The Psychology Of UX And How To Influence User Behavior

UX designers share an important trait with all good psychologists: empathy. UX is about getting people to do what you want them to do and you can’t do that without understanding their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So if you’ve ever wondered why your users aren’t engaging with your product in the way that you want, then this is where you need to start.

The Science Of Motivation

To understand why people do what they do, and how to influence what they do, you have to look at the motivation behind their behaviors. Motivation can be either intrinsic or extrinsic; this means that people can be motivated by external factors such as money or rewards, or internal factors such as the enjoyment they feel from doing an activity or the satisfaction derived from completing a task (such as finishing your to-do list).

However, motivation alone isn’t always enough to enable or change a person’s behaviour. This is something that’s presented in the BJ Fogg behavior model, which states that 3 elements have to be present at the same time for a behavior to occur; motivation, ability, and triggers.

According to the Fogg model, a behavior is most likely to occur when a person is motivated, able, and reminded to perform it. There are 15 behavioral variations in the model and each has a different balance of these three elements. The core message is that a highly motivated person will be willing to partake in a difficult behavior, at which their ability is low, if they are given an appropriate trigger. In comparison, a poorly motivated person will still perform a behavior if that behavior is easy to do and their ability to do it is high — with the correct trigger in place.

In UX design, a good example of a trigger would be a notification that pops up on your phone to remind you to log in to an app to complete a task. In order to log into the app, you need wifi. So, if you don’t have wifi (i.e. the ability to complete the task), the trigger won’t work.

In addition to motivational level and ability, the triggers your users respond to will differ according to their individual preferences. Three notifications a day might keep one user active and make another user deactivate their account because they feel bombarded. To create a successful UX, it’s important to understand the behaviors of your target user and provide options that will tailor the experience for them.

You can do this by building user personas and examining user journeys to; asses the ability level of your users, identify that motivates them, and develop effective triggers. If something isn’t working in your final design, you can revert back to BJ Fogg model and figure out which of the three components is missing.

Users Want To Hack Productivity: It’s Your Job To Hack Humanity

In general, people want to exert the least possible energy to complete a task. You can call this efficiency, productivity, energy conservation, or even laziness — as long as it’s one of the first things you think about in your design process. Users should have to do as little as possible to fulfil their desired outcome on your website or app. That’s if you want them to hang around.

The reality is that people can only really focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking is a very misunderstood term that really only came into existence circa 15 years ago in reference to microprocessors that could process multiple tasks at once. Somewhere along the way, humans started using the term and confusing it with what actually happens in our brains when we manage a number of tasks at the one time: task switching.

This is something that’s easier to do if you have one task that’s less cognitively challenging than the other, i.e. you’re doing admin whilst chatting to your co-worker in the office about the weekend.

Regardless of what you decide to call it, actually focusing on two things at once is possible but it isn’t optimal. In fact, it often becomes pretty frustrating. The only other real scenario where task switching is useful, is when using additional feature/s in your UX actually assists a user to complete a specific task rather than distracting from it. In other words, doing a few things at once isn’t always detrimental to user experience, provided that one action supports the other.

By creating an interface that minimizes distractions and focuses the user’s attention on one task at a time, with a clear workflow that takes them from A to B, you can prevent the user from becoming overwhelmed by the amount of actions available to choose from.

If you look at the new design of the Buckets Project Shelf, you’ll see that we’ve given it a more minimal view now. This new view gives users the space to work without being distracted, but can also be expanded and utilized as needed.

An intelligently designed interface will present the only options applicable to the user, rather than overloading the display with menu options to give the illusion of choice; when in reality, the user only needs to see what they need at each moment.

By focusing your attention on the user and focusing the attention of the user, you can create an experience that’s equally beneficial for you both.

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