Cognitive Science in UX Discipline
The main point of this article is to point out the relation between Cognitive Science and UX. Before going further into this relationship's depth, you must understand the scientific definition of Cognitive Science. As we've discussed above, "Cognitive Science" is the study of human thinking. It's a scientific field combining ideas from computer science, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience.
The idea of Cognitive Science is not only limited to human thinking but also analyzing different aspects of human nature such as language, memory, and visual comprehension. But the question is, how Cognitive Science is related to user experience?
To know the relationship between Cognitive Science and UX, you've to the lead of this article.
An Example of Everyday Cognitive Science
Let's begin with our daily life examples. There are some common Cognitive Psychologies in our everyday life, and we can take those psychologies as a perfect example of Cognitive Science. How can we identify Cognitive Science in our everyday life and how can we use them in our daily lives?
Well, we'll describe some of its common uses further in this article. But first, take a look at some everyday examples of Cognitive Science or Psychology.
As we all know, Cognitive Science is the psychology of human nature. It analyzes everything inside the human mind, including how we think, learn, and comprehends. However, Cognitive Science is a complex and challenging topic for those who haven't any interest in this field. Lots of research has done on this particular topic but unable to explain some experiences such as face recognition, feeling pain, or remembering the past. Well, this is entirely a different topic, we'll describe that in the future.
Examples of Cognitive Science or Psychology
1. Learning is the best example of Cognitive Science. We find something new, and our brains try to learn these new concepts to remember them for the future.
2. Deciding on something that your brain received from processes.
3. Everything we think and try to solve the problems in our daily life is also a part of Cognitive Science or Psychology. In general, the ability to solve different issues directly has to do directly with brain functions. Suppose something happened to your laptop. Suddenly, you're laptop stop working, and it keeps shutting down. You can go through the checklist of familiar things with the laptop, which allows you to find a solution to a particular problem causing your laptop to shut down.
4. The cognitive development of a human being varies at different ages of human life. A six-year-old kid doesn't have the ability to do the math's in the real world, but a ten-year-old might do. In education institutes, teachers must fully aware of the development of Cognitive Science or Psychology.
5. Achieving goals is also an example of Cognitive Science. Moving towards your goal includes many Cognitive developments of human nature. It may consist of perceptions, memory, attention, and other brain functions.
Well, these were some examples of Cognitive Psychology and development. In the next step, we'll see the common uses of Cognitive Science.
Common Uses of Cognitive Science
Well, the term Cognitive mostly used by scientists. It includes the ideas of human thinking, perception, problem-solving, language processing, decision-making, and many other experiences relatable to human beings.
Cognitive Science is mostly used in artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists investigate the different ideas and methods of psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, computer science, and anthropology. There's no doubt about that Cognitive Science is a vast field and covers a wide range of topics. We cannot describe everything in just one article. All we can do is explain everything that it needs to clear your concepts.
Where Cognitive Science has many advantages, yet it has many controversies. But we're not here to discuss the arguments of Cognitive Science.
Following aspects/uses where Cognitive Science is concerned with:
1. Artificial Intelligence
As we mentioned above, Cognitive Science is mostly used in Artificial Intelligence because of its practical use of human intelligence in computers. An exciting thing is the computer is mainly used to study and Cognitive sensation. Study on computers and also implements on computers, isn't it remarkable?
2. Language Processing
Scientists have done something quite remarkable in the history of humanity. However, the ability to learn and understand different languages for a computer is extremely difficult and complicated. Still, they got a lot of success in this process.
3. Learning & Development
Only one thing concerns learning and development by acquiring the knowledge and information over the course of time. Just like human babies are born without any acquaintance with the passage of time, they adapt their native language, walk, and recognize different objects, including people. From the scientific point of view, all of the intelligence comes through the learning process.
4. Memory
As we all know, we use memory to store information for later use. The memory contains two types of information, i.e., long-term and short-term storage. We do not know the limit of long-term memory capacity, but we can assume it to store for years. At the same time, short-term memory allows us to holds for several seconds and minutes.
Memory in Cognitive Science is a psychological thing. Scientists tend to focus on how cognitive memory processes.
5. Perception & Action
Perception is another critical aspect in Cognitive Science to take information through the senses. Just like hearing and vision. These are two different senses that let us observe the environment.
Well, these were some common uses for Cognitive Science from a scientific point of view. Let's get to our most important section of this article.
The Relation Between Cognitive Science and UX
Most people confuse themselves with Cognitive Science and user experience. Well, to be honest, this isn't a thing to confuse with. For a better user experience (UX), you need to learn the psychology of design principles for polished design.
Continuously taking feedback from the user's the utmost important thing to do for designers.
Reducing Cognitive Overload
"In Cognitive psychology, cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory."
A good designer must know how to reduce cognitive load through laws. Following are some Cognitive Science principles that a designer must need to follow:
Limit the Choices
Increasing the number of choices means an increase in decision time. More options mean more Cognitive load. Everyone is attracted to things that are unique and different from others. Seek attention to your design. It is the only way to attract the user to your design.
Follow Simplicity
No matter what, don't leave your simplicity out of your design. People love simplicity in design as well as in behavior.
Similarity
Elements you're using in your design must be grouped together, such as icons, shapes, widgets, colors, etc.
Well, these were some techniques that can surely be help users to get attention on a particular subject. In this article, we've tried to cover the topic of Cognitive Science and its relationship with the user experience. As we mentioned above, Cognitive Science is a long debate; it's impossible to cover this topic on a single platform; hence we explained the relationship between Cognitive Science and user experience.
