Review of CXL Mini degree as a UX (week 3)
Hello Guys! Well, I hope you are all doing good and gathered vibes from yesterday's Dragon launch (I did). Today, I’ll share my progress from week 3 of my own journey through Mini Degree at CXL Institute. It may be not as exciting as lifting a space ship to our orbit and International Space Station, but I did my best to cover all super important things I’ve learned in Digital Psychology and Persuasion this week! Let’s jump to the next lesson from my first course included in the Mini Degree.
Emotional and rational decision making
Decision making is not logic — you feel rejected by this thought, but it is a fact. We like to think we have control over our behavior, that the analytic part of ourselves is the “in charge”.
Studies show, that only 10% of our decision is driven by logic, the rest are pure emotions. It means, that introduction of the products or services should be emotion-oriented first — make people feel, that this what they need, want, like. Then they need rational details to justify the feeling. Those two components together make up our decisions.
We need a rational part, to feel good and smart about things we do. But remember that the oldest part of our brain — the reptilian brain is selfish and relays on information serving our interests first and is triggered by visuals. This is why images are so crucial in marketing and advertisement. They communicate with the Old Brain in the best and the most persuasive way.
Knowing all that, as designers we’re obligated to use both emotions and rational thinking to support decision making and serve User’s needs, address their problems in the most sufficient way, at the same time taking care of delivering business solutions and accomplishing its goals.
What I learned: A sad fact, that I am more emotional than I expected, but also confirmed that no matter what industry you’re in — emotions are key to sales
How will I apply it: Encourage future Clients to carefully consider the tone of their communication and the way they present their products
How people view websites
In the previous post I’ve mentioned that one of our biases is being anchored to the very first information we’re introduced to and filter upcoming content treating it as our reference. In addition, our Brain does everything it can to…not think too much. Yes. It likes to save energy, as it consumes a tremendous amount of our energy, so delivering a conclusion at the beginning of, for example, a text is the best that can happen for our Brain. Mixing those two together, we’re lowering a cognitive load and allow other people to understand better full content or to decide if they want to engage with scanning it.
Speaking of — scanning, this is what we do while browsing websites. Unless an article is something that really interests us, we are getting through bigger chunks of paragraphs quickly to possess as much information with as little effort and time as possible. Again, that is how our brain likes to work.
The other thing, which lowers our cognitive load is natural structure — we read from left to right (in most cultures), and it feels easier for us to follow content this way. This leads us to the famous “F Pattern” indicated as the best practice in structure and Information Architecture planning. Also, keeping the content in one column is also the pattern we are used to, so try to use it us often, as possible. In addition, the length of the line also matters, try to keep 50–60 words in one line depending on the font type. And actually, Medium is a very good example of simplifying the structure, keeping proper line length, bringing an article or a book page pattern as a key visual, because we’re used to it and it is easier to read it.
What I learned: This lesson was more of a revision for me, but now I have a better understanding of them thanks to the knowledge from previous lessons
How will I apply it: I always apply it in grid design and Information Architecture
E-commerce Product Page Study
“The visual perception of a product page creates the user’s value perception of that product”
In marketing and economics there are three types of goods represented by archetypes:
- Search goods — we estimate the value of the product before buying it. It is good with attributes that can be evaluated before we make a purchase. Based on our previous experiences, direct interaction with the product to build our expectations about the product and make us decide whether we’d like to buy it or not.
- Experience goods — on the contrary, these are products, which can be precisely valued only after purchase. Services are a major part of this category.
- Credence claims — these are things, which are hard to evaluate even after a purchase. It comes from a need of having extra knowledge or expertise to truly value the service (In most cases, these are services again, like an accountant, designer, legal services, etc.).
Coming back to the topic of visual perception of the product. Based on the CXL Institute study, we learn, that depending on the category of the product, different rules regarding image size should be applied.
To be honest, that was surprising. I was assuming, that the larger the photo of the product, the better. Well, it is true only regarding search goods. For some reason, people see a greater value, they estimate a higher price for a product or service only by the image. It is an opposite when we’re talking about experience goods, which was…well, not obvious for me, not an intuitive thought.
What I learned: As designers, we should think carefully about the image size of the products depending on the category that the product belongs to
How will I apply it: I will use the rules, and do A/B tests of different sizing in the future websites
Okay! That’s it for today! I have only one more lesson to finish the first course of four in the Mini Degree ☺️. See you next week!