Our endless search for patterns
How humans have always made decisions and why it matters for UX
Before modern conveniences like the internet and encyclopedias, our hunter-gatherer ancestors could only survive on what they learned through experience. As we were exposed to new things and shared resources with other humans, we got better at staying alive. Still, there was no way to document what we had learned, and our knowledge could only travel as far as our voices.
And so our brains relied on something else: analogies. Inviting us to use characteristics from what we knew, analogies helped us recognize patterns and make conceptual leaps. If it slithered like a snake, it was probably dangerous. If its colors were bright, it could be poisonous.
Today, survival is (in some ways) less precarious. While we’ve shifted from spending most of our time in natural environments to spending it in digital spaces, patterns are still at the core of our ability to function in the present and build for the future. Maybe we don’t know that most four-petaled flowers are edible, but we do know that three horizontally-stacked lines at the top corner of an app can serve as a junk drawer.
This is your brain on decision-making
To understand why analogies and patterns work, we need to understand how humans make decisions.
In The Psychology of Perception, M.D. Vernon speaks about how humans learn to find symbolic meaning in the abstract. “We have seen that the child acquires the ability quite early in life to recognize and identify from pictures objects which he is familiar with, because he frequently encounters such pictures.”
Learning happens through exposure and repetition. Whether it be two-dimensional pictures or digital interactions on an iPad, humans adapt to different environments through pattern recognition. Today, toddlers learn how to interact with screens around the same time they learn how to walk. Meanwhile, many non-digital natives only learned how to swipe, scroll, and search after they were legally allowed to drink. Regardless of age or maturity, our brains are continuously searching for patterns to help us make decisions more quickly and successfully navigate our environments.
While we have the cognitive ability to understand things that are less familiar, it takes more effort. Here’s where the power of analogies comes in — they help us conserve mental energy by using the old to understand the new. In Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell our Greatest Ideas, John Pollack writes that “comparisons are the only practical way to sort a flood of incoming data, place it within the context of our experience, and make decisions accordingly”. The same is true when we’re learning something new. We seek anchors of familiarity to help us draw parallels between the known and the unknown. For example, a UXer learning about systems thinking might draw parallels between design systems and natural ecosystems — both types of systems are grounded in patterns, interconnected relationships between objects within the system, and the importance of keeping a healthy equilibrium.
How pattern recognition leads to discovery and innovation
Beyond helping us make decisions and guide learning, patterns applied in different environments can also lead to innovation. In his dissection of analogies and what makes them tick, Pollack states that the most powerful analogies achieve five things:
1. Use the familiar to explain something less familiar
2. Highlight similarities and obscure differences
3. Identify useful abstractions
4. Tell a coherent story
5. Resonate emotionally
By looking at how thinking in analogies helps us highlight similarities, obscure differences, and identify useful abstractions, we can understand why they’ve been pivotal to discovery and innovation.
Take the loop-and-hook-fastener, more commonly known as Velcro. Its invention is indebted to a natural nuisance: burs. A prime example of biomimicry — finding patterns in nature and using them as inspiration for new inventions — the burs’ ability to sink its hooks into our clothing and remain there until we yank it away is what inspired George de Mestrall in the 1940s while he was hiking through the Western Alps. The secure yet impermanent hold of the bur was similar to the secure hold that only snaps and buttons could offer. The fact that this was a plant was an unimportant difference that could be obscured. The bur’s hooks provided the useful abstraction that two different types of material could be securely attached without the use of needle and thread.
This discovery wasn’t instantaneous, of course. De Mestral spent eight years exploring how the anatomy of the bur could be translated into something useful. As Pollock noted, “such aha moments are almost always the product of gradual, iterative explorations or improvements that have finally reached a tipping point of utility, efficacy, or impact.” This sounds a whole lot like the double-diamond process of convergence and divergence that UXers are so fond of.
While pattern recognition kept humans alive, pattern application (like biomimicry) helped humans innovate. A similar concept exists in UX — skeuomorphism. Defined by the Interaction Design Organization as “interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them”, skeuomorphism is just biomimicry in a different environment.
We can see clear examples of skeuomorphism in online shopping. When online shopping was introduced in the mid-90s, it was scoffed at. How could it be safe to hand over precious details like your home address and your credit card information to a computer? This all changed, of course. But it took time, trust, and the creation of parallel experiences through patterns. In-store shopping experiences and patterns were studied and translated to suit digital environments. Collections, product categories, and metadata helped buyers browse an online catalog, mimicking the experience of browsing through clothing racks. Items could be added into a virtual shopping cart just as they could be piled into a cart on wheels. The checkout experience acted as a virtual cash register where shoppers could review their purchases and pay with the method of their choosing.
These similarities helped ease people into the world of online shopping by giving them something familiar to hold on to. And while it took some time for online shopping to really catch on, Statista reports that 75% of people now make an online purchase at least once a month.
What UX can learn from how humans make decisions
Digital environments are unruly and without boundaries — not that this is any different than the natural environments of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The difference is that there now exists a group of people dedicated to helping people make decisions by taming these digital environments — UXers.
So how do UXers tame environments? Mostly through familiarity. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for innovation.
2020 brought with it a drastic shift in how we spend our time. We already gave much of it to digital experiences. With remote working and weekend scrolling, we’re online more than ever before. If we look to trends like scroll-triggered navigation and loading animations, we can see a new hybrid of visual language developing. To fill a void once occupied by face-to-face interactions, designers and developers are humanizing navigation and making it more immersive. But without the foundational knowledge of how to navigate a website, these innovations in interactions would be completely unusable.
UX is a push-and-pull of predictability and innovation. With predictable patterns, we create familiar experiences that require as little effort as possible. But we also innovate. We study these patterns to understand what makes them work, exploring ways to make a new hybrid that’s more intuitive than the last.
When it’s time to introduce these new hybrids, we can do so gently by surrounding them with widely known and understood patterns. By doing so, we can allow users to find their footing on a strong foundation of cause-and-effect narratives before introducing something that requires a little more brainpower.
Because while humans seek to conserve energy, they also seek to make sense of their world. The human brain wants to connect the dots and find the analogy that helps them find meaning. It’s a delicate balance.
So go forth and innovate. Find new ways to use existing patterns. Design fresh experiences that might go as far as delighting users (or experiences that are absolutely boring). But never lose sight of what got humans this far: a drive to make the world as painless as possible.
In what ways have patterns helped you make sense of your environment? Let us know in the comments.
