August 2026 • 4 min read
Tags: UX Design, Psychology, Product, Design Process
TL;DR: When we do not have enough data, a familiar solution can feel like the right solution. Not because it necessarily fits the problem better, but because it is easier for us to process, explain and defend. That is exactly why we need to be careful not to confuse familiarity with proof that the solution works.
Do you know those moments when people are overly confident in a certain solution, even when there is not enough data to support it?
Where does that confidence come from?
I once worked on a product that used the same screen in several different places.
Every time a new area of the product was developed, that same screen was used as the base, again and again. The data I had access to did not show that it was particularly successful. Users asked for changes and improvements, and actual usage was pretty low.
And still, the screen kept coming back.
At first, I thought it was mostly a matter of convenience.
There was already an existing screen. It was familiar to the team. It was easy to take it as a template and reuse it.
But over time, I started to think that maybe it was not only about ease.
Maybe the people who chose it again and again truly felt that it was the right solution every time.
And that is a more interesting question:
What makes a solution feel so right, even when there is not enough data to support it?
Research in cognitive psychology talks about a concept called Processing Fluency - the subjective feeling of ease with which we process information.
When something is easier for us to process, it also tends to feel more familiar, more trustworthy, more positive and more correct.
And this is not just a vague feeling. In a review on Processing Fluency as a source for truth judgments, Rolf Reber and Christian Unkelbach describe how information that is processed more easily tends to be judged as more true. In other words, the brain does not always separate cleanly between “this is easy for me to process” and “this is true.”
In product design, we use this all the time.
We want interfaces to feel familiar to users, because familiarity really can make a product easier to use. If a user already understands how a component works, they do not need to learn everything from scratch. If an interaction pattern is familiar to them, they can move forward faster.
But familiarity does not make a screen the right solution for the problem.
And it is not evidence that this is the right solution.
When we need to make a decision and we do not have enough information, the brain fills in the gaps with what feels easier.
And what feels easier is often what is already familiar.
We see this in organizations all the time:
A very familiar screen? Let’s use it here too.
A component that worked in one place? It will probably work somewhere else too.
A process that worked for me in my previous team? Let’s bring it into this team as well.
Sometimes this is actually right. Reuse is not always a problem, and we do not need to reinvent everything every time.
But reuse should come from fit to the problem, not only from the fact that the solution already sits comfortably in our minds.
The paradox is that the longer we spend working on a certain solution, the more right it tends to feel.
We know it so well by now that everything about it feels clear. We know where the buttons are. We know why we made each choice. We know how to explain the logic. We know how to defend it.
And what has become so familiar to us starts to feel almost self-evident.
But that does not mean it is self-evident to users.
It does not make a confusing screen clear.
And it does not mean other people will feel the same confidence we feel when looking at it.
So when a solution feels especially right to us, it is worth pausing for a moment and asking:
Why does it feel right?
Does it feel right because we have seen that it works?
Because users understand it?
Because the data supports it?
Because it solves the specific problem we have here?
Or does it feel right mainly because it is familiar to us?
If the answer is “because it is familiar” or “because it just feels right,” it might be worth thinking about it a little more.
Or looking for more data.