Designing for Lasting Impressions: The Peak‑End Rule
“We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences.” – Daniel Kahneman
Think about the last product or app you used that truly delighted or frustrated you.
What moments stand out in your memory?
You’ll quickly realise that you don’t remember every second of an interaction – instead, you remember the highlights (good or bad) and how the experience concluded.
This is known as the Peak–End Rule, a concept from psychology that has profound implications for UX.
✨What is the Peak–End Rule?
The Peak–End Rule is a cognitive bias discovered by psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues in the 1990s.
It states that people judge an experience largely based on two key moments: the peak (the most intense point, whether positive or negative) and the end (the conclusion of the experience).
In other words, our overall impression of an event is not an average of every moment but is disproportionately shaped by the best or worst moment and the way things finish.
Other information – including how long the experience lasted or the exact sequence of events – tends to fade in importance.
Kahneman’s original research dramatically illustrated this effect.
In a seminal 1993 experiment, participants endured two versions of an uncomfortable task (immersing a hand in icy water).
One trial was 60 seconds of very cold water, and another trial was 90 seconds – the same 60 seconds of very cold water plus an extra 30 seconds as the water was slightly warmed (still cold, but a bit less painful at the end).
Logically, one might assume people would prefer the shorter trial (less total pain).
Yet the results showed the opposite: about 80% of participants chose to repeat the longer trial with the gentler ending, rather than the strictly shorter trial.
In Kahneman’s words, subjects chose the longer experience “simply because they liked the memory of it better” than the alternative.
A small improvement at the end of the experience dramatically shifted their overall memory of it.
✨Why Peak–End Matters for UX
For UX, the Peak–End Rule highlights that user satisfaction is heavily influenced by brief snapshots of the journey – the emotional high (or low) points and the final outcome – rather than every single interaction.
This has real consequences for how users perceive your product, whether they will use it again, and what they will tell others about it…
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Sources:
- Kahneman, Daniel, et al. (1993). “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End.” Psychological Science, 4(6), 401–405 (The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories)
- Peak–end rule – Wikipedia
- Kane, Lexie (2018). “The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories.” Nielsen Norman Group (The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories)
- Yablonski, Jon (2020). “Peak–end rule.” Laws of UX (UX Collective) (Peak–end rule. People judge an experience largely… | by Jon Yablonski | UX Collective)
- Brummer, Cindy (2020). “Easy at the End: Peak-End Rule Applied to Amazon.com Checkout.” (Easy at the End: Examination of Peak-End Rule Applied to Amazon.com Checkout • Cindy Brummer)
- Perpetual Insights (2023). “UX Design Principle: Peak-End Rule.” (Examples from Amazon, Duolingo) (UX Design Principle #006: Peak-End Rule | Perpetual Blog).
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