100 Things every designer needs to know about people
Susan M. Weinschenk
This book is written primarily in the context of good web design, but has many observations that are relevant to communication, motivation, learning and decision making in general. I found it interesting to reflect on how much using a new web site depends on how I perceive the page, learn what I want to know from it and then decide whether to continue or abandon the page. By analogy, many of the decisions that I make follow the same path of perception, learning, motivation and decision. In many cases, the author adds a brief summary of modern physiological observations related to the topic at hand. My favorite relates to sensitivity: if you were standing on a high enough hill in the dark – you could see a candle 30 miles (about 50 km) away. I will try to group some of the 100 observations using the scheme described above.
Perception
- What you see isn’t what your brain gets* – The brain may be processing about 40 million items a second. If it had to consider all of this in detail, it would never be able to keep up. It learns shortcuts to handle the load. What is really important is to know that you perceive a summary of what you see – most of the detail has actually been removed unless you deliberately pay attention (and even then). These shortcuts are very useful, but they create illusions and help you draw inappropriate conclusions. A simple visual illusion is shown below – there is no rectangle.
The ability of the brain to use hints to create “instant”
conclusions is vital to our survival, and the phrase “seeing is believing” is
probably true. But what you see might not be what is there.
- People identify objects by recognizing patterns - With 40 million inputs/second, the brain copes by creating patterns and might even be thought of as pattern seeking. The illustration above is one example of pattern seeking. The figure below shows 8 dots
- Reading isn’t as fluid as it seems – If you are reading this section easily, you brain has already started to process the letter h that is about 15 characters ahead. While you are focused on letters in the center of your vision (probably 7-9), your peripheral vision is collecting what comes next. ‘What comes next” is a huge part of brain work and much of this information comes from the periphery of your view. We seem to interpret scenes based on peripheral vision more than central vision. So when you enter a room and “read” the scene, much of the input is peripheral. Of course, reading and comprehending are two different things. The bifk pridvfed an emahple tdbt sngws tjft mfgt of ogr rdhsing depends on the first and last letters. Misplacing central letters slows us down, but does not stop us. Here is another example of peripheral criticality. In longer messages, it is the opening and closing that we recall – not the middle. If it is important – don’t put it in the middle (ironically this is in the middle).
Learning & Thinking
- It is useful to think of three kinds of memory: short, long and schematic. Short (or working) memory is quite limited – you can probably only retain 4 items for more than a few minutes. It is quite easy to distract a person and wipe out this memory. Generally, the only things that get moved into long term memory are those that get used. If you want somebody to remember something, make them use it right away and often. Schematic memory is a form of chunking where larger groups of memories are combined. Beginning chess players develop a few schemata (for example, the names, initial positions and movements of the pieces). Advanced players chunk entire strategies and styles; they can often describe early game moves by looking at the positions of pieces mid-game. Expertise and the development of implicit knowledge is a step beyond long term recitation of facts. This sort of memory is the product of experience.
- People reconstruct memories each time we use them – Contrary to our typical mental model, our memories are not like a video recording of our experience that we replay to remember. It is more like a bunch of sticky notes on a wall that we take out and reassemble. This reconstruction means that we are prone to adding or leaving out things. Memory “quality” can be biased by how a question is presented. Memory is affected by what we know to have happened later. We easily remember predictions that we made that came true (though we never made any such prediction) and forget all the predictions that we made that turned out to be wrong (it is wasteful to remember everything – right?). In fact, we forget about 80% of what happens to us within a week (do you know what you had for lunch 9 days ago?) because it is not useful to remember. We don’t consciously decide what to remember or forget, but we are more likely to forget what we are not using than what we are. There is an interesting exception related to vivid memories. Highly emotional events form extremely powerful and durable memories. They are also very likely to be inaccurate. Conviction about a memory is absolutely no indicator of the accuracy of the memory. If you are ever on a jury, this is important for you to know.
- Minds wander 30% of the time – And that is when they are paying attention; it can be higher. On the negative side, this means that many communication efforts are in trouble due to missed content. On the plus side, this is how your brain makes connections to related topics, acts creatively and thinks laterally. This may also be the basis for the idea of communicating seven times and seven ways. The real problem is that we are mostly unaware of how much time our mind is wandering, and so we don’t realize how much we are missing.
- The more uncertain people are, the more they defend their ideas – Changing your mind might be hard and people who are highly committed to a point-of-view may not be able to perceive an alternative. But when less sure of the situation, you do not become flexible. Apparently, you argue extra hard to convince yourself (a sort of cognitive dissonance) when you are unsure about the subject.
- People are driven to create categories – Given a number of things, people will immediately sort them into categories. This is a form of chunking that people seem to do unconsciously. This helps people both remember and interpret information. Suggesting categories together with information makes it easier for people to process and learn information. Some people will reorganize the information anyway, but others will not. The act of categorization is part of the learning process, so well organized information is easier to learn.
- There are four ways to be creative – Here is an interesting perspective on types of creative thinking based on degree of spontaneity and emotion. In matrix form, you can see that there are four combinations. When you are focused on a problem, you may realize a solution using either emotional or cognitive resources. Equally, solutions may come to you spontaneously based on your emotional or cognitive state. Everybody can, and does, use all four ways. What may be important for many people to recognize is that deliberation and thinking can be an important source of creativity – it is not all spontaneity and passion.
|
|
Spontaneous |
Deliberate |
|
Cognitive |
Newton & his apple |
Edison & the light bulb |
|
Emotional |
Artists/musicians |
Aha! |
- Sustained attention lasts about ten minutes - If there is something important to say, say it in the first 10 minutes. After a break, people can re-focus for another 7-10 minutes. By this logic, you are probably not really focusing on this anymore. What this really means is that it is hard to develop a complex case that requires time to explain. This is part of why stories probably communicate information better than “logic”; we can process the information while paying less attention. We are fresh when the important part of the story is told.
- People can’t actually multitask – You might switch quickly, but many tests show that “multi-tasking” is associated with more mistakes and less efficiency. Tests suggest that people who claim they multitask well and actually likely to worse than average at it – they are self-deluded. Environments that encourage multitasking are probably less productive. Studies have also shown that people who often multitask do worse at tasks that require concentration than those who multitask less, and this has nothing to do with age. Young multitaskers are just as bad as old multitaskers. Distraction-rich environments cause people to work almost like multitaskers.
- People can be in a flow state – Undistracted, and working on interesting material, people can really concentrate. It seems so easy that people do not seem to tire and seem to be very productive. Very little in modern work life seems to be designed to enable this kind of quality work time.
Motivation
- People are more motivated as they get closer to a goal – In a variety of different studies that compared the motivating effect of progress made to the effect of being closer to the goal, it is clear that we are motivated by the approaching goal. We are motivated by completion.
- Variable rewards are powerful – The foundation of these concepts are studies with rats. The experimenters asked what pattern of reward was most motivating to the rats. The answer was very clear; variable (unpredictable) rewards create the most motivation. Some tests gave rewards based on time intervals and some based on actions that the rats took. In either case, variable rewards were better. Rewards that were action based (fixed or variable) were more effective than time-based rewards. People basically respond the same way. Many rewards programs (buy 9, get the 10th one free) are a form of predictable action-based reward. Such a program might be more effective if some people, who buy 9, occasionally get 2 or 3 free.
- People are more motivated by intrinsic rewards than extrinsic rewards – Psychologists have identified two kinds of work – algorithmic and heuristic work. The first is well-defined, repetitious and easily measured. Extrinsic rewards (e.g., money) motivate algorithmic work, but they have little positive effect on heuristic work. Heuristic work is more ambiguous, unique and difficult to measure usefully. Intrinsic rewards are much more important for heuristic work.
- People are motivated by progress, mastery, and control – These are the intrinsic rewards that motivate heuristic workers. Letting people do it their own way is motivating. Being able to see their own progress is motivating. Having a sense of ‘growth’ can be motivating. An interesting feature of mastery is that nobody ever actually masters anything – there is always some room for improvement that people can choose to pursue.
- Forming a habit takes a long time and requires small steps – Seven times seven ways is not nearly enough to embed a change. Simple habits develop faster than complex ones. Small habits are easier than big habits; can you break a big habit into smaller parts and work on a series of smaller habits?
Mistakes
- People make errors when they are under stress – The effects of stress are insidious. A small amount of stress can actually be quite beneficial, but only a little. Past a point, stress sharply degrades performance. Simple tasks are more resistant to the effects of stress than complex tasks. Stress is hard to compartmentalize and many things can introduce some stress. What is stressful to one person may not arouse another. Men and women respond differently to stress. The point is that some mistakes are so simple you wonder what is going on, when the answer is that stress has impaired an otherwise competent person’s ability to think and act.
- Not all mistakes are bad - Faced with a new and unknown situation (think new software), people try a few things to see what happens. Objectively, most of these are mistakes – but they reveal the useful structure of the software and allow the person to learn. This is different from the situation where a person knows the correct approach and fails to use it.
Deciding
- People make most decisions unconsciously – Some people expend effort on developing an objective basis for making decisions then decide unconsciously. Others decide immediately on an unconscious basis. Unconscious does not mean incompetent, irrational or any other sense of bad – but it does mean that emotional factors and “invisible” heuristics dominate the decision making instead of logical analysis. What is important about this observation is that convincing somebody means presenting information that will enable the unconscious process to accept the outcome you are promoting. It also has implications for interviewing. When people tell you their reasons for deciding to take a certain action, you have to be skeptical about what they say. Because decision making is unconscious, they may be unaware of the true reasons for their decisions.
- The unconscious knows first – The book describes an experiment where people could choose from 4 decks of cards. People could choose a card from any deck. They would be paid a sum or charged a sum depending on the card. Some decks paid out a large amount but also had the highest penalties. Others had lower payouts, but much lower penalties. Nobody ever explained the complex set of rules to the participants. Eventually, participants chose 100 cards. In the beginning, participants chose high payout decks, but after about 30 rounds they began shifting to decks with low penalties. Eventually, they would only chose from the low penalty decks. They were periodically asked whether they knew which decks were most favorable. They were also connected to a skin conductivity meter which measures changes in perspiration. Long before they were consciously aware of their hunches about the better decks, they were showing physiological responses to the unfavorable decks. Before they would even touch the “dangerous” decks, they would begin to sweat more (a sign of nervousness). Some people could never articulate a reason for thinking that some decks were better than another, but their body knew what their conscious mind did not. Behavior preceded knowledge.
- People want more choices and information than they can process - We are addicted to getting information (literally addicted) and crave it long after the point that we can utilize it. In fact, getting more information inhibits our ability to choose. Even when people say they want all the options – they don’t. Make it easy on people by presenting a few options, but not many.
- Group decision making can be faulty – This is less a comment about groupthink than a comment about group dynamics. The example cited was a study of people choosing a candidate for an opening. The position had objective criteria and candidates varied in their fit to the criteria. When the group began by expressing their opinions in round table fashion, the criteria were ignored and the group would pick unfit candidates. Ninety percent of group discussions start with group members talking about their initial impressions. The research is clear that this is a poor idea; instead, by starting the discussion with relevant information, this data will be weighed more carefully for a better decision. This is not an endorsement of leaving decisions to a single person, but for better management of discussions leading to decisions. Let people develop an opinion, but focus on decision criteria first.
- People value a product more highly when it is physically in front of them – A series of experiments were conducted where people were shown a snack in one of three formats: a text description, a picture or the snack itself. In each case, they were asked what they would pay for the snack. The results are shown below. People valued the real thing more than a representation.
This was also true if toys were substituted for snacks. If the snack was put behind a Plexiglas window, people would pay less. If only a sample of the snack was shown instead of the whole snack, people would pay less. People not only value the real thing, but they value the immediacy of it. Somewhat implied in this experiment is the idea that we will pay more for what we can touch first. This is probably what lies behind the need to test drive or walk through a house before buying. It may also explain why we examine goods at a store in person to convince ourselves that we should order it on line.
Comment & interpretation
- There are apparent contradictions in our ability to pay attention. Working by ourselves on interesting things, we can focus for hours and time stands still. We seem to be very productive in this mode. Put into the mode where we must pay attention to someone or something else, we can’t last 10 minutes. This dichotomy makes me wonder about personality. Might it be introverts that can submerge themselves in their work and lose focus after 10 minutes? Might extroverts be the opposite? Or is really about environment? Does working in an undistracting environment promotes focus and many environments are distracting? If distraction undermines productive focus, how do we balance the value of collaboration and creativity from open/noisy environments with the value of individual productivity?
- I did not include the topic of laziness above, but I think we often think about laziness the wrong way. Laziness may be the source of efficiency and laziness is a huge driver of innovation – your basic labor saving devices support laziness. The author makes the point that people are lazy; and this has been selected for through evolution. Thousands of generations of people went before me and the lazy ones survived. I can be very motivated to find things that make my life easier and often share these with other people. These summaries mean that I don’t need to read this book again. And you can get a lot from the book without ever seeing it.
- The concept that not all mistakes are bad is a vital thought for both learning and innovation. Most designers place great value of prototyping because they expect these mistakes to point the way to better solutions. The acceptance of the future “mistake” is key to giving it a try in the first place.
- In the case of the card game where people showed physiological stress before conscious awareness, I wonder if this is a subtle demonstration of risk aversion at work, but with a fast paced experience to condense the negative experience and reveal the unconscious conclusion. In real life, feedback may be much slower and people may never become aware of their aversive bias, but their behavior was already changed.
*Text in italics is directly quoted from the text
Recent Comments