Neuroception
What stands out to you?
Neuroception is our bodies nervous system’s perception of the world, and it seeks out cues from our perception to tell us whether something is safe or a threat. We can think of neuroception as a beacon that is surveying for signals of danger and safety in an environment.* With awareness, we can use neuroception to find and avoid things that make us feel in danger or towards things that make us feel safe, or rewarded.
Cues capture attention
Getting the attention can be done with cueing. A cue is something designed into an environment to catch someone’s attention (hopefully the good way). Essentially a cue needs to pass through a set of filters that someone has in order to let them know it is worth giving more of their attention to. Things like social proof, or seeing other people trust something can help break down those barriers.
Attention can prime neuroception
Our capacity for neuroception also leads to priming people for danger or safety. Both positive priming and negative priming can have an impact on customer behavior.
Positive cues can make customers feel more at ease. For example at Tiffany’s, sales will offer a beverage while completing a transaction, which can put the buyer at ease nearing point-of-sale.
Negative cues in an environment (such as train station or airport security screening) can cue signals of danger which can put people in a more defensive state. But the duty-free on the other side of security can sometimes help put people at ease.
A cue for danger in one person might be a cue for safety for another. For example, to a US citizen a thumbs-up is a positive gesture, to an Iranian it’s an offense.
Experience is complex depending on the person, but some environmental patterns are constant. When we find the thread that connects good or bad experiences, we have new information to help us understand patterns in the environment.
Neuroception may return us to resilience
Resilience is our ability to regulate a system back to an original state. Resilience applies to us personally, whether it’s our ability to regulate our emotional state and ground ourselves. Resilience applies to product, such as an engine piston’s ability to maintain a steady performance despite thousands of miles of operation. It also applies to systems, such as crypto, which tries to keep the price of selling goods as close to the cost of the currency being traded. What all of these examples have in common are that they involve a system going beyond a normal state. Understanding the cues that trigger different states in our system, and being able to successfully navigate back to a state of connection, not only promotes well-being, but builds resilience as well. Connecting that back to neuroception, perhaps we are impacted most by cues that invade on our sense of resilience.
What does this mean for designers?
People have a knack for determining whether something is safe or not. A visceral reaction to something deemed unsafe can push people away or towards something else. It goes without saying that products we design should be safe for consumers. But oftentimes new things or new products can pose a threat to people’s resiliance. If we veer too far from our mental models there is a sense of danger. It’s easier to pick what is familar to us, unless we are truly seeking novelty- which may best be reserved for the world of entertainment and not every day tasks. In order to curtail this visceral nature, we can get ahead of people’s neuroception by using cues to put people at ease before engaging with our product. To do this, we should get a really good grasp on what the signals are that make qualities of our product seem good or bad, and adjust or amplify those things accordingly. Oftentimes this can be done by simply talking with people that are engaging with our product or service.