Heuristic: Familiarity: when people make decisions based on things, people, and places that are more familiar to them

Design principle: Design a study involving components that the intended participants can either relate to or feel familiar with.

Design in the curiosity EEG project: Formulate trivia questions to be about topics that the participant enjoys and is familiar with. However, this doesn’t mean that each individual question should be about something that the participant is familiar with, because that would affect our data. Instead, some of the general topics that a question falls into should be something that is familiar. For example, if the participant is familiar and interested in animals, we’d give participants some questions about animals. 

Heuristic: Affect: when people make decisions based on their emotions

Design principle: Use stimuli that will elicit a neutral response

Design in the curiosity EEG project: Develop a testing environment that is engaging but not overstimulating, promotes positive moods, and reduces stress and anxiety. We could also ensure that the trivia questions are inclusive and respectful of participant’s beliefs. 

Heuristic: fluency: when people make decisions or judgements based on how well the information or idea is conveyed. 

Design principle: Ensure the study is in a consistent and easily readable format, and the flow of the experiment is logical and consistent. 

Design in the curiosity EEG project: Formulate trivia questions that are easy to read and don’t include too many obscure words or phrases. Also, present the trivia questions with a very readable font and large enough text size.