navigation

Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

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The paths peo­ple take are record­ed by their cell­phones. Anony­mous data from thou­sands of phones shows the paths peo­ple take in Boston (above) and San Fran­cis­co (below). Car­lo Rat­ti, CC BY-ND

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal navigation.

Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to point straight toward their des­ti­na­tions – we call it the “pointi­est path” – even if it is not the most effi­cient way to walk. [Read more…] about Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities

Brain training 2.0: Adding 3D Navigation to Optimize Cognitive Training

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StreetNavAs dis­cussed dur­ing my Sharp­Brains Sum­mit talk last week, it is very impor­tant to ensure fideli­ty between brain train­ing tasks and the real-world sce­nar­ios where we expect those sharp­ened cog­ni­tive skills to be put to good use. That’s why, work­ing with a num­ber of researchers in the US and Europe, I’ve been devel­op­ing a new 3D task called Street Nav, as part of Peak’s suite of mobile cog­ni­tive train­ing games.

And this is what we just released: Pre­sent­ing an aer­i­al map with start and end-points to mem­o­rise, the game places the user at street lev­el with the task of nav­i­gat­ing to the des­ig­nat­ed des­ti­na­tion, in an immer­sive 3D envi­ron­ment (see image to the right). In doing so [Read more…] about Brain train­ing 2.0: Adding 3D Nav­i­ga­tion to Opti­mize Cog­ni­tive Training