Describe situations

People read or hear information—and understand it. That sounds trivial. But not all understanding is equal: A product description can be read without creating a clear mental image. A service process can be explained without the customer grasping what happens next. The question is: What distinguishes superficial text comprehension from deep, action-guiding understanding—and what does the evidence tell us?

Studies

The Layout Experiment

Daniel Morrow, Gordon Bower, and Steven Greenspan conducted an elegant experiment at Stanford University in 1989. Forty-eight students read a story about a man named John moving through a building with multiple rooms. The story explicitly described the spatial layout: "The tool room is next to the garage. The kitchen is above the garage." While reading, participants were intermittently shown an object name—such as "hammer" or "coffee pot." They had to decide as quickly as possible: Is this object in the same room where John currently is? The surprising result: Response time did not depend on how often an object was mentioned in the text, but rather on whether it was located in John's current room within their mental simulation. Objects in the same room were recognized 200 milliseconds faster—even though they were equally present in the text. The readers had constructed a spatial situation model and were mentally navigating through the building with John.

The Orientation Experiment

In 2004, Rolf Zwaan and Carol Madden at Florida State University investigated how detailed mental simulations are. Seventy-eight participants read sentences such as "John hammered the nail into the wall" or "John hammered the nail into the floor." Immediately afterward, they saw a picture of a nail—oriented either horizontally or vertically. Their task was to decide as quickly as possible whether this object had appeared in the sentence. The results were remarkably precise: when the orientation of the picture matched the described action (a horizontal nail after "into the wall"), participants responded 50 milliseconds faster than when the orientation didn't match. The readers had automatically and unconsciously simulated the spatial orientation of the nail—even though this information was never explicitly requested. Comprehension means not only grasping what happens but mentally experiencing how it appears spatially.

Principle

Which principle for Customer Experience Design can be derived from this? Effective customer experience emerges when customers can not only process information but also mentally experience the described situation. Text and communication should therefore use concrete, vivid language and create clear spatial, temporal, and causal connections that enable the brain to construct rich mental simulations. This principle works particularly well for complex products or services, where customers can only grasp the benefit by imagining the application situation. However, for very simple or familiar products, overly detailed situational descriptions can seem superfluous and distract attention from more important information. The following guidelines show how to implement this principle in practice.

Guidelines

Describe action sequences concretely

Describe processes as sequences of concrete actions, not abstract concepts. Instead of "Authentication is multi-stage," write "You enter your email. You receive a code. You enter the code." The brain can simulate actions, but it cannot simulate "multi-stage authentication."

Make spatial relations explicit

When spatial information is relevant, describe it explicitly. Instead of writing "There are three input fields," write "Your name is at the top, your email below that, and your message at the very bottom." This helps users mentally simulate the interface structure and reduces the effort required to orient themselves.

Choose the customer perspective as protagonist

Write from the customer's perspective as the active agent ('You click on...'), not from the system's perspective ('The system sends...'). People find it easier to mentally simulate actions when they are the protagonist. This increases both understanding and perceived control.

Signal causal relationships

CX Guideline: Signal Causal Relationships Use causal connectors ('therefore', 'thereby', 'so that') to make cause-and-effect relationships explicit. Instead of writing "We are reviewing your data. You will receive a confirmation," write "We are reviewing your data. As soon as everything is complete, you will receive a confirmation." Causal coherence is central to situation models.