UX Magazine just posted an interesting article about an occurrence called "change blindness." The article includes videos of the experiments carried out that support the phenomenon.
The experiments are enlightening, mainly because it's amusing to see the scenarios unfolding. As a spectator seeing how evident the differences are, it's surprising how the subjects in the videos are oblivious to the changes. It would be interesting to see the full quantitative data from the experiments to see the percentages and variation by variable. The videos clearly reinforce that user behavior needs to be tested to validate expectation and minimize the difference between actual behavior and desired behavior. I would have expected more participants to notice. Then again the video is probably not be representative of the participant sample.
The end of the article states:
"What are we failing to capture when observing people using the products we design? We [as UX professionals] need to reserve space in our work for uncovering those things that we don't know we don't know, and make it an official part of the process."
This is quite obvious and a good reminder especially when rolling out new features that seem evident to those working closely on the project.
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