Stop telling me attitudes don’t matter much in UX

Behaviour, behaviour, behaviour. While not the only thing UX research looks at, it’s always at the top of the list.

What people say and what they do aren’t always the same thing

It’s true. But any experience influences attitudes, bias and behaviour (and 100 million other things). More often than not behaviour is motivated by attitudes. Is it enough that someone can complete a task in your testing?

What exactly is an attitude? It’s basically an evaluation of an object of thought. It can be anything you’re capable of thinking of, from the mundane to the abstract, things, people, groups, and ideas.

An attitude isn’t just a feeling. What makes attitudes different from feelings is they involve an evaluation. Attitudes are typically made up of feelings, thought and behaviour.

You have attitudes you don’t know about. You have attitudes you’re aware of and attitudes you aren’t aware of. Some are big and longstanding, some are small and fleeting. You spend a differing amount of time on creating different attitudes.

Big ones. You keep your ‘big’ attitudes in memory. It’s like having a well organised cupboard. If someone asks you what you think of a political party, you can go to your cupboard and pick out your political attitude. It’s easy to find, you know what it looks like and what it contains because you spent time making it.

…and little ones. You form these very quickly, and they might group together eventually. Compared to the organised cupboard, these are like that drawer we all have in our kitchen that is filled with unidentified objects that you pay little or no attention to but you know you may need at some point. There is a reason you don’t throw them away…

Attitudes don’t operate in isolation and neither does behaviour. People are motivated to align their behaviour with their attitudes. If they don’t, it causes conflict (something called cognitive dissonance), and let’s face it, we all want an easy(ish) life.

Context, context, context. UX loves behaviour, and context is a large part of that. But for me, behaviour and attitudes go hand in hand and they both have bias in their backpacks, so it seems ludicrous that one is largely ignored. It’s great to know where someone places their cupboard, how they walk to it, and which handle they use to open it. But what motivated them? Why are they using the cupboard? Do they like their cupboard? Would they use that cupboard again?

What are we missing? Even richer context. We regard behaviour so highly, but then largely exclude one of it’s core motivators. It’s important to try and eliminate biases etc. We do what we can, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Take a bit of extra time to get that full picture and get a feel of how your designs are really affecting people.

It’s great that they can use it. It doesn’t mean they want to use it.