How to tackle Cognitive friction while designing mobile app ?

Users are frustrated when things don’t function the way they expect them to. Example: While creating user interfaces , we try to relate it the “real world” — like floppy disk signify “ save “ in most apps.
Users take cues in the digital world from the ones they have already developed in their day to day life. Cognitive friction happens when cues mismatch their expectation.

Definition of Cognitive friction

In the book The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper defined the Cognitive friction as the situation where a user is confronted with an interface that appears to be intuitive but delivers unexpected results.

Example:- When you opened an Gmail app and it said “Sign up “ , but when you clicked on it , it redirected you to the Google News website.

Cognitive friction is a key aspect to be kept in mind while designing mobile interfaces because it jeopardize user experiences & consequently results in user churn & loss of revenue in short & long term.

How to address the cognitive friction ?

UX design team can collaborate with the UI & interaction design team to avoid cognitive friction Pre development & during development iteration.

Pre Development

There are 3 ways to address the design that can point out cognitive friction & help to avoid that as mentioned below :-

During Development Iteration

Below mentioned ways can help to identify cognitive friction & subsequently arrest it .

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