Behavior Is the Whirlpool of Cognition — How to Observe the Invisible

When water flows smoothly and then suddenly swirls at some point, there must be a landform beneath it obstructing the flow — something that makes the surface and the depths move differently, revealing itself in the shape of a whirlpool. On the surface, all we see is water spinning in circles, but the cause always lies somewhere beneath the surface.

To borrow again the metaphor this series has used to compare user experience to water: this whirlpool is precisely the unusual behavior a user displays. When there is a point in the flow of experience that is not smooth, the user — without realizing it — exhibits behavior different from usual, and that behavior becomes the surest signal that a problem exists.

It is difficult to look directly beneath the water, but finding a whirlpool is easy. Likewise, it is difficult to look directly into a user’s cognition, but observing behavior is comparatively easy. This is precisely why the observation of behavior occupies such a central place in user experience design.

What Is Behavior? — How the Unconscious Reveals Itself

So what exactly do we mean by “behavior” here? Behavior refers to the movements we make unconsciously. Unlike activity — something we consciously choose and carry out — behavior is closer to a motion or response we take naturally, without being aware of it ourselves.

As we saw earlier, unconscious cognition shapes experience far more than the conscious cognition that appears on the surface, because most of the countless judgments and choices we make in daily life occur beneath the surface of awareness. This is why observing unconscious behavior carries far greater significance for understanding user experience than observing conscious activity.

The importance of observing behavior is not limited to this matter of relative weight. Problems that users consciously feel — “this button is too small,” “the loading is slow” — are relatively easy to report through surveys or interviews.

But problems that arise in the realm of the unconscious go unrecognized by users themselves, so even when asked directly, they rarely surface in answers. And because they go unanswered, they are naturally never recognized as problems, and therefore never solved. The moment a user feels, “I don’t know why, but something about this is uncomfortable,” is exactly when such an unconscious cognitive problem is at work — and observing behavior is nearly the only route by which we can capture it.

The Mall Elevator and the Meaning of a Vanished Path

Let’s look at a concrete example. Suppose a shopping mall has just opened, and oddly enough, when its visitor traffic is analyzed, one particular spot repeatedly shows people circling or pausing hesitantly.

At first, one might simply assume there’s an interesting store in that area drawing people in. But suppose a closer analysis of what this pattern means reveals something else: people looking for the elevator keep heading toward that spot, failing to find it, and turning back.

What does this repeated behavior mean? For some reason, users expected an elevator to be there, and when that expectation was not met, they experienced confusion.

We use a variety of cues — memory, location, signage, atmosphere, color — to grasp the character of a given space and time and act accordingly. The causes here, too, could be varied. Perhaps in most other malls, an elevator is typically located in that kind of position, so users, drawing on past experience, assumed this mall would follow the same pattern.

Or perhaps the atmosphere created by a water cooler and a sofa placed near the corridor gave the impression that an elevator must lie further inside. Or perhaps certain kinds of brands that are commonly found near elevators happened to have stores in that area, leading users to unconsciously assume, “since this brand is here, the elevator must be nearby too.”

What’s worth noting is that none of these judgments are the product of conscious thought. We do not simply read directional signage and move accordingly; rather, we gather a range of information — the shape of the space, the arrangement of objects, the atmosphere, memory — and piece it together through inference, reducing cognitive load in the process. Most of the time, these inferences turn out to be correct, but when the environmental cues underlying them diverge from reality, errors in behavior can result.

The Solution Is the Environment, Not a Sign

So how can this problem be solved? In a building that has already been constructed, changing the actual location of the elevator is not realistically feasible. But it is possible to reconfigure the environmental elements that shape users’ unconscious judgments, so that the spot in question no longer reads as “elevator territory.”

Depending on the cause, a range of solutions exist: changing the shape of the corridor, rearranging the objects that cause the misunderstanding, shifting the atmosphere of the space, guiding the flow of foot traffic naturally toward the real elevator, or repositioning stores.

If all these approaches fail, a large sign or standing signboard ends up going in — but this should be the very last resort. A sign does not resolve the problem at its root; it simply places an additional conscious cognitive burden on the user, which is why, from the standpoint of user experience design, it is the least desirable solution.

Heuristics, and How We Find Milk at the Convenience Store

In the mall example above, we saw users unconsciously making judgments by piecing together a variety of cues. This mode of cognitive processing through inference has a name.

This is called a heuristic. It is a cognitive device that helps us make fast decisions by drastically reducing the amount of information we process, rather than carefully reviewing everything.

In fact, in most cases, this heuristic functions as an essential cognitive shortcut. If we had to consciously process every piece of information at every moment, even the simplest everyday actions would consume an enormous amount of cognitive energy.

For example, the reason we can find milk relatively easily even in a convenience store we’re visiting for the first time is not because we were specifically told where the milk is. Rather, our feet move unconsciously, guided by a kind of mental model built from past memory and experiential judgment — the sense that milk is usually displayed in a certain spot within the refrigerated section, amid a certain kind of atmosphere.

In this way, we repeat this kind of interaction countless times, not only in physical space but also across the many user interfaces we encounter in digital environments. When the connection between this automatic behavior and the expected outcome holds up smoothly, the experience flows without friction; but the moment that connection breaks, the need for conscious review and correction arises.

Breaking the Flow Is Also Design — Intentional Friction

What’s interesting is that even this chasm between automatic flow and conscious review can, at times, become a deliberate element of user experience design.

If a piece of important information demands a user’s full attention — if it requires conscious review rather than simply being carried along by the unconscious flow of behavior — then deliberately disrupting that flow can actually heighten the user’s attention. Requiring a deliberate scroll before agreeing to important terms in a financial service, or adding a confirmation step before an irreversible action, are examples of this.

This approach, however, should be used only in rare and carefully considered cases. In most situations, user experience design aims to guide the natural flow of experience and behavior forward, not interrupt it.

So when this kind of gap occurs unintentionally, it should be treated as one of those rock formations beneath the water that impede user experience. To return to the metaphor from the beginning: it is a whirlpool occurring where it is not wanted.

Behavior Is the Only Window Into Cognition

Let’s bring the discussion so far together. In the previous post, we established that user experience design is, at its core, “design for user cognition.” But as has been said repeatedly, cognition is not something we can observe or correct directly.

Because cognition is an internal process that takes place inside the user’s mind, we have no choice but to infer it by observing the “behavior” through which users outwardly express their cognition of things. Just as we identified a problem in spatial cognition through the circling paths of people in the mall, behavior is precisely the only window through which we can access cognition.

Likewise, when we correct something through user experience design, users come to perceive that corrected thing anew, and that new perception is, again, expressed through behavior. It is also only through this behavior that a designer can infer whether a design is working as intended, whether the user experience has actually improved. In other words, the entire process of user experience design both begins and ends with behavior.

For exactly this reason, the “UX design methods” this series will cover going forward place heavy emphasis on observing behavior and analyzing it. Designing an experience, or observing behavior to infer cognition, may be understandable as a concept, but the moment you try to actually put it into practice, it’s easy to feel lost about where and how to even begin.

Which behaviors should be observed, what cognitive meaning should be read from them, and how that interpretation should be translated into design improvements — all of this requires a concrete methodology. UX design methods are precisely what offer a systematic procedure and framework of thought at this point, helping us move step by step toward the ultimate goal of user experience design: the correction of user cognition.

So far, we have looked at what UX design is, by what principle experience is formed, and what role cognition and behavior each play within it. The core of the discussion has been this: cognition lies at the root of experience, that cognition can only be observed through the window of behavior, and the results of design are likewise verified through behavior.

The next post will take up emotion — another axis, alongside cognition and behavior, that constitutes experience. Having long been addressed in traditional design, it may feel familiar, but it remains a powerful and distinct UX design parameter in its own right.