Design and Cognitive Ease: What Max Martin and Starbucks have in common

First, let’s explore an example to get a sense of what is cognitive ease. Consider the two sentences below, which statement is true?

      Brad Pitt was born in 1962.

      Benjamin Bernanke was born in 1954.

Experiments similar to this have shown that the first statement is more likely to be believed to be true. Why? Brad Pitt, the personality, is on average more familiar to people than Benjamin Bernanke, his name is easier to pronounce, and the sentence is more legible (it’s bolded). Because of these features, when you read the first sentence you feel a greater sense of ‘cognitive ease’ compared to when you read the second. This example is adapted from the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Khaneman. And, in fact, both statements are false.

Cognitive ease is a state of mind that is experienced when things are going well, there are no threats, and nothing requires additional attention. On the flipside, cognitive strain is experienced when you have to call upon additional mental resources for unmet demands (think of walking into an unfamiliar grocery store for the first time, where’s the pasta?). You’re constantly switching between cognitive ease and strain throughout the course of the day as you switch from routine to novel experiences. The brain actively seeks routine to preserve it’s mental resources and experiences positive affect when familiar experiences are found.

####Who is Max Martin and what does he have to do with this?

Max Martin is arguably the most influential music producer of modern day. He’s written and co-written 21 number-one hits for artists like Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, N’Sync, The Backstreet Boys and many others. Martin is from Sweden, has ‘disciples’ who are just as influential as he is, he’s basically a musical god.

In music too, our brains are designed to seek out patterns and have a preference for familiarity. “We work melody first. That’s Max Martin’s school. We’ll spend days, sometimes weeks, challenging the melody. The goal is to make it sound like anyone can do this, but it’s actually very difficult. [Martin taught me that] Instead of making tracks for five thousand people, why not make tracks for a million?” says Savan Kotecha, one of Martin’s apprentices.

Funny enough, Max Martin is actually not his real name, it’s Martin Karl Sandberg. Unsurprisingly, I suspect he changed his name to make himself appear more familiar and likeable - ‘Max Martin’ comes off the tongue nicely, and I swear I knew a Max Martin in high school.

####So what do Max Martin and Starbucks have in common?

There are scholarly articles written about Starbucks and their brand/product experience, so I won’t delve into it here. Martin and Starbucks both create positive user experiences by consistently delivering familiar experiences. Martin seeks out melodies that are simple, easily understood, and breed familiarity with existing popular music. Starbucks has over 11,000 locations in the US, all of which feature the same interior design patterns and deliver the same coffee cup time and time again.

####How does this apply to design?

Our brains are lazy, they follow the path of least resistance and actually experience stress when called upon to do something not intuitive - i.e. double digit multiplication, doing something new for the first time, or simply when called upon to react in an unfamiliar situation. As a designer, it is your goal to design a product that is easy and intuitive to use. One way to inform your design is to understand aspects to your product or UI or service that your user is likely to already be familiar with and use those in your design. This is most applicable when tying to design the layout of controls or displays. The relationship between the controls, and what they’re supposed to do, is called their mappings. Imagine how painful it would be to type on a keyboard with different key locations. For a more detailed dive into this aspect of design, see The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.