Crafting a better wallet with psychology and communication principles: Part 4

In Part 1 I looked at user intent. In Part 2 I looked at user Gestalt grouping. In Part 3 I looked at operant conditioning. This article will build upon the previous three, so I recommend you check those out before proceeding.

Part 4: Schemata

Consider the image above. We see young Mitch watching his mother arriving home from work. To our adult eyes and minds, she has a distinct position and relation to her surroundings. If, however, we tasked Mitch with illustrating the scene, his impression would be quite different. Mitch is transitioning through the schematic stage of artistic ability. His mind is building frameworks, called schemata, that allow him to interpret and so express the elements of the world around him. From the blue line of sky and m-shaped birds found in the ‘up’ location, to the yellow sun radiating lines of light, to the house with a smoking chimney, Mitch has developed a schema for each of these. Mitch still struggles with human anatomy, ignoring his T-posed mother’s trunk entirely, though Mitch clearly considers her the most important part of the scene as she’s disproportionately large. As different from reality as Mitch’s illustration may be, he can convey perceived information from the concepts in his mind to the page, and then into the mind of another through harnessing these schemata.

How are schemata useful?

Schemata are the mind’s way of organising pieces of knowledge and information. If you can think back to Part 1, I mentioned how heuristics were shortcuts the brain uses to rapidly interpret information. Shortcuts are the modus operandi of the brain, and schemata allow us to interpret vast amounts of information in an instant by best matching shared qualities between what we’re currently experiencing and our past knowledge so we might act accordingly.

Imagine a situation in which you’re walking down the street at night, and hear a faint, distant growling. You continue forward, and the growl loudens, before two glowing orbs rise over the crest ahead. They hurtle towards you as the growling turns to a roar, and bright light bathes your surroundings. You continue forward along the footpath without a worry, despite knowing the entity barrelling by could kill you in an instant. This may seem foolish, but to someone without a schematic concept of a car, or road-rules, this situation would be utterly terrifying. It’s in this way schemata allow us to properly navigate all manner of situations in daily life without committing substantial effort to them.

Schemata as a weakness

As powerful as schemata are, allowing us to function and thrive as a species, they’re also flawed. Unlike conditioned responses explored in Part 3 which are vulnerable to extinction, schemata are long-lived, and although alterable, schemata are quite rigid, taking time to change. It’s this that makes things like biases, prejudices, and irrational fears stubborn to erase.

Returning to Gestalt, let us consider Prägnanz and the phrase ‘the whole is something other than the sum of its parts’. Consider also another phrase you may be familiar with, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck”, which is a case of abductive inference. This process, also known as abduction, isn’t sound, but rather a ‘best available’ conclusion. It’s also how schemata work, albeit unlike abduction, schemata are largely subconscious affairs. Thus, we’re vulnerable to snap decisions that are ultimately objectively incorrect.

Schemata and intuition

In the 1800’s, William James proposed the beginnings of what’s known as dual process theory, which suggests all thinking takes place either consciously as explicit reasoning, or subconsciously as implicit intuition. We know from Part 1 that wallet interaction should be intuitive, so how can we manage this with schemata in mind? Consider measurement units of length.

Imperial units of length
Inch
Foot — -12 inches
Yard — -3 feet
Mile — -1760 yards

Metric units of length
Centimetre
Metre — -100 centimetres
Kilometre — -1000 metres

As this demonstrates, metric units are far more intuitive. They can factor out decimally, and the naming convention is largely intuitive also. Each common unit shares the base unit name-metre-paired with a prefix drawn from Greek or Latin root languages; these are conventionally shared across the metric system and the sciences as a whole.

Imperial units, on the other hand, largely require rote memorisation, with little in the way of consistency between unit values. This is true also of the naming scheme.

Why does this matter? If a user doesn’t immediately understand your units and the relationship between them, investigation and rote learning become necessary. Both of these demand the user be sufficiently invested mentally, otherwise the effort heuristic will lead the user to abandon the wallet, and possibly their investment as a whole, as too much trouble. This is particularly apt when user are faced with syllogistic problems to understand their actions. An example would be a user wanting to spend coins that transition through multiple states. These problems bar easy comprehension, and such reasoning problems are popular in IQ tests for the simple reason that many people struggle with them.

Harnessing schemata

The curse of knowledge bias is a common problem in the cryptocurrency and technology space as a whole. It involves someone in a position of knowledge and understanding assuming a greater understanding from their audience than that which is possessed. This stands directly in the way of meaningful communication, leaving the audience lost when they stumble and lose the presenter’s line of thought. Schemata are useful tools in helping avoid this.

Let’s consider Bitcoin. While Bitcoin and its underlying systems are rather complex, it’s surprisingly easy to learn the basic premises due to the way Bitcoin and its parts are named and referenced. One bitcoin is one bitcoin, and while it can be broken down into decimal places (the smallest of which are often called satoshis or sats), it’s always recognisable as bitcoin, be it at 0.0001 or 145. The name is also intuitive, using ‘bit’, itself usually a root, as a prefix, and ‘coin’ as a root. Bit is easily recognised as related to computing, and coin as related to money.

The concept of mining is also intuitive, as it relies upon a user’s preconceived schema of mining-working one’s way through material of little or no value until finding something of high value. It’s intuitively understood that there’s no assurance of finding the high value something at any given interval, and that the more work is done getting through that of no value, the greater the probability of finding that of high value.

As you see, Bitcoin efficiently conveys foreign concepts by likening them to existing concepts for which most users will have a developed schema. In this, new information can simply piggy-back on the existing schema in a process called assimilation. This process is easy for the learner, and paves the way for meaningful learning, so is something we should aim for in teaching new concepts.

To conclude this article, when designing a wallet, it’s important to consider frameworks already established in the user’s mind. Cryptocurrency is a new, complex technology, so harnessing what the user already knows allows us to link new concepts to existing schema through assimilation. Thoughtfully and intentionally naming and refining the concepts and processes a user will interface with will allow them to maintain a state of intuitive learning conditions. This frees their conscious mind to focus on things like passwords, transaction amounts, and correct address entry. If we can’t afford the user that freedom, they’re likely to simply move on.