Wear Thinking Hats: Visualizing Data with CogniLense

You’re in a room with people, a dashboard on the screen, and a decision to make. The numbers are the same for everyone. And yet, within minutes, you have five different interpretations, five different “obvious” next steps, and one familiar question floating around—“How are you seeing this?”

Because the real variable isn’t the data. It’s the lens.

How do you think when things are unclear? How do you solve problems when every option has trade-offs? How do you visualise data when it’s incomplete, noisy, or politically loaded? Most of us don’t realise we’re answering these questions on autopilot, using default thinking patterns that feel “logical” because they’re familiar.

That’s exactly what this Cognilense workshop is built for.

So, what exactly is Cognilense? CogniLense is a practical thinking toolkit, built as card decks created from Siddharth Kabra’s experience across hundreds of design and business problems. It gives teams a simple, structured way to switch perspectives on purpose, instead of getting stuck in one dominant viewpoint. These are problem solving tools to think from various perspectives and arrive at a holistic solution.

Here's what the worskhop looks like:

• The session centers on one idea: if you change the lens, you change the interpretations, decisions and conclusions.
• Participants will work in small groups of 5–6
• A scenario-based activity where information is introduced in “data chunks,” just like real life—partial, messy, and open to interpretation.
• Each participant takes on a specific thinking lens (the CogniLense “hats”; for example: optimist, skeptic, crook, judgement, process)
• The group debates the same situation from different angles before aligning on a conclusion.
• We close with a guided debrief and reflection to surface what changed, why it changed, and what participants noticed about their own default patterns of thinking and visualizing data.

Who is the audience for the workshop? People who work with decisions-making and different scenarios - especially those in product, design, business, data, marketing, leadership, and collaborative roles; where outcomes improve when teams can consider multiple viewpoints (not just the loudest one). Even students, designers, or any professional in data viz.

What will participants take away? Participants leave with:

• Awareness of their own thinking patterns and blind spots
• A repeatable method to interpret and communicate data through multiple lenses.
• Sharper awareness of bias patterns (individual and group)
• A stronger ability to align teams around decisions, especially when the data is real, but the meaning is contested.
• A stronger habit of conscious thinking and visualising data, instead of autopilot conclusions.