Have you studied cognitive psychology? Either 1 class or more...

Yes.

and what did that give you?

That's a difficult question.  

A lot of the academic cognitive psychology probably isn't that relevant to UX to be honest... (for example the language generation / comprehension bit )

Without some good guidance you could spend a lot of time reading psychology stuff, which, while interesting isn't really that relevant to UX.

Which begs the next question...

How valuable is studying cognitive psychology for UX?
I have spent hours figuring out how to do this piece of my object. Starting over with a new mesh a number of times.  I punched the holes manually, after learning the evil that is boolean modifiers.  But I just can't seem to shake my bad luck with this piece!

Many artifacts show in render, but in render preview it looks nearly flawless.  I don't have the option to leave out smoothing..it looks too poly without it.  I have no idea how to fix this. Here is the rendered version: 
1
Also notice how the metallic piece to the right (up against the glass) renders just fine, despite the fact that it is made with the same material.

Here is how it looks in render preview:


The mesh in edit mode:


Here is a link to my blender file for you to go nuts with:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9lh6z9hyeqwneqn/sonicpublic.blend?dl=0
