This article is part one of our series where we'll share various cognitive heuristics, principles and biases that you can optimise for and leverage in your products and solutions. When we create learning solutions we are creating an experience. Often this can involve creating learner journeys with multiple touch points both digital and in person, building interactions, designing interfaces and multiple immersive micro-interventions.

Leveraging cognitive heuristics and principles can help make your solutions more intuitive for learners, easier to consume and easier to use.

Let's look at 4 heuristics you can apply to craft more engaging experiences.

Provide Exit Points

Bottomless pits of infinite scrolls or click nexts keep learners locked in, sometimes with no indication about how much of the journey they have already completed or how much time they still need to put it. Exit points allow an experience to have an endpoint that allows people to disengage with a sense of completion and satisfaction.

The peak–end rule

People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak - its most intense point and at its end, instead of the sum or average of every moment or micro-experience within it. You can create and foster experience peaks and positively end experiences so the learner leaves with a more positive impression of the overall experience.

Sprinkle Some Delighters

Delighters go beyond what learners imagine or ask for. They are happy surprises in the form of micro-interactions that create a sense of enjoyment or excitement. Over time, delighters loose their novelty and wow factor.

The Zeigarnik Effect

A task in progress creates tension which is relieved when it is completed. Interrupted or incomplete tasks or events are more easily remembered. When you start something but don't finish it, thoughts of the unfinished task or event stay in your head. You feel the need to go back and finish what you started.