If you work in User Experience you must read Daniel Kahneman.
If you don’t it’s at your own peril.
Daniel Kahneman is an Isreali psychologist who, in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences together with his colleague Vernon Smith. But how, you may think, what does a psychologist have to do with economic sciences? Eh, he has a lot to do with it!
Thanks to his research in the field of cognitive and behavioral psychology he took home a Nobel Prize, and here I quote,
“for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”.
One of his most famous books is “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, a true sacred text , at least for those who write, it is a real guide for the whole team at BaasBox. We are talking about a piece able to spread light on some of the most interesting phenomenon that guide each of our daily choices.
The journey that Kahneman takes with the reader takes him to explore the unknown wanderings of our mind, opening the doors to behavioral phenomenon that, until a few minutes earlier, we simply ignored.
Mechanisms able to influence our every decision , whether it is the new t-shirt to buy, the candidate to vote for at the next elections or the possibility or not to make tap on a certain CTA.
To comprehend them and study their impact on the decisional processes of every single individual becomes fundamental for anyone who decides to build products and services that are usable and able to offer the best user experience possible. Aspects and variables that we could consider trivial, if not even irrelevant, often influence in decisive way the behavior and judgment of our users.
The real protagonists: Systems 1 and 2.
In his book, Kahneman talks of two fundamental mechanisms that guide the human mind called System 1 and System 2.
The first covers intuition, irrational choices, immediate thought. It is all those mechanisms that work immediately, all those decisions that don’t need effort not even our auto control.
So, if I were to ask you to complete this proverb “red sky at night …..”, you would activate System 1 and you would be able to answer quickly without thinking too much about it.
We share some characteristics of this system with other animals. Since we are born we have the ability to sense the world around us and direct our attention (if we hear a sudden sound we turn towards it). Other skills instead, we have practiced over time and, day after day, they have become associations of ideas that have become part of System 1. Surely you can answer in few seconds the question “what is the capital city of France?”.
The second system is that which refers to logic, rationality, it is that which we activate when we have to take on challenging mental activities that require a good dose of concentration.
If I were to ask you to solve the problem 57 x 34 you would not be able to do it using System 1. You would probably be able to solve it in your head but, nevertheless, you would have to make an effort to find the answer.
System 1 is quick whereas System 2 is slow and, above all, very, very lazy. If it can avoid working, you can be sure that it will. The author tells us how the first always produces cues for the second: sensations, impressions and intentions. The second, because of its innate laziness, often limits itself to adopting the suggestions made by the first.
It can happen though that System 2 activates in the presence of “particular” events which flow outside of the of reality to which System 1 refers.
During the course of our days we use System 1 for 98% of the time and for the remaining 2 % we use System 2, interesting, no? This goes to show that for the huge majority of the time it is the “auto pilot” that orients our choices.
Cognitive fluency.
One of the main functions of System 1 consists in determining how difficult it is to perform a certain task, notifying us at the moment it is maybe necessary to call to aid System 2. We are talking about the so — called Cognitive fluency.
According to Daniel Oppenheimer’s definition,
“Cognitive fluency is a metacognitive assessment of the difficulty of a cognitive process”.
To simplify.
If System 1 identifies and rates a determined task as “easy” it is a sign that everything is going as it should, that there are no imminent threats and that, more generally, there is no need to allert System 2.
When, however, a task is rated “difficult” by System 1 there is need for the direct intervention of System 2. In this case we do not talk about cognitive fluency but, moreover, cognitive dis-fluency.
On the basis of cognitive fluency Kahneman poses four causes which are distinct from one another but with interchangable effects:
- an experience which, repeated over the course of time, aliments the sensation of familiarity;
- clear and leggible characters able to increase the sensation of truth;
- an idea subjected to priming, resulting in a feeling of positivity;
- the good mood that is able to aliment the feeling of effortlessness.
In light of this we can affirm that when we find ourselves in a state of cognitive fluency it is very likely that we are in a good mood, we like what we see, believe what we hear, we trust our intuitions and, more generally, we find ourselves in a comfort zone and in a context that is familiar.
On the other hand, in a state of cognitive dis-fluency, we are alert and suspicious, we have more difficulty completing the tasks on which we are working, we are uncomfortable, less intuitive and creative than usual but, in return, we tend to make less mistakes.
Simple is better: prototypes, familiarity and good humour.
In an interesting article called “The psychology of simple”, Jory Mackay talks of how our brain is uncontrollably attracted to simplicity. The simple things, in fact, don’t require any effort from the user to understand their function, (and we have seen how lazy our brain is).
In the article the author cites Harvard professor George Whitesides who, during a TED talk entitled “Towards a science of simplicity”, assigns these characteristics to “simplicity”:
- Predictability: the behaviour of simple things is easily predictable and System 1 is activated.
- Affidability: we trust simple things and we are more likely to use them. We find, once more, the concept of familiarity.
- Economic sustainability: if a product costs little, the user will certainly find a way to use it ( stones are simple and primitive objects yet, with them, man learnt to build cathedrals).
Finally, simple things can be used as if they were building blocks that can be assembled and used to build other things.
Thanks to these characteristics, simplicity has the extraordinary quality of being able to break down the entry barriers for the user.
As we have previously seen, during the course of our lives we are always accustomed or, in some way forced, to have to make snap decisions. The concept of simplicity inserts itself perfectly into this daily picture ( simple things make the task easier) but to this we have attach two more components: the prototypes and the familiarity.
Prototypical elements help us in the elaboration of our mental processes therefore making our choices more fluid. We immediately attribute the concept of danger to a red triangle. To an icon in the form of a house we associate the “Home” section of an app or a web site.
The concept of familiarity is, instead, tied to the so-called “Mere-exposure effect”. This has to do with the link that is created between the repetition of a stimulus and the slight affection it causes. This does not depend on direct experience and not even on our own conscious. The experience of familiarity possesses an extremely potent quality, the effect of déja-vu that creates in the subject an illusion of remembering.
It is scientifically proven that we have greater cognitive fluency when faced with a word or object that we have already seen before. A name that is familiar to us is clearer in our heads and “easier” to see. There are simple methods with which to make the user familiar with a new word, for example showing it to them beforehand for a few milliseconds or making it stand out thanks to a higher contrast than the rest of the text.
Product placement in films and television, for example, exploits the power of the exposure effect (here is an interesting experiment carried out by the psychologists Stefano Ruggieri and Stefano Boca from the University of Palermo).
In an article entitled “Mind at Ease Puts a Smile on the Face” it is demonstrated how positive feelings are associated with cognitive fluency. Words which are easy to pronounce or objects which are easy to recognise spark in us sensations that provoke good humour.
Cognitive fluency and font.
The use of legible font that does not require too much effort from the user contributes to increasing the feeling of cognitive fluency.
Legible characters, with the correct contrast, size and style paired with a simple lexicon and correct orthography, make it easier for the user to perform a task or adopt new behaviour. Writing a text with a difficult to read font and maybe using colour tones that are unsure and poorly defined will cause, on the other hand, dis-fluency.
This means that the user could deem a specific task more difficult just because of an incorrect font or colour.
But there is also another interesting aspect to assess, the relationship between clear characters and the perception of the truth.
Legible fonts make an affirmation more credible in eyes of the reader.
A reader could perceive a product or service as more reliable also thanks to the fluency of text and its impact on a smart phone screen. It is a very important strategic realisation seeing as it could, for example, move a person to buy a product.
As Daniel Kahneman wrote:
“The general principal is that anything you can do to reduce cognitive strain will help, so you should first maximize legibility”.
So far we have only spoken about System 1 and of actions and perceptions tied to the concept of speed. In some cases though, it could be necessary to slow down and call System 2 into action. If we want a user to concentrate more on a certain task or if we want them to better expand a concept, it could be useful to use what professor Stefano Bussolon defines as dis-fluent by design solutions.
To conclude, as Colleen Roller (VP, Usability Engineer in Bank of America Merrill Lynch) states in this article in UXmatters:
“Cognitive fluency — or dis-fluency — plays a subtle, yet influential role in judgment and decision making”.
Knowing the importance of the impact that cognitive fluency and dis-fluency have on the processes of decision making and the behaviour of the user is fundamental for whoever works in User Experience.
Underestimating or even excluding cognitive and behavioural psychology from your reasoning designing a new product, represents an error which could cost you very dearly.
Don’t do it!
Reading Daniel Kahneman could be an important first step towards the planning and realization of better products and services.
