Familiarity drives user preference
I met my friend Anuj at TeaBrew cafe. Dim light, soft music, and the drizzle outside rendered a perfect set up for a long chat on life, career, daily hustles, family, weekend plans, etc.
As we swamped in a plethora of stories from everyday life, one story stood out to me as a designer. It exemplified the human tendency to prefer something because we have seen/heard/used it often.
Anuj has 2 bank accounts. Let’s call it Bank X and Bank Y.
He is a regular user of Bank X and an occasional one of Bank Y.
2 days ago, he tried to log in to Bank Y account. Entered the wrong password thrice and ended up with a locked account for 24 hours.
He reached out to Bank for assistance. The support team did the needful to resolve the issue. Plus, informed him about an added security layer i.e a secondary password. To access some features, he will be again asked to enter both passwords.
After narrating this story, he sipped his Kashmiri Kahwa tea and opined
“Dude, the Bank Y sees this as security but it made me feel how insecure their system is. I use Bank X often. I need to enter one password one time only. Thereafter, everything is accessible. I never had an issue. Asking to re-enter is too much. Something seems to be wrong with their system. What do you think?”
As his words traveled through my eardrums, it invoked the designer’s instincts. A question popped up in mind “Why he felt that way”. Brain fired neurons carrying the mere exposure effect, familiarity principle, and mental model.
To probe further, I replied “Interesting perspective Anuj. I have a follow-up question. Let’s say you were a regular user of Bank Y with satisfactory login experiences. You open a new account in Bank X. Unlike Bank Y, the password at Bank X is a one-time activity. After, login everything is accessible. How would you feel?”
After a few seconds of silence and moving eye left, right, and downward, he answered. “I will find Bank X less secure”.
Further follow-up helped me decode his rationale. Anuj opined that knowing one password will make a hacker life easy. With one password they will be 100% successful in causing the intended damage. Multiple security measures won’t reduce the risk to zero but if anything goes wrong the loss/pain will be low in comparison.
That said, here, I want to clarify, I’m not calling Bank Y security superior. I don’t have an account in the same bank as him. I’ve never seen their interface. Plus, neither I’m a security expert nor my friend. At this point, it would be unfair to judge from UX or security standpoint.
Here, my key takeaway was the correlation between familiarity and preference.
As humans, we tend to carry forward experiences of the past wherever we go next. A satisfactory experience sows a seed of preference. The higher the repetition of the satisfactory experience stronger will be the preference. In short, repetition breeds familiarity and repeated satisfactory experience breeds preference.
Psychology terms this phenomenon as the Mere Exposure Effect. It is also known as the familiarity principle because it’s built on the establishment of familiarity.
As a designer, I should be mindful of patterns that enjoy familiarity among the userbase. My 1st preference should be to leverage their familiarity. Because using a known solution will shorten or eliminate the user’s learning curve. The usage speed will be high. The higher the fitment with the user mental model, the faster will be the task completion rate. As they think less, the user will complete the journey with less cognitive load.
That said, but this shouldn’t stop me from coming up with new patterns or modify the existing ones. And if I do any, its value should be clear to the user. To ensure, what’s delivered is useful, usable, and valuable, the right approach would be to test with users. The primary focus of this test should be to observe what mental model the new or modified design is leading them to.
Bottom line
In max cases, whatever problem we are trying to solve, we are neither the first one nor the last one to solve it. The probability of users being familiar with some solutions will always be there. Stronger will be the preference for a solution to follow a pattern if they have seen/heard/used it often + experience was satisfactory or beyond.
So when a problem statement arrives at our desk, ask one question “how common this problem is?”. If common, gather insights via competitor analysis. This analysis will tell HOW but not the WHY or frictions associated with the current pattern. If time permits conduct user or design research. In case, similar patterns are seen across competitor apps, reuse the conceptual model. If you want to try something different, move ahead in a measured manner. By measured, I mean test with users as you iterate.
As a designer, we must strive to find a solution at the intersection of user goal and business goal. Leveraging user familiarity enables them to achieve a goal with ease. Plus, helps boost the conversion metrics.
