Cognition in UX/UI (user experience/user interface) design refers to how users think, perceive, remember, and make decisions when interacting with digital products, and what designers do to support those mental processes. You apply cognitive-science insights to reduce mental effort, align with user expectations, structure information clearly, and guide users toward their goals.
In this video, Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University, shows how perception, cognition, and action form a complete cycle that you must consider when designing intuitive digital interactions.
Cognition broadly refers to the mental processes which people use to acquire, process, store, and act on information: namely, perception, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, and mental models. In UX and UI design, cognition represents the way users reason about a system, interpret what they see, recall what they’ve learned, form expectations, and navigate their way around a product.
For example, imagine you’re designing an app for booking doctors’ appointments. If the interface uses vague icons, buries key options under multiple layers, or forces users to remember insurance policy details without prompts, that can pose a massive problem; it’ll create unnecessary mental effort. However, if you design around how people naturally think, by showing clear steps, using plain language, and grouping actions logically, you’ll reduce confusion and help users complete their tasks with ease. That’s effective design for cognition in action, and it’s a “must” for a successful digital product.
Cognition becomes a kind of tool, a way for you the designer to stay several steps ahead as you anticipate how users will think, decide, and act. You can’t expect them to read your mind; instead, you shape your interface to support their mental work and cut out as much of the “work” part as possible. You intervene in layout, language, interaction design, and visual hierarchy to match how the brain naturally operates. The benefits of designing for cognition and how the brain naturally works include that you:
Clear layouts, intuitive labels, and familiar patterns lower mental effort, and make users feel more confident and in control.
In this video, Vitaly Friedman, Senior UX Consultant, European Parliament, and Creative Lead, Smashing Magazine, explains how well-designed UI patterns reduce user frustration by presenting clear, predictable ways to filter and interact with content.
Designs that match users’ expectations and mental models make navigation feel seamless. People spend less time figuring things out and more time achieving their goals, while being able to forget about the design.
When your interface supports decision-making and minimizes overload, users get that “magical” boost of being more able to complete tasks faster, feel satisfied, and come back to your product (and brand).
Interfaces that reduce cognitive friction help users build muscle memory, develop trust, and use your product more effectively over time.
Cognitive-friendly design doesn’t just help the average user but helps users with cognitive disabilities, neurodivergence, or age-related challenges, too. Everyone gets to benefit from simpler, clearer interfaces.
Find powerful design insights as this video explains how accessible design ensures that digital products remain clear and usable for people with disabilities and for your future self.
As idiosyncratically unique as individual human beings may be, the way people process information, remember tasks, and make decisions follows well-documented cognitive patterns, and the most important principles to apply in UX/UI design include these ones:
People can only hold a small number of items in working memory, famously estimated at 7 (plus or minus 2). So, when a UI forces users to juggle too many steps, with unclear language or complex screens, it overwhelms that capacity and makes tasks harder to complete.
That’s why you break tasks into manageable steps, minimize unnecessary options, use plain language, reduce clutter, and apply progressive disclosure. For example, a checkout flow that shows one step at a time is easier to follow than showing all steps at once.
In this video, William Hudson: User Experience Strategist and Founder of Syntagm Ltd., explains how progressive disclosure helps you reveal only what users need so you reduce clutter and cognitive load.
Users don’t pay equal attention to every element on a screen; they scan, skim, and focus on standout cues instead. Visual hierarchy, color contrast, typography, and spatial layout all help direct attention.
This is why when you apply Gestalt psychology and its principles like proximity and similarity well, you’ll help users perceive structure and relationships. Use size, spacing, and placement to highlight primary actions. Group related content visually and avoid unnecessary animations or visual noise that steals focus.
In this video, Mia Cinelli: Associate Professor of Art Studio and Digital Design at The University of Kentucky, explains how Gestalt principles help users instantly perceive structure by highlighting figure/ground, grouping, and visual hierarchy.
People find it easier to recognize something they’ve seen before than to recall it from memory. That’s because recognition uses less cognitive effort and taps into familiar patterns. Forcing users to remember steps or commands leads to errors and delays; for no small reason, then, recognition vs recall is an essential point to check in a heuristic evaluation of a user interface to assess how well it performs.
That’s why you’ll want to use familiar icons, standard navigation patterns, and consistent layout. Be sure to label buttons clearly and provide visible cues to remind users what to do next. Don’t make users remember context from earlier steps.
In this video, William Hudson explains how heuristic evaluation uses established usability principles to judge whether an interface supports recognition over recall and other key cognitive behaviors.
Users bring existing mental models, which are internal representations of how things should work, based on past experiences. If your design matches those models, it’ll feel intuitive to users; however, if it clashes, users will feel disoriented or make mistakes.
Stick to familiar UI conventions wherever possible and as “unoriginal” as it may seem. For example, a shopping cart icon should lead to checkout, not account settings. And reinforce expected behaviors through layout, labeling, and feedback to help users.
Cognitive psychology shows that too many choices slow users down (Hick’s Law), and the way you frame choices affects decisions (framing and anchoring effects). The more effort a choice requires, the more likely users are to defer or abandon it.
That’s why it’s vital to limit visible options to the most relevant at each moment and reveal more choices only when they’re actually needed. It’s why you’ll want to provide smart defaults and clearly mark recommended paths, too, as it will reduce decision fatigue. Remember, users will be accessing your design in a variety of ways and contexts, so don’t envision them sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room with all the time in the world to do things in.
In this video, Alan Dix shows you how real-world physical, social, and environmental contexts shape users’ decisions far beyond what appears on a screen.
Human decision-making is prone to biases (systematic thinking shortcuts) by nature that influence behavior and impact outcomes. Some example forms of bias are:
Anchoring: Relying heavily on the first piece of info seen.
Confirmation bias: Favoring information that aligns with beliefs.
Availability bias: Relying on recent or vivid examples.
Bias may be inevitable and “human,” but you can safeguard users when you present options in a meaningful order, reinforce correct expectations during onboarding, and use social proof (such as “Most popular plan”) to guide decision-making ethically.
In this video, Alan Dix explains how cognitive biases like anchoring shape people’s judgments and how reframing information can help reduce the influence of bias.
Affordances are clues about what actions are possible for users to take. Feedback tells users their action was received and what happened as a result. Without clear affordances or timely feedback, users feel uncertain and lose trust in the digital product (and maybe, by association, in the brand too).
Make buttons look clickable, use animation or color change to show state change, and confirm user actions with brief messages (such as “Payment received”).
Explore how affordances work in design, in this video, which explains how affordances and anti-affordances shape what users believe they can and cannot do in an interface.
Try this step-by-step to help meet user needs and connect them with your brand:
Gather research on how users think about their problems, what mental models they bring, and their familiarity level with the domain and tasks. From that, you build personas (research-based, synthetic representations of real users), user flows, and cognitive maps, to show how the user understands a task, their decision points, and their knowledge gaps.
In this video, William Hudson explains how personas, an essential UX design tool, keep your focus on real users rather than assumptions or organizational roles.
Structure your interface so that you:
Present the most relevant information first and guide the user from one step to the next with clarity.
Organize information logically through headings, sub-heads, card layout, steps, and breadcrumbs, all to reduce orientation load.
Keep it simple: before adding a new feature, ask whether it increases cognitive load. If so, weigh whether it’s essential.
Be predictable: Stick to conventions wherever possible. When you do introduce something new, help the user understand it with clear cues.
In this video, William Hudson explains how information architecture structures content so users can find what they need quickly and move through an interface with clarity.
Apply patterns such as these to support users in the moment:
Progressive disclosure: only show details when needed (reduces overload).
Progress indicators: help users know where they are.
Minimal options per screen: avoid overwhelming; not everything is equally important, so make primary actions the most prominent and minimize distractions.
Familiar icons and consistent layout: help users recognize rather than recall. Label everything, use familiar icons, and show users where they are and what they can do next. Use consistency, build habits, and support shortcuts once users are familiar with things, but always keep fallback for new users.
Clear affordances and signifiers: make clickable elements recognizable.
Find important actionable points in this video, which explains how clear signifiers help users recognize where they can interact, reducing confusion and cognitive effort.
Users will inevitably make mistakes, a matter of when, not if, so your design should anticipate this and reduce cognitive load of recovery. Show clear error messages, highlight where the mistake is, and offer corrective suggestions. Provide “Undo” wherever possible; good feedback falls into line with how people learn and correct mental models.
Cognition isn’t uniform across all users; people with diverse abilities, neurodivergence, or age-related changes may need more cognitive space, so accommodate everyone. Use clear language, predictable actions, consistent layout, sufficient contrast and negative space (white space) to support cognitive accessibility.
When you’re building prototypes, focus on usability testing and not just surface aesthetics. Test with real users; observe where they hesitate, ask questions, back-track, or seem confused; all cognitive friction points. For example, if a user can’t locate “checkout,” they probably misinterpreted the label or layout. Test cognitively; on usability tests, ask not just “Can they complete the task?” but “Did they understand what to do? Did they pause? Did they guess incorrectly?”
In this video, Alan Dix explains how iterative prototyping with real users helps you uncover usability issues and cognitive friction before finalizing a design.
Overall, real-world human nature, human behavior, and users’ in-the-moment needs mean you’ll want to design for how people think, not just what they see. It’s about human limits and strengths: limited working memory, finite attention, strong reliance on past experience, natural decision-making shortcuts, and biases. You as a designer become a facilitator of mental flow: you clear distractions, align with expectations, show clear affordances, guide decisions, organize information, and provide feedback in the best way possible, every time and in every design.
That’s how you build interfaces that feel intuitive, satisfying, and efficient and reduce the friction that users experience when UIs force them to think too hard. Seamless experiences aren’t about making users think; they’re where you foster trust, confidence, and engagement with lower errors, higher conversions, greater retention, and more delighted users. So, in your next project, pause and ask: “What mental work am I asking the user to do? How can I make that easier? What expectations are they bringing?” If you design with the brain in mind, you help users move toward their goal and reduce the work they feel they must do against the interface. That’s how you craft experiences that do better than work but are ones that achieve the magic of where users don’t feel like they’re toiling at all, and that’s part of how you’ll manage to make a difference in their lives.
For an in-depth immersion in how to design successfully for the brain, take our course on Perception and Memory in HCI and UX.
Enjoy our Master Class How to Design with the Mind in Mind with Jeff Johnson, Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, University of San Francisco.
Explore how to tailor designs that meet your users on their level, in our article Cognitive Maps in UX.
Discover important insights into how to design with vital factors about users in mind, in our article Emotion and Design.
Cognitive psychology helps UX (user experience) designers and UI (user interface) designers understand how users think, learn, and make decisions. When you study how people perceive, remember, and process information, you can create interfaces that match natural human behavior. For example, recognition is easier than recall; users naturally prefer clickable choices over typing.
Concepts like cognitive load, attention span, and mental models directly influence usability. Designers who ignore these principles risk confusing users and lowering engagement. For example, Apple and Google both use cognitive principles to shape intuitive experiences that resonate with users. Knowing what frustrates or confuses users leads to smoother workflows and higher satisfaction, and cognitive psychology gives you a toolkit to predict user behavior and reduce friction. Get your interfaces aligned with how the brain works and they’ll become more effective and enjoyable to use.
Explore how to leverage the power of mental models to fast-track your design decisions towards more successful outcomes.
The main cognitive processes that shape user behavior are attention, perception, memory, learning, and decision-making. Attention filters what users focus on; if something doesn’t stand out, it might as well not exist. Perception affects how users interpret layout, color, and structure. Memory influences how users recognize icons, navigate menus, and remember steps.
Learning affects how quickly users adapt to an interface, especially when it matches familiar patterns. Decision-making processes determine how users evaluate choices and take action. When you understand these processes, you can craft experiences that feel effortless and intuitive. Clear calls-to-action, consistent visual hierarchy, and predictable interactions all stem from these cognitive principles.
Pick up a treasure trove of insights you can improve your design solutions with, in our article Learn the Role of Perception and Memory in HCI and UX.
To reduce cognitive load, simplify visual elements and minimize unnecessary decisions. Limit the number of choices users must make, and group related items together. Use familiar icons, patterns, and language to reduce the need for learning.
Also, break complex tasks into smaller steps using progressive disclosure. Consistent layout and navigation help users form mental shortcuts. Don’t include distractions like auto-play videos or flashing animations. Provide clear labels, error prevention cues, and helpful defaults. For example, think about how Google’s search interface uses a minimal design with one clear action (type and search) reducing cognitive friction. Above all, aim to align design with how people naturally think and process information; you’ll help users stay focused and confident, even when tasks are complex or unfamiliar.
Consider how a greater grasp of cognitive science can help you minimize users’ cognitive load in designs they can take to more naturally.
To capture attention, use contrast, motion, whitespace, and hierarchy. Headlines, buttons, or visuals should visually stand out and appear where users naturally look first, such as in the top-left or center of a screen. To hold attention, reduce clutter and avoid competing elements. Break content into scannable chunks using headings, bullets, and icons. Use interactive elements sparingly but strategically.
Apply the von Restorff effect: unique elements are more memorable and noticeable. Notification badges or animations can draw attention, but overuse of them leads to user fatigue. Highlight key benefits or next steps within the first few seconds, in visually engaging interfaces and micro-interactions that guide focus while motivating users to continue. Remember, amid the factors of the user experience, simplicity and relevance keep users engaged.
Find essential insights about how to cater to users best in our article The 7 Factors that Influence User Experience.
Key information stands out when you apply visual hierarchy, contrast, and proximity. Use size and bold fonts for headlines and CTAs. High color contrast, like white text on a dark button, improves readability and draws the eye. Place important content near the top or center where users naturally look first. Icons paired with text enhance comprehension.
Whitespace, or negative space, creates separation and directs focus. Color cues, like red for errors or green for success, reinforce meaning. Motion can highlight changes but should stay subtle to avoid distraction. Overall, effective visual cues help users quickly find what matters, reducing their frustration and decision time.
Discover how to apply visual cues to help users enjoy your digital product while doing what they want to do with it.
Avoid overwhelming users by prioritizing clarity and reducing clutter. Present only essential information up front and hide secondary details using collapsible sections or progressive disclosure. Break content into smaller chunks with clear headings and whitespace. Use visual hierarchy, with larger, bolder elements for key points and smaller fonts for supportive text.
Limit the number of calls-to-action per screen. Use bullets, icons, or visuals to summarize complex ideas. For instance, onboarding screens often use short messages paired with simple illustrations. This keeps users focused and prevents information fatigue. Keep navigation simple, consistent, and clearly labeled. A clean, organized interface helps users find what they need without any stress, which boosts satisfaction and trust.
Visit our article Visual Hierarchy: Organizing content to follow natural eye movement patterns for helpful tips on how to guide users comfortably around your design solution.
Design aligns with users’ mental models by reflecting how they expect systems to behave. So, study user behavior, conduct interviews, and analyze competitor interfaces to learn these expectations. Use familiar terminology, icons, and interaction patterns, like a trash can icon for deleting or a shopping cart for checkout.
Organize content logically, such as grouping account settings under one menu. Consistency reinforces users’ understanding across screens. For example, e-commerce sites often place filters on the left and product listings on the right, and match user expectations. When design matches the user’s mental model, navigation feels natural and intuitive. Misalignment creates confusion, forcing users to pause, rethink, or abandon the task altogether, perhaps with sour memories of your design and maybe even the brand, too.
Discover How to Use Mental Models in UX Design to help your app or website conform to users’ mental models.
Guide users to better choices by applying choice architecture principles. Limit options to reduce decision fatigue, often called the “paradox of choice.” Highlight recommended actions with visual emphasis like size, color, or placement. Use progressive disclosure to delay less important decisions. Frame options with clear benefits and avoid jargon. Default selections often influence users, so set defaults that align with their best interests.
Provide immediate feedback after choices, like confirmation or error messages, as it will build trust. Cognitive biases like anchoring or social proof also help, such as labeling one plan as “most popular,” and note that ethical design helps users make decisions with confidence.
Explore how to guide users in design, with our article The Top 4 Things You Can Learn from IxDF’s New Visual Design Course.
To support novices without annoying experts, design adaptive experiences. Offer contextual help, tooltips, or guided tours that users can skip or dismiss. Use progressive disclosure: show basic options first, with advanced settings hidden behind “More” links.
Allow customization so experienced users can streamline their workflow. Maintain consistent navigation and clear labels for everyone. Keyboard shortcuts, collapsible panels, and preference settings all help advanced users move faster. Tailor support based on behavior; trigger tips only when users hesitate or make errors. Balance simplicity with power by designing layered experiences.
Understand user needs to get a greater grasp of how to design to accommodate them.
To test for cognitive usability, observe how users interact with your design in real tasks. Use methods like think-aloud testing to hear their reasoning. Track task completion times, error rates, and hesitation points to find where confusion occurs. Conduct cognitive walkthroughs; step through tasks from a user’s point of view and note friction.
Also, use eye-tracking or heatmaps to analyze attention patterns. Ask users to explain what they expect before clicking. Check for information overload or unclear navigation. Tools like usability tests, A/B testing, and analytics reveal patterns. For example, if users consistently miss a CTA, then it likely lacks visual priority. Validate assumptions early and refine based on how people actually process your design.
Discover how to get A/B testing working for you so you can find a winning design more easily.
Alnanih, R. (2019). Cognitive process-based design implications for mobile user interfaces. International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering Research, 7(11), 523529.
This journal article focuses on how cognition (attention, memory, perception, learning, planning, decision‐making) must inform mobile UI design, especially for aging user populations whose cognitive & perceptual capacities differ. The author argues that treating all users uniformly is inadequate; UI layout and interaction need to respect cognitive strengths and limitations (e.g., reducing multitasking demands, simplifying layout).
Chande, S. V., & Tiwari, B. M. (2025). The Impact of UI Design Elements on Cognitive Performance in Elderly Mobile Application Users. Journal of Emerging Technology & Research (JETNR).
Focusing on older adults (ages 65–85), this empirical study examines how specific UI design elements, typography, color contrast, navigation patterns, feedback mechanisms, impact cognitive load, task completion, error rates and overall performance when using mobile applications. The authors report that optimized interfaces led to a 42% reduction in perceived cognitive load (using NASATLX) and a 37% increase in task completion rates for elderly users. Given cognitive decline associated with aging, this paper underscores how a design that respects cognitive limitations can significantly improve UX. It is particularly relevant for your interest in cognition because it links UI design features to measurable cognitive performance.
Johnson, J. (2014). Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Guidelines (2nd ed.). Elsevier‑Morgan Kaufmann.
This book provides a clear, practitioner‑friendly guide to the cognitive psychology underpinning UI/UX guidelines. Johnson explains how human perception, attention, memory, decision‑making, and motor coordination each place constraints on interface design, and why common rules (e.g., about layout, color, typography, feedback) have a basis in mental processes. Because many designers know “the rule” but not why it works, this book helps bridge theory and practice. It’s influential because it arms designers with rationale rather than just heuristics, enabling better justification of design decisions and adaptation when trade‑offs are needed.
Weinschenk, S. M. (2020). 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (2nd ed.). New Riders.
In this book, behavioral psychologist Susan Weinschenk distils hundreds of research findings into accessible (“100 things”) insights relevant for design. She covers how people see, read, remember, decide, feel, make errors, and are motivated, all central to cognition in UX/UI. The strength is in its breadth and readability: it offers quick, evidence‑based take‑aways that designers can apply directly. The book is influential in UX because it converts cognitive science into design implications in a highly usable format, making it a go‑to for applying human‑behavior‑based thinking in interface and product design.
Norman, D. A. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition. Basic Books.
Although broader than pure cognition, this classic by Don Norman remains foundational because it emphasizes human mental models, affordances, signifiers, feedback loops, and error‑tolerance, all core cognitive‑psychology concepts applied to everyday interfaces (physical and digital). It highlights how design should align with how people think and how they expect things to behave. For UX/UI designers concerned with cognition, it provides the conceptual bedrock: understanding users’ mental processes and designing systems that match or support them rather than fighting them. Its continuing influence is seen across design education and practice.
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