The human brain always looks for patterns and familiar objects around them to make sense of whatever they touch and see. Whether it be the surrounding environment or digital items, it is easier for them to quickly learn if they can correlate the pattern with something they are familiar with. A designer before making a website, or app needs to understand this psychology to make a design that is easy for its users to explore. Understanding the psychology of users also helps designers control their decision-making ability. Thus, psychology plays a crucial role when it comes to the user experience (UX) design process.
A UX designer must design through the perspective of the consumer and address themes that combine cognitive psychology, social psychology, and human-computer interaction.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
— Steve Jobs
To help you understand users’ perspectives we have come up with some of the major principles but before that, we must understand Cognitive load.
Running too many apps at once on smartphones slows it down or even freezes it. Similar is the case with the human brain!
Cognitive load is defined as anything that forces users to pause and consider their next steps. And when a user thinks too much, the outcome is a befuddled user on the verge of ditching you. So, to operate your app if the user has to learn many things, you need to realize that you are on the wrong track. You must provide your users with the quickest and most direct route to their desired result.
Cognitive load is increased by any component of your UX that has a learning curve. So, we need to minimize the cognitive load.
It is referred to as an inherited difficulty associated with a certain instructional topic. How can users keep their attention on the task at hand while absorbing information?
An e-commerce checkout is a nice example. Designers should remove all navigation and just provide the content users need to complete a purchase. Thus, by lowering the intrinsic cognitive burden designers can increase the likelihood that a user will accomplish the activity at hand.
It is how the brain deals with non-essential aspects of the activity, such as fonts, micro-interactions, and directions. Excessive unnecessary cognitive load in UX is exemplified by a user straining to read fonts or comprehend instructions.
It is the type of cognitive load that is devoted to the processing and construction of schemas. While learning something new, the human brain looks for patterns in the content that can help form schemas.
Employing design patterns that users can distinguish from something they already know, makes it easier for them to recognize and learn.
The top Principles of UX design Psychology that you must not ignore are:
Have you ever noticed that among any numerous displayed items, you only remember a few?
Users have the propensity to remember only the first and last thing in a series, known as the Serial Position Effect. Proposed by German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, the primacy effect and the recency effect are two memory recall biases that cause this effect.
It allows users to recall the items that are displayed at the beginning with greater accuracy than the ones followed.
It is the opposite of the primacy effect. The user remembers the information they see last with better clarity than information they have previously absorbed.
This is why, in today’s apps, the hamburger menu has been replaced with a bottom or top bar navigation, and the most critical user actions are placed to the right or left.
Quick Tip – A/B testing is the most effective technique to see if your initiatives and experiments are working with design.
Learn how A/B testing can help you in upgrading your business.
When numerous comparable objects are present altogether, it becomes difficult to predict which one to go for. The one that stands out is most likely preferred. This is why all CTAs or call-to-action buttons on a website or application differ from the other action buttons!
The Von Restorff effect offers the most important ideas in UX design psychology aiding clarity and direction to the user. We want consumers to be able to tell the difference between a simple action button and a CTA so that they can comprehend and remember what the CTA performs while using the app or site.
Quick Tip – The Von Restorff effect is also a beneficial component of the user interface (UI) as the current page in navigation or the current step in a user flow can also be highlighted to increase the awareness of a user.
According to Hick’s law, the amount of time taken by a person to make a decision is determined by the number of options available to him or her.
As the number of options grows so does the cognitive load and exponentially the time to make decisions.
The biggest examples to consider are e-commerce websites. There are too many options for shoppers to begin, so they take a long time to select before they buy. So, a UX designer must constantly examine designs to ensure that users have the fewest possible options for completing a job or achieving a goal in time.
Quick Tip – A UX designer must consider Hick’s law for the checkout page. As more the steps or input required to complete the sale, more are the chances of users to abandon the cart.
Learn 5 ways to improve checkout for high conversions.
We are well aware of the amount of input that any owner needs to put in to start and establish an online business. With instant products and diverse services, you also need to take care of the compelling design and accurate CTAs. Therefore, to ease your efforts and enhance your consumer’s experience we provide an integration-ready brand store platform- Kartify that has fully customizable UI/UX such as user flows, layout, menu, filter, etc. to give you high flexibility and functionality so that you can reach your customers and serve them better. So, you can rest assured and request your DEMO now!
