Baby duck syndrome in digital design

In human psychology, Baby Duck Syndrome is called the effect when a person, studying a particular area, considers the first object encountered from this area to be the best, and the subsequent ones to be the worst.

Every usability specialist is a kind of researcher. Therefore, there are not only generally accepted standards and laws but also rules that are opened with each usability audit and usability testing.

It is no secret that Users of digital products often do not follow the optimal path to achieving their goals. They are not always interested in the most reasonable and simple solution to their problem. Sometimes they can be content with a long way if it satisfies their needs.

As practice shows, Users are ready again and again to go through a difficult way of downloading a file and not register on the Web site. Although, if they had registered once, they could have significantly shortened this path in the future.

Baby Duck Syndrome

Once upon a time the Great Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz lived, and he loved geese, and they loved him. It is precisely the geese, but “Baby Duck” — the result of an incorrect translation from German to English.

Based on this love, he wrote many books on aetiology and philosophy, but the well-known duckling’s syndrome originates from the book King Solomon’s Ring. The bottom line is that a goose just hatched takes the first moving object for his mother, follows it and unambiguously repeats the actions performed by the object, regardless of whether the object is a goose, a toy on wheels or the great Austrian scientist Lorenz.

So Lorentz discovered the Phenomenon of Imprinting, applicable to humans too.

In human psychology, Baby Duck Syndrome is called the effect when a person, studying a certain area, considers the first object encountered from this area to be the best, and the subsequent ones to be the worst, the “worse” — the…