Comments on: How Cognitive Biases Shape User Experience

By: Rob Marchant

Rob Marchant — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:12:30 +0000

I studied cognition and usability at university, fascinating subject. Thanks for sharing!

By: Amrit

Amrit — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:33:22 +0000

It is important to know and understand what the user is used to, user’s cognitive biases, to give the user a familiar experience. But designers should also be a little bold and experience with new things from time to time.

By: Christopher Brown

Christopher Brown — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:48:48 +0000

Lovely piece, with great detail to attention.

So many people “design” without the user in mind. Simplicity and great UI is so inportant in web design. Many of the big players do not recognise this.

By: Irina Shishkina

Irina Shishkina — Fri, 06 May 2011 08:04:23 +0000

Great insight and very well written. Another thing to consider is the target audience. It’s quite important to understand who will use your website as different users have different expectations.

Being a graphic/web designer I strive to make my sites both usable and visually appealing. Sometimes pleasing yourself, your client and the target audience can be really challenging as clients ( as well as us, designers) also have preconceived notions concerning what a website should look like.

By: Simon White

Simon White — Mon, 02 May 2011 09:36:38 +0000

I particularly like your comment “Although visual design is very important, it’s not as important as creating the proper taxonomy and nomenclature.” Often, I have worked with mockups and wireframes where you get to the inevitable “this widget / call to action isn’t visible enough” when in fact it’s still got draft wording or no wording at all. It’s incredibly hard, however, to get delivery of close to final copy before wireframes are already validated. So the bias when the final wordings come in can change the feel of the page completely and cause – at best – a design reiteration. Usually the site just goes live and you’re forever playing catchup afterwards.

It’s counter-intuitive, because the link between what is written in the page and the visual design is so fundamental yet seemingly counter-intuitive for many people (except excellent copywriters, who are worth their weight in gold IMHO).

-Simon

By: Jane Jordan

Jane Jordan — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:02:22 +0000

Hi Jordan, nice article.
As designers we are sometimes guilty of using our own experience as the key to what everyone else thinks.

For some of our design work, when we are discussing the usability one of the scenarios I consider is an older person, as some older people are not as as au faux with the cognitive biases that young people are. Throwing this in the mix helps us produce material that is more usable by a wider audience.

By: Dino Dogan

Dino Dogan — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:30:41 +0000

Dude…i think about this shit all the time. Its amazing when it works, and its even more amazing when you think you KNOW its going to look right and perceived as expected and then boof! users dont get it.

Its always a delicate dance. Great post :-)

By: Jatin

Jatin — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:25:48 +0000

Nice findings, great article.

By: Phillip Zelnar

Phillip Zelnar — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:31:41 +0000

Thanks for the great article. This type of background is always helpful in helping clients understand that using their site to “reinvent the way the internet works” is usually not a great idea. I’m a big fan of accepting precedents and then trying to improve on them.

By: PixelTunnelVision

PixelTunnelVision — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:36:45 +0000

“The field of experience design attempts to realize a user’s cognitive biases, or opinions, and rationalizes design decisions that make use of those biases.” – Only really worth while if a set of common biases are statistically found to be very consistent across large groups of people. Even in simple A/B testing I’ve always found most people tend to flock toward one thing. It’s never a draw or close call. It’s also worthwhile to consider how web UI norms shape biases. If websites from 1994 to 2007 all looked mostly the same, which they did, people come to expect certain layouts. People who want to forge 6-figure careers around mastering UI design that utilizes mounds of psychology and rocket science to parallel how people tick usually just end up making common sense stuff in the end anyway.