What Navigation Apps Reveal About Human Cognition
The truth is, I have a terrible sense of direction. I get turned around, mixed up, and lost more than most people. Thankfully, the map on my cell phone saves me every time. It takes away a huge, stressful problem for me.
Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze provide more than just directions. They offer solutions to cognitive problems. Designers have long drawn upon Cognitive Psychology to understand how people process information. As an exercise, here is how navigation apps handle a cognitive problem and a design solution. This is useful to anyone designing products, apps, or features.
Our short-term memory lasts only fifteen to thirty seconds, and we only remember seven (plus or minus two) objects in this memory. To store a memory in long-term memory requires even more effort. Memories become long-term through repetition and rehearsal. We are high functioning information processing machines, yet our short-term memory is finite.
Design Solution: Turn-by-turn navigators announce directions twice: shortly before you act, and again as you should act. The first announcement primes us for what is about to happen, while the second announcement triggers the action. Drivers do not have to remember multiple steps. Instead, they can rely on only their short-term memory. There is some new research suggesting that people who rely on GPS, versus of older methods of navigation, recall less about their routes, such as street names. This makes sense, given that navigation apps allow us to avoid engaging our long-term memory.
To make sense of our world, our brain automatically constructs a cognitive map. This is a mental model of where we are and where everything else is. A cognitive map allows us to decipher what our senses are telling us, to know where we are, and what we can do. Without a cognitive map, it is difficult, stressful, and disorienting to navigate an environment.
Design Solution: Provide information that helps drivers know where they are, where they will soon be, and where they are going. Here are three examples of how the navigator app helps build a cognitive map.
In the first screen, we see something like a 3D version of our world augmented with labels. In the second screen, we see the route from start to finish as a single line on a two-dimensional map. These visual tools help us understand the spatial relationship between us and the world. The Picture Superiority Effect suggests these visual directions may be easier to remember than text directions. In the last screen, we see a list of directions plus estimated distances. Think about how this interface would look without the addition of distance.
If human beings required no spatial awareness, the first screen above would be adequate. It is a concise list of turns that would correctly navigate anyone to their destination. But the list does not include anything about distances, which are the spatial relationships between turns. The addition of distance labels on the right helps us to construct a mental model of our journey.
The brain can only process one task at a time. When we multitask, we rapidly switch between cognitive tasks. This divided attention is cognitively expensive, drains mental energy, and raises the risk of mistakes.
Design Solution: Provide ways for drivers to passively absorb information, rather than actively seeking it out. Voice turn-by-turn directions let drivers relax their eyes onto the road. The Apple Watch sends haptic alerts letting drivers when new turns are coming up. These are forms of communicate that rely on our senses, which are always on and feeding into our brains.
Active attention requires us to focus at the expense of other cognitive tasks (like driving), so it should be used minimally. Even a text alert on your screen — something as short as this! — can take your eyes off the road for a few seconds as you adjust visually and cognitively.
Both iOS and Android unveiled do not disturb modes for drivers in an attempt to reduce distracted driving. It is too early to tell if these features are having a positive impact on reducing distracted driving.
Studies show that drivers are significantly impaired while using their cell phones. This has lead to a number of states to pass hands-free laws, levying steep fines and penalties on drivers caught driving while distracted. At its heart, this is a cognitive problem. It is simply beyond the bounds of cognitive abilities to drive at our full abilities when distracted by a cell phone.
Design Solution: Craft human-computer interactions like people are giving you divided attention. Apple’s redesign of Maps for iOS 10 threw out the book, metaphorically speaking. Until this app, Apple put tappable controls and features near the top of the screen. With this app, Apple ditched all that for a slidable control at the bottom of the screen. Even on Apple’s largest iPhone XR, you can still access these controls using just one hand.
This bottom-up navigation also comes with an emphasis on big, simple labels. Generously portioned, wide buttons make unmissable tap targets. All of these design decisions suggest Apple knows this app is for people using one hand and divided attention, such as automobile drivers.
For a deep examination of Apple’s move towards bottom-up navigation, you must read All Thumbs, Why Reach Navigation Should Replace the Navbar in iOS Design by Brad Ellis.
Although we may not be aware of it, digital assistants — such as GPS navigators — solve our real cognitive problems. Breaking down features into the cognitive problem and design solution helps us to understand why features succeed. Cognitive principles help explain why good design succeeds.
Ronan Rooney is a UI/UX designer living outside of Portland, Oregon. Despite his poor sense of direction, he managed to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.
What Navigation Apps Reveal About Human Cognition
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