Do you recognize me?
The psychology behind recognition heuristics and its implications in content strategy.
When was the last time you met someone familiar, yet you couldn’t recall their name? It happens a lot, to all of us. And it is frustrating.
Or let’s take another example. Can you repeat the whole name of the last technical product — either TV, washing machine, electric shaver or electric toothbrush, headphones … — you have bought? It probably reads something like Sony MFRZX1950/BLK ZLX Series* … So that’s a no (confess, have you even read the full name I have posted? =) ). Now, could you recognize the product from a photo of the product, or possibly even from the cover of the packaging? I rest my case.
Recognition heuristics is a psychological term, proposed by Gigerenzer and Goldstein (Wikipedia, 2018). It speaks about judgments and decision making. Recognition happens when a fact is not accessible by a sole recall, and yet some cues — usually visual — spark a connection in the memory. This can lead to a full recall or at least to feelings of familiarity.
In decision making, recognition speeds up the process using fewer resources than in recall. Moreover, recognition comes with recognition bias (more on this in Lief’s blog where you can learn about biases in general and find further references). In short, a familiarity which is a result of recognition sparks trust and hence amplifies the chance of preferring one option over another.
Further evidence for the application of recognition heuristics can be found in Bloom’s taxonomy (rev. 2001; see References), where recognition comes before recall in the “remember” layer. Taxonomy is used in the construction of knowledge exams. The lowest level is the simplest. The simplest exam offers a variety of answers (e.g. options A-D) where one option is the right one. Even without any deep knowledge, many people are able to recognize the right answer. The recall is the next level, where no helping cues are provided. Anything above that is beyond the purpose of this article.
How does that affect Content strategy and User experience?
As we have seen earlier, recognition rather than recall lowers the effort needed to understand something. Beyond understanding is decision making. This is particularly helpful in e-commerce. Users often forget what they were looking at. Remember the name of the product from the beginning of the article? But if I included the image there and asked you now among 3 products, which it was — you could easily recognize the right one. And with recognition biased, you would also prefer this product over others. This is the purpose of these — Your last viewed products — sections. And the purpose of remarketing, where a product is chasing you across the web.
But there’s much more to it than e-commerce. Imagine a menu on the website. I am sure what you imagined looked something like this:
This is easy to use, intuitive menu. We all know how to use it. It’s easy and efficient. But sometimes some businesses get too creative. Have you ever abandoned a website because the navigation was simply awful? Or have you ever abandoned a cart, never to return to complete the purchase, because the process was too complicated? Here is an insight for you: they have violated recognition heuristics. They have violated standard norms, making you think hard. So hard actually, that you have decided to drop it all together.
Now, as a business or website owner, you have to think hard which way to go. Creativity is cool. To a certain extent. In my career, I have seen quite a few pages which were really good looking and creative. They even won some prizes for creativity and innovation. Yet, most of them did a re-design within a year or so. The violation of recognition heuristics was just too great. People liked the page — but could not use it with ease. So the page was an art canvas instead of a useful tool. Having a look-a-like e-commerce site is not necessarily bad after all. You should rather make an impact with a content ;-)
*Product name is altered and faked, but it reflects an actual product name.
