (this is related to “surfing”, “delving” and information processing in Cognitive Productivity books). Compare Beaudoin’s prior grant proposal. Beaudoin was editor and lead author of the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking. Check out its psychological rationale..
4. Sleep Onset and Insomnia project. Luc designs mySleepButton, a CogSci Apps invention and Luc P. Beaudoin’s SFU project page on insomnia. The core of this project is Beaudoin’s somnolent information processing theory, which is an integrative design-oriented theory (basically: applying developing broad and deep theories of mind-brain from the designer stance [an interdisciplinary approach with theoretical AI at the core]).
5. Book Project: Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind. Beaudoin is editor and main author of that book. It is part of (a) Learning from Fiction project and (b) emotion-modeling project; (c) meta-effectiveness project; (d) integrative design-oriented psychology project.
6. General interest in “mental perturbance”, a concept that roughly translates to “affective pre-occupation” (more specifically a loss of control of executive functions due to insistent motivators), e.g., in “limerence” (infatuation) or grieving.
7. Learning from Fiction and Other Forms of Art.
8. Beaudoin has long been interested in Aaron Sloman’s meta-morphogenesis project, which he is increasingly trying to make progress on. Beaudoin’s former research contributors, Alice Dauphin and Guillaume Pourcel, are also involved.
9. Productive Practice with Technology (such practice can be approximated with software like Anki flashcards and RemNote,
10. Other book project: Great Contemporaries in Cognitive Science and Related Endeavors (due c. 2020),
11. Two other book projects,
12. Significant improvements to a name mnemonic system, future tests of its effectiveness, software implementation, and an explanation of why it works.
13. The Zest of Brel project,
14. Affective Self-regulation: Volition, Emotion, Motivation, and Attitudes (e.g. for overcoming addictions).
15. Temporal self-quantification — the mySelfQuantifier,

Most of our work involves integrative design-oriented research in psychology, which is a research approach that Beaudoin is defining. That specification is itself a project!

Most of these projects involve infinitely complex problems where progressive problem solving would never end. We like that.

Why pursue so many projects? Isn’t one supposed to be hyper-focused in order to be successful? Well, that depends on your definition of success. Darwin addressed a very large set of interrelated problems. It was a long time before he published his integrative theory of evolution. The key to the riddle is this: addressing selectively chosen, highly informative and interrelated problems, in a theoretically deep manner, with an ambitious view to building important knowledge. We are not concerned with short-term “success” as others may measure it, nor with the academic impact factor —at least not as measured in our lifetime. Call our attitude an example of the French influence, exemplified by Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Jacques Brel, if you will.

“We” here refers to CogZest, which is mainly the work of its founder, Dr. Luc P. Beaudoin. He is also part of R&D teams inside and outside academia who contribute towards our objectives.

CogZest spun off CogSci Apps Corp. in 2014, at which point it sold its (software) intellectual-property portfolio to that company. Some of our projects are in collaboration with CogSci Apps Corp.

We welcome requests to collaborate on our R&D. We invite qualified knowledge workers who would passionately want to contribute to CogZest to get in touch.