Why a 50-Year-Old Study Should Change the Way We Design Apps

Designing for Cognitive Thought

Psychology plays a massive role in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design.

When it comes to designing products, take the time to develop an experience that connects with your audience on a cognitive level. It should require very little effort from them to accomplish their goal, building value in your product or service. I am going to discuss a few concepts that I find interesting in relation to problem solving and cognition, and how it can relate to developing great user experiences.

Right Brain / Left Brain Theory

The right brain vs. left brain theory was first developed by American Psychologist Roger Sperry in the late 1960’s. Sperry discovered that each side of the brain handles thought and decision making differently than the other.

Our left brain processes information in an analytical and sequential manner. It looks at all of the various pieces of information and then puts them together.

Our right brain is more focused on intuition. It is more of a subconscious, natural form of decision making. It focuses on the bigger picture rather than the little pieces.

In relation to UX and design, it’s important to connect with the right brain as it requires less active thinking, creating a more natural experience for the user. Our users have a very short attention span and, when using our applications, they should be able to intuitively understand how to accomplish their end goal. Triggering left brain thought too often can deter users from going any further into the problem-solving process by triggering anxiety and frustration. This results in potential loss of profits, or loss of users altogether.

Example of Right / Left Brain Decision Making

Picture this. You’re at an electronics store, looking to replace your old TV. The sales person begins telling you why the model you’re looking at is the best on the market. He starts talking about pixel density, refresh rate, energy savings, and so on and so forth.

While this sales person thinks he is building value, he is also devaluing the experience by overwhelming you with information. You now start to make comparisons.

“What was the pixel density of my last television? Was it good enough? What was the refresh rate? What is the pixel density of the other televisions?”

In most cases, the customer will actually walk away without making a purchase stating that ‘they need to do more research’.

The sales person in this example did not connect with the right-brain. Instead, he focused his sales pitch on left brain, which became bogged down in analysis and new information. Showing the customer the television, to begin with, would have connected more with the right brain, requiring little to no effort in the decision-making process. As soon as the sales person informed the customer of things like refresh rate and pixel density, they wanted to make comparisons and review data—using their left brain.

Design Ideas to Target the Right Brain

There are some simple tactics that can be used to make your UX more intuitive for users.

Signifiers and Snapchat

Signifiers are an important tool when it comes to creating a seamless user experience. Signifiers notify a user of an action that can be performed. Examples include highlighting touch points for touch screen experiences, elevating/creating depth on buttons showing the user they are to be pressed, etc. The absence of signifiers can cause a user frustration because they will be confused and have no idea how to use your application.

While Snapchat is wildly successful, I think they took a huge risk with their applications design. Snapchat is a great example of the absence of good signifiers.

At first glance, there is no indication as to how to use the app whatsoever. They do give you hints at the beginning, which is helpful, but if you ignore these hints, you’re left on a camera screen with no idea how to see the story feed/direct message screen/add user screen, etc.

Snapchat was able to overcome this because they created an experience that was fun to learn and caused the user to feel as though they accomplished something every time they found themselves in a new view.

Signifiers are extremely important in providing instructions to our users and showing them how to use our applications. The absence of signifiers will cause us to think with our left brain which may cause frustration and anxiety because it doesn’t feel natural. We may begin to think, have I seen something like this before? And then our brains run through websites that we frequent, frantically trying to identify similarities in order to make use of the application.

Familiarity and Google

While cognitive thinking is, for the most part, a natural occurrence, nurture also plays a major role in the way we make decisions.

For example, if a web page or web application has content in a column on the right side of a page, we tend to ignore this information.

Why? Because for years this is where advertisements were placed. This now causes us to automatically disregard information that is being displayed on the right side of the page. It is important to think about what has been successful with design in the past, as well as what major websites and applications are using for design principles because these are already familiar to the user. They will automatically know how to navigate and find the content they’re looking for.

Google’s material design is a great example of taking advantage of familiarity. Material design is a design principle that Google is using to attempt to create a design standard across web and mobile applications based on years of design research and experience. This is a great idea because creating a standard will allow for familiarity across all of Google’s experiences and allows users to naturally navigate through these tools without thinking — appealing to their right brain.

Gestalt Principles

The Gestalt Principles is a term that refers to the theories of visual perception that create a ‘unified whole’. This idea, developed by German psychologists in the 1920’s, delves into the ways that people tend to organize visual elements into groups.

Figure/Ground — Our minds subconsciously identify what is foreground and what is background. And, we naturally focus on the foreground.

As designers, we should take advantage of this and create depth to our applications. This will allow our users to (without thinking) know exactly where the important information is.

Similarity Principles — Our minds naturally group things together by size, shape, and/or color. We know toolbars and navigation go together by adding a background color that is different than the main body of the application, or by creating a similarly shaped set of buttons. These design elements clearly tell the user these items go together.

Focal point — Our minds are initially drawn to whatever stands out visually. This can be accomplished by using a bright color, adding depth with the most important information at the foreground, or by enlarging an item that we want users to see first. This is how we can draw our users attention to what’s important and guide them through the application or website experience, in order to accomplish their end goal.

Summary

As designers and developers, it’s important for us to look beyond traditional design principles to dive deeper into human psychology and cognition. We can take the burden of thought off our users, allowing them to connect with their intuitive ability to problem solve. We can eliminate anxiety and frustration. We can create a better experience for them.

At Helpful Human, we focus heavily on solving problems in a way that creates a seamless user experience. This ease of use in the applications we create and work we do provides our clients with successful, efficient end products. If you’re interested, get in touch with our team and we can show you some of our work.