How the theory of cognitive model helped deal with raging emotions in the design approval process.

“She changed my layout as she pleased, without relying on any research. Just great! Where did she even get these ideas? Do they think I randomly throw text on a page and hand it over to UI?” — I was angry today when I saw total changes in the information architecture of the section that I meticulously built, element by element, for several days.

According to the cognitive model, our emotions, bodily reactions, and behavior do not depend on the situation itself, but on how we interpret it. Some events, such as deceit or rejection, can indeed cause sadness, but we often misinterpret neutral or positive events. This suggests that our perception does not match reality. Working on correcting cognitive errors involves critically evaluating our thoughts and responding to them appropriately.

The theory is based on three simple ideas:

1. What you think is how you feel.
2. When you are anxious, you fool yourself. Anxiety arises from distorted, illogical thoughts. This is a mental deception.
3. When you change your thinking, you change how you feel about yourself.

After reading “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David Burns, this theory stuck in my head for a few days, and a contentious situation with a colleague presented a great opportunity to try it in practice. What was happening in my mind for an hour while I frantically tried to compose a super angry yet professional response after opening the layouts in Figma and encountering a “nightmare”, as it seemed to me in the first few seconds.

Event: Trying to understand what, where it went, and how it ended up here.

Thought: What the fu… but I drew it… I did…

Event: Writing to the project manager to express my dissatisfaction + attaching a screenshot of before/after.

Thought: Well, now how do you all feel… I asked if anything was unclear — write to me, and I’ll explain.

Before / After

Event: It turned out that the manager hadn’t seen the mock-ups yet and first sent them to me.

Thought: “Oh my God, what a mess.”

Event: I am commenting on the mock-up in Figma for further discussion, hoping that the designer will just make the changes. While commenting, I unconsciously resort to using CAPS LOCK on emotions “These buttons SHOULD BE at the bottom…”.

Event: A response comes from the designer in a passive-aggressive tone and with a bunch of smileys covering the tone of a killer: “No, they SHOULD NOT be at the bottom, but rather SHOULD be at the top.”

Finally, a sensible thought: Why does our correspondence look like kindergarten communication?

Event: The cognitive model kicks in.

Train of thought: Why did I get so nervous? I need to keep my feelings to myself, let’s switch to respecting the other person’s opinion mode and try to understand what they are trying to say. Yes, they can be wrong, just like me. And my task is to describe the processes and logic as detailed as possible to defend the decision that I am sure of and which took me hours to analyze competitors and analogues. Why was it done this way and not otherwise? Based on what? After all, it was my part of the work to conduct research, not hers. Let’s remember who did the same, and those who 100% conducted testing before release? Cian, Avito, Auto.ru? Why are there two different approaches to this task, and I choose this particular one, and she chooses another?

Event: Having calmed down, I write a rational response that helps to get out of the situation without exacerbating the conflict: “Please show me which design decisions you relied on, send screenshots, and we will understand what the difference is.”

How to use the model in practice

1. Formulate the reason for the negativity: “My negative reaction was caused by changes in the mock-up that were not agreed with me. What was the point of me trying then?”.
2. Ask yourself the question “What terrible thing will happen?”. In my case “What terrible thing will happen if we do as the colleague suggests?”.
3. Answer: “We will release a bad product.” Here I realize, is the colleague’s task to sell bad designs? Of course not. Of course, they tried and made changes, taking into account their own background and experience and thought that it would be better. At this moment, when we show empathy towards the opponent, a neutral attitude comes, a desire to understand why it happened the way it happened, and an understanding of what to do next.

Event: Phew, success, she sends screenshots and we realize that the product with buttons at the top is designed for multiple content editing, so this functionality is moved to the top and fixed (as a colleague gave an example), since the user can start and finish editing at any time. However, in our case, the main user scenario goes a different way: it is aimed at creating a trading card in one go (happy path), and filling it from top to bottom. The user needs to complete its filling and publishing as quickly as possible, and only returns to editing mode when something really goes wrong or something significant happens during bankruptcy.

We apply the gained experience to cognitive model ideas and draw conclusions:

1. In a worried state, we try to pass off our decision as the only right one in order to defend our position of correctness, forgetting about the real problem we are solving.
2. As soon as we form the idea that the opponent is also competent and has justification, we move on to a more constructive dialogue, supported by materials and statistics.