Cognitive psychology
Studies the mental processes by which we perceive, pay attention, remember, reason and decide.
What it studies
How we process information and what its limits are. It gives design knowledge about what we see, what we remember and how much we can attend to at once when using a product.
Principles
Limited attention
We can't attend to everything at once.
Imperfect memory
We remember by reconstructing, not by recording.
Two modes of thinking
One fast and intuitive, the other slow and deliberate.
Applications in design
Use it like this
Show few things at once and group information so it is easy to remember.
Avoid
Designing as if people read everything and remembered every step.
Don’t fall for it
Test with real, distracted people, not just with the team that already knows the product.
Theories and concepts
System 1 and System 2
We think in two ways: one fast and intuitive, the other slow and deliberate.
Negativity bias
Bad things weigh more and are remembered more than good things of the same intensity.
Mere-exposure effect
What we see several times ends up appealing to us more, even if we don’t know why.
Self-determination theory
What truly motivates us is what lets us choose, makes us feel capable and connects us with others.
False consensus effect
We believe most people think and choose as we do, more than is really the case.
Hick’s law
The more options there are, the longer we take to choose, though each new option adds less time.
Cognitive load
The mental effort a task demands from a memory that can only hold a few things at once.
Mental model
The idea we form of how something works, which we use to predict what will happen.
Gestalt principles of perceptual organization
We see groups and whole shapes, not loose pieces: what is close, similar or continuous joins up.
Methods and tools
- MethodPersonasResearch-based characters that represent groups of users and their goals.
- MethodUsability testingWatching real people attempt tasks with the product to find out where they get stuck.
Connections
Authors and works
- 1956
George A. Miller
Showed the limits of how much information we can hold at once.
- 1967
Ulric Neisser
Popularized the name of the field with his book Cognitive Psychology.
- 2011
Daniel Kahneman
Brought the idea of the two modes of thinking to a wide audience.
Sources
Original sources
- Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97. View source: Miller, G. A. (1956)
- Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Secondary sources
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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