Perception and Action Coupling

Keep them coupled.

This is a principle I use through out my design process. This isn’t my idea, (it’s from ecological psychology). but I wanted to write about some of these concepts as I think having a solid underpinning for decision making in the design process helps keep things simple and straight forward. Making you a better problem-solver rather than needing pre-made solutions or techniques.

Essentially the idea is this:

We perceive to act, and we act to perceive. We attune our perceptual system to our environment in terms of our action capacity to achieve relevant goals.

In the UX and design process, We may need to uncover insights (perceive) in order to orient ourselves in a potential design direction (act). Or we may need to design and build something (act) in order to uncover insights (perceive). After we ship a product (act) we pay attention to metrics to determine success (perceive). The coupling of perception and action are what allow us to move towards a specified goal.

Reality is always giving us accurate feedback on our actions. When we chase after a ball in a tennis game, we self-organize our actions based on perception, our intention, hit the ball, already starts us running in that direction. In building digital interfaces, this doesn't happen by accident. We need to consider what information does a person need to perceive in order to act to reach a goal. After an action has been taken what feedback will most valuable to inform their next action. How will they know if they are getting closer to their end goal.

It's a simple idea, hopefully of some value! Thanks for reading.