Importance of cognitive psychology in design

ABSTRACT

This essay discusses the importance of psychology in design and in a more specific view, it’s importance in mobile application design with a focus on cognitive psychology. This essay aims to provide an understanding of cognitive psychology and how design can support human cognition and an examination of human mental models. This essay uses Jakob’s law which is a principle in psychology to analyse the importance of cognitive psychology in mobile application design. It provides an in-depth understanding of Jakob’s law and its origins and demonstrates the importance of cognitive psychology through examples of how this principle has been applied in the design of mobile applications.

INTRODUCTION

This essay aims to highlight the importance of psychology in design with a focus of cognitive psychology in mobile application design. It aims to discuss this through Jakob’s law as a principle in psychology.

What is psychology?

According to Plotnik and Kouyoumdjian (2013), Psychology can be explained as the systematic and scientific study of mental processes and behaviours. In explaining psychology, there exist key terms that make up this definition which are - Science, mental processes and behaviour.

Psychology is said to be a field of science because it aims to understand people by critical thinking about carefully controlled observations. The reliance on observation carried out through scientific methods is the foundation of all sciences including psychology. Behaviour as a term in psychology, refers to the observable actions or reactions in both humans and animals and can include habits, patterns or regular actions like laughing or speaking (Plotnik & Kouyoumdjian, 2013). The mental process however, is not observable and refers to feelings, emotions and motives that cannot be directly observed (Lahey, 2012). Aside understanding people, psychology aims to also predict and influence mental processes and behaviour through which scientific methods, allows accurate description of psychological facts and associations. As detailed by Lahey (2012), when satisfactory descriptive evidence has been acquired, rationally correct predictions can be derived and explanations are proposed so as to help us understand these actualities and associations.

What is user psychology?

User psychology is a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, social psychology and human computer interaction which approaches user experience design through the perspective of human behaviour (user psychology, 2022). User psychology aims to understand the mental processes influencing how users interact with products. The objective is to create products that will be easy to use and liked by users. It plays a big part in a user’s experience with a product because when designers understand how the designs are perceived by the users, adjustments can be made so that the designs created are more effective in achieving the goals of the user.

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Cognitive psychology, an area of psychology can be defined as the study of the way people learn, perceive, think about and remember information (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2011). According to Goldstein (2010), It can be seen as the branch of psychology that is concerned with the scientific study of the mind.

Principles of cognitive psychology are grouped with cognitive modelling as a means of designing interfaces as best as possible. Researchers aim to predict behaviour of users and then design around limitations that are inherent, in order to design and create an interface that is seen as efficient and intuitive for the users to effectively navigate and interact with (What is Cognitive Psychology?, n.d.).

While cognitive psychology provides focus on how people acquire, process and store information within their brain, it is important in the design of mobile applications as it allows designers to predict how the users will perceive and operate the application and this is effective through an understanding of the user’s mental models. The mental models of users are conceived of as a cognitive structure which forms the foundation of decision making, reasoning and behaviour. They are constructed based on the user’s perceptions and understanding of the world (Jones et al., 2011).

Experts have researched and analysed how design can be better improved by studying human cognition, mental models and applying them to create principles in psychology. The importance of cognitive psychology in mobile application design can be illustrated through a psychological principle called Jakob’s law and examples of how this psychological principle have informed the design of mobile applications.

JAKOB'S LAW

Jakob’s law which is also known as Jakob’s law of the internet user experience was created in 2000 by Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert who described the propensity for users to have an expectation of design conventions based off their cumulative experience of using other websites (Yablonski, n.d.).

According to Nielsen (2000), this law simply states that users prefer a site or application to work the same way as every other site or application that they know because most of their time is spent on these other sites and applications. Nielsen describes this observation as a law of human nature and encourages designers to follow common conventions in design which allows users to put more focus in the content of this site or application. In contrast, conventions that are uncommon can lead to the users getting confused and frustrated and more likely to leave their tasks and the product simply because the interface does not reflect their understanding of how things should work. Nielson proceeds by highlighting the areas of consistency around this background by stressing the importance of matching the expectations that users have of an interface, based on the other interfaces they have seen before. He explains that consistency is one of the major usability principles and when things behave the same at all times, the users will not need to worry about what will happen. Rather, they know what to expect based on earlier experience. If there is a deviation from what is commonly done on other applications, the application will be more difficult to use and users will leave.

Eysenck and Keane (2015) highlight that one of the most fundamental parts of human psychological understanding that supports Jakob’s law is pattern recognition which is a cognitive process that enables us match information from a stimulus with information recovered from what we have stored in our memory.

The cumulative experience referred to by Nielsen is useful and helpful for people when accessing a new website or application because it matches their understanding of how things should work and it meets their expectations. This underlying factor is highly essential in user experience and directly relates to the psychological concept of mental models.

Familiarity of a mobile application helps the users instantly know how to use the application when finding contents and navigation across the application. The familiarity of use ensures a lower cognitive load. To put this in other words, the Users can dedicate more mental effort to achieving their objectives the lesser they spend to learn the interface. While uniqueness and design creativity are not bad, when there is an opportunity to remove or avoid unnecessary additions that does not provide value and purpose, it is important to do so. Design patterns and conventions are often seen in strategic areas like navigation, workflow, location of expected element like search bar (Yablonski, n.d.).

Zane (2021) informs that Jakob’s law does not state that all designs and experiences should be undistinguishable. There are features that should be alike which allows a good user flow with minimal cognitive load of the user.

EXAMPLES OF JAKOB'S LAW

Stories on social media applications

Stories are a feature existing on several social media applications which allows users to create series of images, videos writeups or any of the combination that can be augmented with music, stickers, texts, effects, animations and emojis (Menon, 2022). It is designed to last for only 24 hours and then disappears after that automatically. The main aim of a ‘story’ is o tell others what Is happening in one’s personal or professional life in the form of a story.

As common as they are and exist on almost every popular social media application, it was made off the success of snapchat signature ‘snaps’ which are posts that normally disappear after 24 hours. While it is generally known as stories, it also exists as other names on different applications (Garcia, 2021). It is called snap on snapchat, fleets on twitter and status on WhatsApp.

It normally appears as circular stroke borders around the user’s profile pictures on the social media applications. Most of the applications show their stories right at the top of the application so it will be one of the first things seen when the application is opened. These similar designs have adjusted to the users mental models and upon picking up any social media application, users can expect to know where to find a story without going through any onboarding process no matter what name it may be called on the application. If this I done differently, users will face difficulty navigating to the stories on the application as they are already used to it being done a different way (West, 2021).

Ecommerce applications UI

There are a lot of similarities on ecommerce applications such as ebay, amazon, shein, target, etsy and the likes of others. These applications were designed similarly so that users will be comfortable switching from one application to another effortlessly They require minimal cognitive effort to shop on the applications because of these similar designs influenced by jakob’ law.

Firstly, using an ecommerce application, one will notice the popular shopping cart. This is where all products the user intends to buy go to. It is normally highlighted as a shopping cart icon and displays the number of items in the cart. Whichever application the user enters, they know exactly where their items go and how to find them.

Secondly, a lot of ecommerce applications use image search to find products across the application. Apart from recognising a product by visual cues, searching with image also lets users discover new ideas based on the context of the image. Barcodes are also used to scan as it decreases the chances of error and voice search enhances accessibility and provides convenience. These features are commonly placed in the design and users would normally expect to see them when moving from an ecommerce application to another (Jhang, 2020).

Thirdly, along with using the search bar directly, users make use of browsing features to find new items. The product categories seen on several ecommerce applications allows users to browse and find items grouped in an organised manner (Harley, 2018). This improves how users navigate these applications as it’s just like walking to the grocery store and seeing where each item is placed in different aisles that we expect to find them (Jhang, 2020). Applying Jakob’s law here is very effective as users will always know how to find whatever they are looking for and navigate the application easily.

Fourthly, Another way these ecommerce applications show similarity is use of different call-to-action buttons for different stages. Having 2-3 call-to-action buttons for different user flows is a common design pattern. For example, Ebay and amazon have “buy now” and “add to cart” buttons in successive rows. The “buy now” is helpful when the user intends to buy a specific item immediately. If the application only has a “buy now” button hen the user is not ready to purchase the item, it could affect their shopping experience and discourage them from using the application as it does not provide for their shopping behaviour. Ecommerce applications try to make this structure alike so the user’s shopping experience can be similar across several shopping platforms (Jhang, 2020).

Chat list on messaging applications

A messaging application is simply a chat application that allows users to instantaneously communicate and connect with each other through their mobile devices (Munroe, 2018).

There are several messaging applications that let people connect with each other. Since messaging on our phones is a very common and basic thing in the modern society, users may communicate on any number of these messaging platforms and they should work in a similar way to provide a seamless experience. These messaging applications exist on their own or packaged with a social media platform. The popular messaging applications today are facebook messenger, IMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram.

There should not be a case where a user should have to start learning how to use a new messaging application as there already exist so many other messaging platforms that they are familiar with.

On the chat list screen, they normally have an icon for new messages on the right-hand side, a search bar below and the user’s contacts, profile photo or placeholder on the left side of the list and a message preview. As these applications are so many and all still designed in a similar way, users mental model has been configured to these design patterns and if an application deviates from these patterns, people may not want to use the application. 

CONCLUSION

By illustrating with practical examples of mobile application designs, the essay shows how jakobs’s law has influenced these designs and the importance of psychology can been through this. By designing applications based on users previous experience with other products, it reduces the cognitive load needed to use the application as they are already familiar with the user flow required for them to achieve their tasks. As psychology studies how human mind works and the mental processes, psychology principles should be applied to design as it helps designers to understand the cognitive effort the users will need to use the application. Developing this level of understanding will enable designers to make more informed decisions for a better user experience. While the discussion of this essay is limited to the application of jacob’s law in mobile application design, so many other psychology principles can be applied to design for a better user experience in not only mobile applications but also other digital devices and products in general that is designed for users.

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