How do people like apples?

In the earliest TV advertisement of iPad, there was such a side complaint: "Absolutely awesome, full of magic! You already know how to use it. " What an inspiring advertisement. Apple's iPad is certainly a brand-new revolutionary product that subverts the market. It is completely different from the electronic equipment we have seen in the past, and as advertised, it is extremely simple to use. So how does a company like Apple do all this?

One answer is the ability of Apple designers to learn from people's almost instinctive behavior patterns. The medium of interaction may be something completely new, such as the multi-touch screen that few people used before the iPhone. But everyone should know how to squeeze and stretch an object. Even if this interactive mode is transferred to the screen, users can easily master it after watching it once. As Alan Cooper wrote in About Face:

"All idioms must be learned, but good usage only needs to be learned once (all idioms must be learned; Good idioms need only be learned once.

The role of dopamine in pattern recognition

Our brains are always looking for patterns. We look for models that experience thinks can lead to success (in love, war, gambling and even investment, whatever). Jonah Lehrer wrote in How We Decide that when we recognize some familiar patterns in real life, the brain will secrete dopamine, a nervous system chemical that can bring happiness. And when you follow this model to accomplish something and succeed, dopamine, the source of happiness, will give you another extra pulse stimulus.

If we recognize a model but feel wrong, or follow this model but the result is not as good as expected, then we will not get another pleasure from dopamine and readjust our expectations. Many neuroscientists believe that this reward system promotes our "learning". This process forms a cycle of self-improvement based on pleasure, which guides us to learn from our mistakes and thus better understand the world.

According to our expectations of the world, the dopamine reward system will make us have positive or negative emotions. Lehrer believes that this is a powerful subversion of the traditional understanding of the role of emotions in the decision-making process. Since Plato, it has always been believed that reason can overcome emotions, and rational thinking is the reins to control unruly emotions. What sets us apart is the ability to use logic and reason to contain emotions and make wise choices. Lehre's book explains in detail the support of recent neurological research for decision-making model inference:

"Emotion triggered by dopamine reward system plays an important role in our decision-making."

This discovery in neurology provides strong support for the use of patterns in interaction design. Let's take a look at the carousel mode, which is a very popular form of interaction on system desktops, tablets and handheld devices. In the Yahoo design library, it is described like this:

"Presenting content in the form of sliding out from one side of the screen; The display items on each side will be partially blocked by the previous display item, so as to present more contents not in the current pane in the limited visual space; Arrows appear in time to guide users to get more display content. This is a very simple interactive mode, and users only need to use this function once to learn. "

Users who are willing to try will come into contact with this merry-go-round mode almost at the first time, but even if they encounter it for the first time, they can get started immediately. Then when users see the design form of carousel in other places, even if there is no interaction, users can immediately recognize this pattern. Recognizing a pattern, dopamine is to ignite the user's pleasure. When the user follows this interactive mode, such as clicking the arrows at both ends to get more content, and succeeds, then the brain will secrete more dopamine and enhance the user's pleasant experience this time.

Rotary broadcast mode

However, it is undeniable that neuroscientists have not used magnetic resonance imaging to measure dopamine secretion when users follow interactive modes such as merry-go-round. So far, our research on the brain's response function to real-world models is quite limited. We can only infer from experiments on monkeys, or rely on the reasoning of psychologists.

Lehrer's radar soldier story

Lehrer told the story of a radar soldier during the first Gulf War. The radar soldier needs to observe the light spots on the screen day after day, which represent the return of the plane from a specific position on the Kuwaiti beach to the warship. One morning, radar soldiers suddenly felt quite anxious about a group of light spots on the screen, and I don't know why. These light spots are not much different from what he observed day after day, but this morning these special light spots just made him feel that something bad was going to happen. He nervously ordered the shooting down of these spots. This decision saved everyone's life, because these light spots were launched by the enemy to destroy the missiles of the allied warships in the Gulf.

Radar soldier can't explain why he thinks these spots are not returning planes. It was not until reviewing this experience and the intervention of a cognitive psychologist that the investigators found that the reason was that the initial positions of the missile point and the plane point on the screen were slightly different:

"The missile launch point is a little far from the sea. Lei Dabing can't tell this difference yet, but his subconscious tells him that the plane light spot pattern formed over time has changed. The emotional anxiety and physical pain caused by this change led radar soldiers to order the destruction of these light spots regardless of the seven or seven. "

Ray's story (and other stories mentioned in Lehre's book) shows that our brains recognize and obey patterns unconsciously. Familiar patterns appear, dopamine ignites pleasure, what we have learned is strengthened, and we enter a state of high emotions. But if the pattern is broken, or the performance is not as expected after following it, everything will be out of order, and our brain will send out a "prediction error signal". A place in our brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) monitors the activity of the prefrontal cortex. When ACC detects that there is no activity between dopamine neurons due to unexpected circumstances, it will send out a "prediction error signal". This "prediction error signal" will make other glands such as amygdala and hypothalamus secrete some chemicals, which will cause anxiety: rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, shortness of breath and so on.

Anxiety caused by pattern errors

We naturally don't want users to feel anxious when using the system we designed, but this kind of thing often happens. One of the reasons is that when we often present a certain interactive mode to users, we don't give enough visual guidance to this mode. Let's take a look at Roku's channel store. When users want to add a channel to their system under the channel interface, they are faced with a static information form. If there is no interactive experience of carousel mode in advance, users may think that this 3X4 form interface only provides 12 channels.

In fact, this form adopts the interactive mode of carousel, and you can see more hidden content on both sides by switching left and right. This form can even switch up and down to get content, but it is difficult for users to understand the visual presentation of information. To make matters worse, users can only know a little about the interactive mode of carousel here, so they will face it next time. Ironically, Roku is famous as a streaming media player of Netflix, and Netflix has well applied the interactive mode of carousel, presenting the same information form on the interactive interface of some game consoles (such as Wii).

Back to the design of daily necessities, Donald Norman's definition of "visibility" is as follows:

"The right operation should be visible, and the operation can convey the right information" (the right controls are visible, and they convey the right information). "

Roku's channel store didn't do this. Unless further exploration, users will not know the use of carousel mode in Roku's channel store.

Roku's channel store

Sometimes, the problem is just the opposite: users think they use design patterns, but they don't. If a pattern we think doesn't work as expected, our brain will think something is wrong, and then it will be restless. Take the basic function design of the list of items on the smart phone as an example. This is a familiar function for iOS users, and it is also well described in josh clark's book Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Applications:

The gesture of sliding from left to right triggers the deletion operation, and a "Delete" button appears, prompting the user to confirm the deletion.

This design mode is simple and easy to learn, but other smart phone systems are scattered and unpredictable. For example, the email system in Palm's WebOS also uses the same gesture to let users delete, but there is no "delete" button to confirm the gesture, so the email disappears from the screen so easily. However, in the SMS application of Palm OS, the confirmed "Delete" button exists.

Sliding from left to right in iOS triggers deletion.

The early Android OS didn't use the sliding gesture to delete, but switched to the "Edit Project" page to delete. The upgrade of gingerbread version (andr iod OS 2.3) brings more inconsistent user experiences: for example, in the contact list, the gesture of sliding from right to left is texting, while the gesture from left to right is calling! Imagine that a user wants to delete a contact through a gesture from left to right, but suddenly finds that he is calling this contact, which doesn't scare him!

Pattern matching sounds easy, but it is difficult to do.

We have all experienced the anxiety caused by this model error more or less. Under the Windows operating system, whenever I instinctively move the mouse to the taskbar and want to open a webpage that I think has been minimized again, I still feel anxious when I find that the webpage I am looking for is actually opened under another tab, rather than an independent minimized window that I thought. I have been in this mood every time for at least three years. Interactive habits that are deeply rooted in people's hearts will not be easily changed.

Because I use three different browsers on at least four computers, I often can't find the "Home" button, which used to be on the left side of the address bar of most browsers. But now, the standard installation of Firefox 12 browser, whether under Windows operating system or Mac operating system, the "Home" button is on the right side of the address bar; The standard Safari browser doesn't have a Home button at all. Nowadays, there is no reliable mode for us to determine the location of the "Home" button in the web browser. However, our brains yearn for such a pattern, which leads to happiness, and vice versa (physiological and natural chemical reactions).

Undeniably, the inconsistency in various platforms, browsers and software has its own reasons, from patent issues to design habits. And interaction design will inevitably change and progress with the passage of time. We can't be tied down just because the brain is familiar with a current pattern. We should use the principle of human brain function that we are gradually mastering to design. We can learn from behavior patterns that are not obvious but easy to learn, such as "squeezing".

We can design step by step on the basic elements of the existing design, so that the new interaction design will retain enough old patterns and the brain can still recognize them. We can also cautiously introduce new models as additional functions:

"For example, the three-finger and four-finger gesture operations of the MacBook Pro touchpad are not necessary, but once found, users can easily and naturally learn to replace the mouse positioning and key operation of the application interface."

In fact, this last resort is to use chemical reactions in the brain. A "prediction error signal" is issued because the predicted event did not happen, and the result was disappointing or completely failed. But sometimes, predicting the wrong result will bring joy instead of panic. Although the result is not as good as predicted, something better may have happened. David Locke mentioned in "The Brain at Work":

"Happy and novel experiences can also stimulate the secretion of dopamine, which will bring pleasant experiences."

This experience is similar to the effect of humor: jokes are funny because the ending has an unexpected turn and wonderful results. More importantly, the risk is the least and the joke is the best: throwing a dog to eat shit won't kill you. But if the joke is too sharp, it will inevitably get stuck in your throat, so you must hold back.

The new interaction design can follow similar principles:

"If the design can bring unexpected pleasure, and no one is injured (and no data is destroyed), then the design can stimulate unexpected pleasure, which can be quickly used to replace the old design you have always wanted to change."