97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 27. Best and Last Impressions Are Lasting Impressions

Andrea Mancini

Think about the last time you ate ice cream on a cone. The ice cream was delicious; you clearly remember this detail. And after the ice cream comes the cone. What happens if the cone tastes like cardboard? You are more likely to remember this negative detail. But why?

We live daily experiences and preserve memories of these past moments, but we obviously can’t remember every detail. Instead, we focus on strong emotions and feelings; we record “snapshots.” But this is not the full story. There is a time-based factor that modifies how we remember experiences.

Think again about the ice-cream example. You had a negative lasting impression because you experienced the worst part at the end. Designers who are aware of this behavior can design more enjoyable experiences. If you can control how the experience is remembered, you can influence the user’s final evaluation. This is the peak–end rule value.

This statement might sound odd since we often rely on retrospective evaluation to rate the quality of past experiences. That method doesn’t necessarily give us the whole story, though. Two different mental processes are involved in the operation: memory recall and an act of evaluation, processes that are not completely logical. A famous 1993 psychological experiment conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Fredrickson ...