Ekaterina Kosova

On June 19, graduates of the Bachelor's in Computational Social Sciences, launched in 2022, received their at the HSE University's Cultural Centre. All the graduates have completed in-depth training in a social science discipline while developing advanced competencies in data analysis and mathematical modelling.

Researchers from the HSE Laboratory for Cognitive Psychology of Digital Interface Users have discovered how social cues in the design of news websites—such as reader comments, the number of reposts, or the author’s name—can help build user trust. An experiment with 137 volunteers showed that such interface elements make a website appear more trustworthy and persuasive to users, with the strongest cue being links to the media’s social networks. The study's findings have been published in Human-Computer Interaction.

Users often prefer older versions of interfaces due to a cognitive bias known as the baby duck syndrome, where their first experience with an interface becomes the benchmark against which all future updates are judged. However, an experiment conducted by researchers from HSE University produced an encouraging result: simply re-exposing users to the updated interface reduced the bias and improved their overall perception of the new version. The study has been published in Cognitive Processing.

A team of researchers from the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences has adapted the widely used System Usability Scale (SUS) for Russian-speaking users, testing the adaptation on a sample of 657 participants. A validity test confirmed that the translated questionnaire maintains its structure and reliability, enabling an accurate assessment of system usability. The final adapted version of the SUS questionnaire can be used in both research and interface design practice. The paper has been published in Psychological Studies.