86. People make errors when they are under stress

86. People make errors under stress

• Stress can cause someone to not be able to do tasks they are familiar with.
• Under stress, people tend to do the same actions over and over, even if they don’t work.
• Do as much research as possible to find out which situations in your product may cause stress. Including site visits and observing people interacting with your product and redesign as needed.
• Even if someone is an expert at a well-learned task, performance stress may cause errors.
• 
• Caption: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happens-your-body-when-youre-stressed-180964357/

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

• 
• A little stress can help perform a task because it heightens awareness, but too much stress degrades performance.
• The optimal amount of stress/arousal depends on the difficulty of the task. Difficult tasks require less arousal while simple tasks require more arousal to keep the user's attention.
• If people are performing a boring task then you need to raise the level of arousal with sound, colors, or movement.
• If people are doing a difficult task, then you need to lower the level of arousal by eliminating any distracting elements.

Tunnel Action

• Tunnel action is where you keep doing the same task over and over even though it isn’t working.
• Too much stress causes the user to be unfocused and have trouble remembering thus causing the tunnel action.
• Giphy (video/mp4)

Keep in mind while designing

• Don’t assume that people will use your product in a stress-free environment.
• Men and Women may react differently to stress.
• Performance stress may cause errors for experts. The higher the stakes the more pressure is on the user to perform well, causing errors.
• See more information on the Yerkes-Dodson Law in the video linked.
• Yerkes-Dodson law - Intro to Psychology (Embed)