7 More Cognitive Biases That Impact Your Design Process
Cognitive biases are something I’m very interested in right now, and creates a fantastic foundation for future UX work. I believe that these learnings should be shared with everybody in the design community, as they are effects that quietly influence, yet nonetheless play such a huge role in the way we as humanity perceive different things.
In this article I will be aiming to understand, alongside you, 7 cognitive biases that subtly and secretively impact your design process in order to create the best experiences that we can for our users!
(Skip to the end if you just want a quick summary of the points!)
#1 Labour Perception Bias
The principle behind the labour perception bias is that when users see something that indicates the work going on in the background, for example a loading bar, they not only understand intuitively that their task has been completed through the use of clever feedback, but also appreciate the results of the effort more than they would if feedback was instant!
Clever usage of this bias can provide to our users a more enjoyable experience, as it avoids the unconscious bias to view things that are given too quickly as lesser, and also removes the misconception that an action has failed due to it being ‘too quick’.
#2 Banner Blindness
Most users have experienced banner blindness, especially with the amount of web based ad banners that appear daily in our lives, but this subconscious avoidance of banners that is usually directed towards advertisements leaks into banners that may contain useful information or advice for our users.
This selective attention overlooks things that may interrupt the experience, even if they are there to aid it, so if you’re designing with the consideration of drawing the users attention to something, keep distant from the typical stylisation and appearance of advertisements!
#3 Attentional Bias
The Attentional Bias describes our users tendency to focus on certain elements, namely an objective or desire at hand, whilst ignoring others.
The basic understanding behind this, is that both external and internal stimuli can bias the way we place our attention, from emotional states to physical needs, for example in a state of hunger your attention would be drawn more towards food than it usually would, possibly to the degree of ignoring safety or other important elements, or if you were attempting to give up an addictive habit, your attention would lie on it far more than the consideration of health.
We can utilise or combat this bias depending on the situation and ethical landscape, by keeping certain things outside of the attention that our users want to avoid, for example removing the word ‘sugar’ or sugary foods on a health foods app when the user is trying to get into shape, or by including subconscious nudges towards a habit the user may want to pick up more, like daily notifications to meditate after a user downloads the app!
#4 Expectation Bias
Expectation bias is when an individual’s expectation towards an outcome influences the perception of their own, or other’s behaviours.
This bias can have quite a dramatic effect on not just design, but experience as well, especially within research settings. Putting down assumptions and expectations of a result as a designer is incredibly difficult to do, but has to be done in order to retrieve uncorrupted and valuable data from our users in order to provide better experiences for them.
#5 Trivialization Effect
I find the trivialization effect particularly interesting in terms of the wiring of our reward system, as it states that people tend to prefer a thank you rather than a small monetary reward.
The reasoning behind this is that rather than rewarding users’ loyalty to an equivalent exchange, it shifts the relationship to a meaningless transaction based one, in turn damaging the way that our users view our products!
#6 Completeness Effect
When we see products or items in their entirety or whole form, we tend to grant them more value, even if they are equivalent!
The idea that breaking things down into parts displays to our subconscious that their value is lessened is fascinating, and it can play particularly into how we design for the user experience.
If we as designers are attempting to reduce consumption of a product, or give it the sense of larger quantity, particularly physical products, we should ensure we display them in their whole form, subconsciously influencing them to believe they have consumed more. Vice versa, if we want to increase consumption, we should break things down into parts and show them as smaller pieces that add up to a whole (Like sushi instead of a rice bowl!)
#7 Speak-Easy Effect
The Speak-easy effect is one that copywriters and UX writers should pay attention to, as when we use words that are easier to say, they appear more trustworthy and valuable!
When users view words that require jargon, take longer to say, or are harder to pronounce, subconsciously we distance ourselves from them and in turn place less trust in the product, as it quickly confuses us, causing uncertainty of if that jargon is a form of ploy, which it often can be when used for manipulative content writing!
An example of this would be to compare the start-up company name of GoodFoods, to ParticularlyCuratedNourishment. Doesn’t really click with you, does it?
In Summary
Now that we’ve better understood these 7 more cognitive biases that affect us as UX designers, hopefully we’re better armed to challenge the subconscious psychological nature of both ourselves and our users in order to do what we do best!
- Labour Perception Bias: When we’re shown the background work, we appreciate the effort more.
- Banner Blindness: We tend to ignore banners due to our assumption of advertisements.
- Attentional Bias: We place our attention towards certain elements, and ignore others almost entirely.
- Expectation Bias: We are both influenced, and influence others, based on our preconceptions of a result.
- Trivialization Effect: People prefer a thank you compared to a small financial reward.
- Completeness Effect: Items in their whole form appear as more valuable than those in their parts, even when equal.
- Speak-Easy Effect: Simple content writing is more trust-worthy!
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