Is UX Cognitive, Behavioral or Cognitive Behavioral?
I had this conversation with my wife yesterday as we discussed an article I am writing. I asked her about the psychological frameworks that measure cognitive events from priming, specifically within Gestalt Theory. My question was whether the common measurements we take in UX relate to the theoretical frameworks of cognitive, behavioral, or cognitive-behavioral psychology (I personally always thought it was cog-sci)
Her answer surprised me, as she told me she honestly didn't know. To explain it better, she told me that while we take a lot from Don Norman in UX (obviously), and he is a clear reference for both UX and cognitive science, most of the methods we use and what we try to measure are behavioral and influenced by authors like Gibson, and that cognitive-behavioral methods apply mainly to therapy, not to theoretical frameworks like UX.
However, she does not feel that a pure paradigm is used in UX and that she definitely sees more elements of Vygotsky's sociocultural psychology (which in turn partly influences Gibson).
She also feels that this lack of definition is the cause of many methodological research failures in UXR because we use formulas like Hicks Law (or Fitts') that are clearly behavioral, but we try to see them through cognitive lenses.
Now, she's a PhD in psychology, so her opinion clearly has a lot of foundation, but her doubts about it got me thinking: is there a psychological paradigm in which we can really include the most common UX research methods? Or is there, as she says, no pure paradigm, but a mixture of methods and methodologies?
Answers that can incorporate Gestalt and/or priming are also a great help!