A design review of TripMasters, a travel booking site, utilizing the knowledge of metacognition and cognitive styles.
Introduction
Metacognition, also known as ‘thinking about thinking’, is key to the way that we process information and gives us the ability to self-reflect on our thinking process and efficiently approach our goals. Efficiency is critical because it allows us to interact with the world without exerting an excess amount of our attentional resources. Metacognitive skills, such as cognitive styles, operate within and run alongside metacognition, resulting in a higher cognitive load which can have a detrimental effect on human preformance. Since every product of reasonable complexity needs to be learned, it is vital that we support the cognitive styles of our users and build products that support and enhance our users’ natural metacognitive abilities. By doing so, we will create products that will be easier to learn, improve human performance, and preserve those precious resources. This paper focuses on metacognitive and cognitive styles and their effect on human performance and user experience. This knowledge is then applied to a case study where the design’s strengths and shortcomings are reviewed.
Metacognition: “Thinking About Thinking”
According to Flavell (1979) metacognition can be organized into three categories: metacognitive knowledge, experiences and regulation. A vital part of metacognition is that it allows individuals to self-regulate their own thinking and learning by assessing their current knowledge and abilities so that they can strategize efficiently towards their set goal (Jacobs & Paris, 1987). Before going into any situation, a goal is set, although it may not be clearly defined. After a goal is set, our regulatory skills assist in the completion of that goal. There are three significant self-regulatory skills under metacognitive regulation: planning, monitoring, and evaluation (Moshman & Schraw, 1995). Planning is the process in which individuals, based on their resources and an understanding of their abilities, select a strategy to complete their set goal (Moshman & Schraw, 1995). Choosing an appropriate strategy allows an individual to accomplish a goal without exerting excess energy. Monitoring is an individual’s ability to accurately discern their knowledge and capabilities in completing a task or goal (Moshman & Schraw, 1995). If an individual can properly self-assess their capabilities, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses when faced with a task, they will be able to administer checks and balances to compensate for a potential weakness so that they are able to correctly and efficiently complete their goal. However, those who are low performers and are not able to accurately self-assess their capabilities are problematic because they may not be able to recognize their potential weakness, preventing them from administering their own checks and balances. Evaluation allows individuals to understand and assess the progress they are making towards their intended goal and can result in a re-evaluation of goals or conclusions when applicable (Moshman & Schraw, 1995). Our metacognitive abilities, specifically the regulatory skills, allow us to efficiently utilize our limited pool of attention. Although not everyone has highly developed metacognitive abilities, they are an ability that can be taught (Moshman & Schraw, 1995).
These regulatory skills run parallel to an applicable cognitive skill (learning, decision-making, etc.) resulting in a high cognitive load. Some individuals, particularly children, low literacy individuals, and the elderly, will find this high cognitive load too much to handle due to their limited pool of attention. A high cognitive load can lead to increased anxiety, frustration, and a higher abandonment rate (Norman, 2013). As designers, we must compensate for those limitations as much as possible. Whenever a designer can take the knowledge that is required to complete a task and incorporate it into the design, the needs of the user to recall and learn diminish, thereby decreasing their cognitive load.
Cognitive Styles
Metacognition, as noted earlier, is an activity that runs parallel to an applicable primary metacognitive skill, such as cognitive styles. Cognitive styles operate within metacognition and are the preferred way of acquiring, organizing, processing, and interacting with the world (Sadler-Smith, 2001). It is the most stable individual characteristic over time and across a range of situations, as opposed to learning styles and personality types which are more flexible and can evolve. A learning style is a favored way of interacting with a learning environment, and a personality type is a preferred way of interacting with one another (Cassidy, 2004). Curry (1983) discriminated between cognitive styles and learning styles with her onion model. The bulb of the onion, known as cognitive personality, is more stable and less context based. However, as you move into the upper layers, containing individual preference of social interaction and learning environment, they become more open to experiential or context-based change.
There are many identified cognitive styles; however, two of the most researched are field independence and dependence (Ausburn & Ausburn, 1978). Field independence and field dependence affect the way that individuals acquire, cognitively restructure, and learn information (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). Cognitive restructuring is the ability to organize a field that lacks structure (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). Individuals who are more field independent have good analytical and cognitive restructuring skills and are more likely to explore the product to construct a mental model before moving forward with the task (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). They are also more likely to self-regulate and apply strategies they have gained from experiences in order to achieve their goal (Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, & Cox, 1977). Individuals who are field independent have weaker cognitive restructuring skills which may impede them when faced with an unstructured interface. They also prefer to be guided and may require specific instructions when faced with a problem (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). When presented with an interface whose information requires structuring, field-dependent users expressed a higher cognitive load (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). However, when the information is already presented in an organized form, and does not require any additional restructuring, field-dependent and field- independent users are not expected to vary in their learning (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997). Field-independent users were not negatively affected by a structured page, therefore when creating a product, designers should lean towards creating a more structured interface because it will not negatively affect human performance for either cognitive style (Dufresne & Turcotte, 1997).
Riding and Cheema (1991) describe two important and independent categories of cognitive style describing how individuals prefer to process and represent information: verbalizer-imager and holistic-analytical. In the first category, verbalizers prefer to view information as words while imagers prefer pictures. In the other category, holistic individuals are likely to look over the whole page to create an inclusive image and have strong interconnected schema with multiple points of activation (Calcaterra, Antonietti, & Underwood, 2005). Analytical individuals, on the other hand, tend to break down information serially and focus on the details of the task, they are very direct and prefer step by step instructions (Calcaterra, Antonietti, & Underwood, 2005).
In additional to the cognitive styles discussed earlier, there are around 16 additional ones, such as impulsive/reflective, scanning/focusing and externally guided/self-guided (Ausburn & Ausburn, 1978). This large variety indicates that there are various ways that people organize, process, and learn information (Ausburn & Ausburn, 1978). Designers need to be cognizant of this and understand that those styles are relatively fixed, a fact that is important because products of reasonable sophistication require some learning. Therefore, designer's must create their products to be compatible with their users’ cognitive styles in order to create a pleasurable, efficient, and anxiety free experience. Another method designers can use when their users’ cognitive styles are conflicting with their design is supplantation. Using this method, a designer makes a noticeable alteration to their design by implementing a measure to assist the user through a process that would have previously resulted in a high cognitive load (Ausburn & Ausburn, 1978).
Case Study: Tripmasters.com
Tripmasters.com is website where individuals can create complete multi-destination vacation itineraries. On this website, customers can create an itinerary in a multitude of ways. They can create one from scratch, select a suggested itinerary created by Tripmaster agents, or customize a suggested itinerary based on personal preference (by budget or time at a specific destination). The site also provides hotel, transportation, and activity recommendations based on the customer’s selected itinerary and has agents who are available 24 hours a day to assist customers when needed. Potential customers need to learn how to use the Tripmasters website to be able to utilize all its valuable features. The problems discussed below are rated on a scale of low to high cognitive load. All the issues were determined to impose an unnecessarily high cognitive load on users. This is a global website, so their user population encompasses anyone interested in booking a vacation. This can include individuals with various cognitive styles and strong metacognitive skills or weak metacognitive skills such as the elderly, individuals with cognitive disabilities, and low literacy populations.
When an individual arrives at Tripmasters.com (Figure 1), it can be assumed that their goal is to plan a vacation. However, some individuals go into activities without a properly defined goal. They may have determined that they want to plan a vacation itinerary but not know where they want to go, or they may know what country they want to visit but not which cities within that country. This website has a very broad user base and some users, for various reasons, may not be capable of setting a clear goal. Designers must compensate for their users’ limitations by considering their potential goals and assisting them in creating clear ones. A recommendation to compensate for those limitations would be to ask questions like “Already know where you want to go?”, “Do you already have a country in mind?” and “Need some inspiration?” on the Tripmasters homepage to guide users to the features that would best help them plan their itinerary efficiently.
The Tripmasters homepage, seen above in Figure 1, currently supports field-independent users who are more likely to browse and find all the features which can be utilized to create itineraries. However, this interface which advocates exploration can create a high cognitive load for field-dependent users who have trouble with cognitive restructuring. Since field-independent individuals are not negatively affected by a structured interface, designers should support navigation by utilizing goal setting questions, like those mentioned above, to structure and give explicit guidance to field-dependent individuals. At the top of the page in Figure 1, outlined in yellow, are two approaches that a user can take to ask for help if needed, which is a good aspect of the Tripmasters website because it supports field-dependent users who prefer to be guided.
As you scroll down on the Tripmasters homepage you come across the highlights section, outlined in red in Figure 2, which are suggested itineraries categorized by regions. This page supports both visual and verbal cognitive styles very well. The text is accompanied by a corresponding image. This combination supports learning and is a good aspect of this interface’s design (Koc-Januchta, Hoffler, Thoma, Prechtl, & Leutner, 2017).
Once a user has chosen a suggested itinerary, they come to the page shown in Figure 3. This page supports individuals who have a holistic cognitive style since they prefer to get the big picture before focusing on details. This page allows users to get a verbal overview of the potential destinations, the sample itinerary, as well the price history before digging deeper into specific details like hotels, tours, and transportation. However, this page is purely an overview page. As they click through the various tabs at the top, users can get a deeper understanding of the various options that they can eventually choose. Under the itinerary tab, if they attempt to click ‘book now’, it brings them back to the overview page, show in Figure 3, with no explicit instructions on how to further proceed. A field-independent user would explore and discover that in order to proceed they must click ‘view price’, outline in green in Figure 3. However, this unclear navigation would be particularly problematic for a field-dependent user who prefers guidance. My recommendation would be to alter the verbiage of the ‘view price button’ to “ready to customize your itinerary?” in order to alert users that this is the next step in the process.
Throughout this process of learning how to create a vacation itinerary, users are still engaging in metacognitive regulation. This parallel processing of self-regulation and cognitive styles creates a high cognitive load on individuals with weaker metacognitive skills which prevents them from properly monitoring themselves because most of their energy is going towards creating a new knowledge structure. To compensate for that limitation, checks and balances should be added to the design to prevent error. My recommendation would be to add a progress indicator into the design in Figure 3, and have it continued on subsequent pages till the final step, so that users will be able to recognize the steps that are required in order to complete their original goal. I recommend that the progress indicator for Tripmasters should read: 'choose itinerary', then 'customize itinerary', followed by 'input passenger information', and finally 'confirm and pay'.
Figure 4 shows the next step in the itinerary creation process. On this page users can review and customize the suggested itinerary that was selected previously. This page is more geared towards individuals with a serial (analytical) cognitive style because all the steps needed for them to customize their itinerary are displayed in a clear linear step-by-step sequence starting with flights followed by hotels, tours, and transportation.
Conclusion
Metacognition and cognitive styles have an important and impactful effect on design and the user experience. Designers should support self-regulation by assisting their users in creating clear goals and building checks and balances, like progress indicators, into their design. Designers should also aim to compensate for their users’ limitations by creating an interface based on their users’ cognitive style or with methods such as supplantation. It is imperative for designers to be cognizant of metacognition and cognitive styles when creating a product because when considered properly, they can decrease the users cognitive load and potential for abandonment and create a more pleasurable user experience.
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