Yesterday I read an article on UX magazine about how cognition relates to user experience. I found it interesting that as a designer, we often talk about design principles and examples. However, when we are actually designing, we often forget how these principles will take place in our design.
People’s cognitions influence their experience in a unique way. In this article, it demonstrates how people’s perception will affect how they feel about the experiences. For example, if people expect to complete the task within a short amount of time, then giving them several but short steps would be better then giving them only one but complicated step.
The other interesting takeaway is that giving people a right quantity of choice and the right level of choice are important when designing the structure. Even though the navigation bar shouldn’t be way too long, the things and labels that are similar should be in the same level.
To think about cognition and how it will affect user experience is definitely a useful lesson.