Lessons from The Design of Everyday Things (2/7)
Welcome to my mini-series of 7 lessons from 7 chapters of Don Norman’s DOET. This article focuses on the second lesson.
Lesson 2: Understanding the psychology of everyday actions
In chapter two of Don Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things, he goes into extensive detail about why and how people do things, how we process our environment, and the actions taken to accomplish our goals. This chapter is packed with insights from psychology and behavioral sciences. Here are the highlights.
Why we do things and the 3 Levels of Processing
Our behavior and actions derive from intaking our environment and experiencing the world through our senses. Though we’re not always consciously aware of why we act or feel certain ways, understanding the reasons behind why we act will help us get closer to helping users fulfill their needs and build intuitive and useful products. Let’s start with how we process the world around us. According to Norman (and psychology), we process our world in three levels.
1. Visceral (subconscious)
In the visceral level we experience the world without judgement. When we come into contact with new products and objects, our first impressions are visceral. We perceive them through our senses. The look, sound, feel, etc. determine if we form a positive or negative opinion. At this level we simply exist. We don’t assign context or history we experience the present moment and react to it automatically. For instance, we don’t reflect on why we love certain foods and find others repulsive, we simply have preferences. We don’t consciously think about why we like certain colors of cars and dislike others, we just do or don’t.
2. Behavioral (subconscious)
A step above the visceral level is the behavioral level of processing. This is the home of ‘learned skills’. Whenever we find ourselves in situations we’ve been in before, we act in similar ways that have gotten us the same or similar outcomes. Norman writes: “Whenever we perform a well-learned action, all we have to do is think of the goal and the behavioral level handles all the details…”. Whenever you pick up a pen, turn on your faucet, stick out your tongue, you don’t consciously think through those actions. You somehow will yourself to action. According to Norman, the behavioral level is the most crucial to designers because “…every action is associated with an expectation”. Behavioral states are learned and whenever we process our environment in the behavioral level, we act and expect things to work in a predictable way. But when things don’t go the way we expect them to, we get frustrated, angry even because what we think works, and has worked in similar situations, suddenly doesn’t. Therefore, Norman writes how critical the behavioral level is when designing for users. It is the designers responsibility to ensure that products behave in predictable ways so users’ expectations are at least met.
3. Reflective (conscious)
The reflective level is the last and only level where conscious cognition occurs. The first two levels are subconscious so their processing is fast, instant. The reflective level is slow and deliberate and is triggered after events occur. This is where we think back on what just happened and compare it to similar, past, or known contexts. It’s where cause is assigned and predictions for the future happen. But it is also where our most intense emotions live. When we fail at a task that we haven’t failed at before, we can blame ourselves for being inadequate. We can feel ashamed for our imagined short-comings. In contrast when succeeding at tasks we can feel proud of ourselves for knowing how to operate something and getting to our desired outcome. Norman illustrates that all three levels need to be accounted for when designing. This will ensure users make positive impressions of products that work in predictable ways and empower users to feel confident in their ability, knowledge, and action.
Why do we act?
We act depending on changes in our environment or in our goals. Norman introduces us to two types of behavior; event-driven behavior and goal-driven behavior. Event-driven behavior (aka data-driven behavior) occurs when external stimuli change our environment in ways which cause us to change our behavior or actions. Goal-driven behavior occurs when we strive to reach an outcome.
How do we act?
7 Stages of Action
Norman outlines seven phases of action that cause us to act depending on our environment or goals. If we become hungry, we form a goal of obtaining food to eat. In goal-driven behavior the action sequence starts with the formation of a goal.
1. Goal
2. Plan
3. Specify
4. Perform
5. Perceive
6. Interpret
7. Compare
Note that both event and goal-driven behaviors can be subconscious.
The action sequence for finding food when we get hungry may look as follows:
1. We feel hunger so we create a goal to eat food to not feel hungry anymore.
2. We look into our fridge and find butter, bread, and cheese. We plan to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
3. We specify the actions needed to perform making a grilled cheese (find proper cookware; skillet, butter knife, plate, etc.)
4. We perform the actions (spread butter onto bread, place cheese on bread, place skillet on stove, turn correct burner on, etc.)
5. As our grilled cheese… grills, we perceive when the sandwich gets to our desired level of toasty-ness and cheese melty-ness and decide to stop cooking. 6. We interpret the previous stage as our sandwich is ready to eat, being careful not to burn ourselves
7. After we finish eating our sandwich we ask ourselves if we successfully accomplished our goal and whether or not we still feel hungry. If we’re not satisfied we continue the cycle of preparing and eating food until we no longer feel hungry. If the grilled cheese satisfied us, we proceed to our next goal or event.
Event-driven behavior can start at any stage of the action cycle. Norman uses the example of reading a book during the day, in a well-lit area of our home. As we become engrossed in our book and day turns into evening, we perceive that reading becomes difficult as the sun starts to set. The sun’s setting is an event that mobilizes us to look for a new light source. So we turn on the lamp next to us. As this is an event-driven behavior, we simply respond to our changing environment, so the first phase of action is not a formation of a goal but perceiving what occurring around us.
1. We perceive that reading has become more difficult
2. We interpret that reading has become difficult because the sun is setting
3. Our goal of reading has become thwarted so we create a new goal
4. Our goal now is to find an adequate light source to continue our initial goal of reading
5. We plan to turn on the lamp next to us
6. We specify the actions necessary to turn on the lamp (moving closer to the lamp, flicking the light switch, etc)
7. We perceive that now, with our lamp, we’re able to see and read our book clearly
8. We interpret that we no longer need to look for more light
9. We establish that our goal to find light succeeded and we can continue to read
Side note: Whenever we create, plan, or execute goals, Norman instructs us to find the root-cause. As designers, we need to constantly ask ourselves why the goal, is the goal. This constant exploration and understanding of why users do things is called root-cause analysis and is a driving force behind our job as designers.
In order to build exceptional products and experiences, understanding the psychology behind human behavior is vital. Norman writes a superb chapter explaining and educating us on the different areas of study behind our motivations and how we can implement his teachings into our own work.
If you’ve gotten this far, I would love to learn if you’ve used these findings in your own journey or research. I hope you enjoyed reading this article, and again, I would love to get your feedback on it.
‘Till next time!
