Cognitools

• Socrateaser — Guided thinking using predefined question sets

  Avoid context switching and use cognitive off-loading to facilitate repeating thinking tasks. What an external coach, a facilitator – or a manager – effectively does is she makes an otherwise non-linear and multi-faceted process flat and linear for a person. Without this help, in order to follow each step of a given process, a person needs to constantly switch the focus between the content and that process. Even the simplest 'chatbot' with predefined questions and zero AI can have a significant impact.

• Valuesorter — (Bubble) Sort out a list of thoughts

  Simple, guided sorting algorithm to help in prioritizing things, using pairwise comparisons. Sorting a list of items, especially personal preferences, mentally is a surprisingly difficult. It's even difficult to do with pen and paper (try sorting out your top 10 personal values this way!). With a help of an app it becomes a simple task of comparing two items at a time until the list is sorted.

• Synapticle — Tickle your brain with information, reinforce your memory, collide ideas.

  There are several ideas here. Learning materal preview and priming, review and reinforcement by repetion, and methodic ideation by generating combinations. Synapticle also introduces randomness to the thinking process, which is not really possible without an external device.

• Numbervision — Trainer for visual acuity and working memory.

  Numbervision was an experiment to train visual recall of numbers (and text). The observation was difficulty in verifying that two long number strings are the same: the bank account numbers when copying them from paper to an online form. The hypothesis was that the problem was due to trying to verify them by subvocalizing, by saying them aloud in one's mind, one at a time – and running out of short-term memory. Coloring the numbers was an attempt to enforce visual matching instead. Android app in Play Store (unmaintained).