Review of CXL Mini-degree as a UX designer (week 2)
Today I am going to share my next chapter with CXL Institute Mini degree journey. As I told you in my previous note from week 1, I am diving into Digital Psychology and Persuasion to extend my skills in UX design. So far, I am very absorbed in my studies. Let’s jump, and find, what topics I was faced with in week 2!
Lessons from Neuromarketing 🧠
After this lesson, I understood a lot of my own behaviors and triggers, which makes me continue to work on something. Whether it is my work, eating habits, workout — it is all driven by the very same rules and they concern all of us.
Inside the neuromarketing chapter, I could learn about simplified brain structure, enough for marketing purposes. The oldest part of our brain, the reptile brain is taking care of causing actions. There are 6 stimuli, which get, so cold, “Old brain” to move us, humans, towards engagement and action. One of them is contrast and first and last things met in the interaction. The contrast means a change. If the “Old Brain” doesn’t see anything new on its way, it gets bored and stops paying attention to it.
As a UX designer, I knew, that breaking the pattern for example in layouts or content is a great way to cause engagement, make User “alerted” and get focused on a new thing. Another example, why that mix of the article and video kept me engaged, and also allowed me to understand the initial thought of the lesson very easily? — now I know why, and understanding it, gives me more control in the appliance. Another example is…the CXL course. The first two lessons had a video at the beginning and text as the main content, additional images along the way kept me engaged and intrigued. I also realized, that the workout program I am following from over the year engages me from the very same reasons — changes, contrasts. There is a library of almost 300 videos, so every single work out is different, I am never sure or don’t remember that well every single exercise included in the video, very often I am very surprised by the alternative ways of a similar movement in new videos. In addition, the decorations in every video change so are the hairstyle and outfit of the instructor. It showed me, how many elements can impact the way we are engaged and boost by the factors we only perceive with eyes, without too much effort.
Thanks to this lesson, I have understood not only, how neuromarketing can impact the Audience I design or, but how much I am influenced by the factors. Every paragraph kept my interest growing, and the next lesson brought even more good stuff.
What I learned: A deeper understanding of our brain structures and “Old Brain” importance in decision making
How will I apply it: Take all triggers for the “Old Brain” into account, when planning User Flow, Customer Journey, Information Architecture, Layout
A big list of persuasion techniques
This lesson expands previously touched principals and adds up more tips to use in on-line persuasion. This lesson s slightly demanding, there is a lot of information Although the Author made his best to make it very condensed and filled with pure knowledge only, it takes time to get through with understanding.
If my calculations are correct, we are given 38 different techniques with description, scientific research example, or clarification story, A/B test examples and online persuasion tips to underline to possible usage of the knowledge. I miss slightly some kind of categorization here because all lessons in the “People & psychology” course are complementing each other, and some of the principals are similar, could work well together, or are impacted one of another. I am thinking of summing it up this way, and probably I will make this kind of categorization 😊. Except that, all given examples and research background kept me very curious, and it made it get through each technique with nice excitement. And thanks to this lesson, I could understand why.
One of the mentioned techniques is Front Loading — it simply says to start the information with a conclusion at the beginning. Our brain needs a lot of energy (20% of the body’s energy in a resting state for an average adult), so it does its best to spend it wisely. Getting to the point right at the beginning causes less cognitive load and it motivates for further exploration. This, and many more techniques are going to be my very best friends from now on.
I found here well-known facial distraction, attentional bias, affect heuristic, or the IKEA effect. This lesson is pretty long, but the constant float of knowledge aligned with already possessed information kept me going (first and last principal and contrast for my Old Brain kept me going). The most surprising for me was, the Fear Appeal — I didn’t know, that people tend to reject any threatening messaging, even regarding their lives so much, unless they meet a solution for that threat next to it. I’ve started to look in my mind for an example, and I quickly realized, that newsletters from the Activist Organization often use Threat Appeal by describing the issue and giving you a link to sign a protest. Next thing I realized, that I became really resistant to these messages, because they start with the threat only, so if your company is doing the same, it would be wise to support the messaging with the solution given right at the beginning to gain more conversion for your causes.
What I learned: Almost 40 useful techniques with practical tips and research behind them
How will I apply it: use all cueing techniques in visual design, and contended related techniques to plan the best information structures and hierarchy on websites
Cognitive Biases — We’re All Affected By Them
Cognitive biases are affecting our everyday life. Whether we like or not, it is impossible to omit them, they are part of us and is also observed in monkeys, rats, pigeons. Biases impact things we believe, our decisions and behaviors. There are also social and memory errors, altogether they shape the way we perceive our reality. So once more, if you’re a UX designer, here is another user, why you need to talk with your Audience and not base your beliefs on your own experience — we are all very different and cognitive biases makes it even more irrational to allow our belief, that we can think for others.
Funny thing. If you expect to gain more control over your own biases by acknowledging them — there is a bias called Bias blind spot — if you think you are less biased than others, well….this is a bias to.
In this lesson, there is a short description of 9 of almost 104 biases defined at Wikipedia (although, different resources give different numbers). It is good to get through those, which can be taken under consideration, but the truth is it is better to know them because as Designers we’re impacted with them and can fail with our decisions being biased by our own beliefs.
One of the most dangerous biases, when you are a UX designer
False-Consensus Bias — we tend to believe, other people think like us. From my previous words, you know now, that is not true. We all have our own beliefs, motivations and we are biased by them.
The curse of knowledge — being a specialist is very satisfying, but once you have certain information, it is easy to forget, that they are obvious only for us. I realized recently, that I need to be very careful talking about my design decisions, because I’ve learned things, which my Audience doesn’t. I support everything I am saying with examples, step by step explanations, I avoid jargon. And it is still hard to get on the same page sometimes.
Confirmation bias — we are persistent to confirm our beliefs. It means, that from the given information we will be remembering and paying attention to those, which support what we know and want to believe. It is very easy to ask questions in and conduct tests that will confirm what we’re thinking. Be aware! Try different scenarios, have a second opinion, and ask neutral questions always! Learning that your idea was wrong might be hard, but is a blessing after all.
What I learned: I’ve already learned about cognitive bias, but it fascinates me always, so it was a good repetition
How will I apply it: Do my best, to test different solutions, and plan neutral questions for interviews and surveys to not influence answers of Users
That’s it for my week 2! Coming back next Sunday with another portion of my experience with CXL Institute Mini degree.