12 Insights About People Every Designer Needs to Know
Discover how psychology has informed the work of these Salesforce Designers.
Psychology underpins design in many ways. The study of the human mind lends itself to methods of creative problem solving. Knowing this, I wasn’t surprised to discover that many Salesforce designers hold psychology degrees. Among them is Aimee Slupski, Salesforce Experience Designer.
“My background in psychology — especially the social and cognitive branches — has shaped my design approach,” says Slupski, who has a degree in computer science and psychology. Many of her colleagues similarly have explored a range of subjects from anthropology to philosophy. I wanted to learn from them what insights about people designers might find useful.
Through a kaleidoscope of lenses, some Salesforce designers offered universal takeaways that would serve anyone practicing human-centered design.
Here are 12 insights about people that can inform your design work:
1. When people are unsure how to behave, they look at other people’s behavior to guide their own.
This is also known as social proof, a theory that gained traction in the mid-1980s. It describes situations when people aren’t sure what’s expected of them and they assume other people know more. For example: When someone wants to find a good restaurant nearby, they look at reviews on Google.
“Many times, a design goal is to promote a behavior or establish credibility and social proof is inextricably linked to this,” Slupski says. Her studies have made her increasingly interested in what other shortcuts come naturally to us all.
2. People often rely on biases to process an immense quantity of information daily.
Slupski also reminds us that we each consume a lot of information every day. Over a decade ago, a UC San Diego study reported an average American consumes 34 gigabytes of media per day. Today, it’s presumably even more.
To make sense of all this, people rely on habits and heuristics. The American Psychological Association defines heuristics as rules-of-thumb that can be applied to guide decision-making based on a more limited subset of the available information. That’s what gives rise to biases favoring what’s recent, confirms personal beliefs, or that others will like. And there are even more ways that processing so many bits of information impacts our brain — including the time it takes.
3. The more choices a person has, the longer it will take for the person to make a decision.
While Hick’s law may seem obvious, it’s an important reminder to the professionals creating decision trees. Salesforce UX/UI Lead Zack Kirby says, “Keeping UIs simple is critical to user-friendly design. Creating a less complex experience starts with a designer who can filter the options being presented to users.”
Kirby holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology. “[For UX design], there are a number of psychological principles that inform us and help us understand those mental processes.” He also considers how people hold bigger concepts.
4. People form mental models based on their own experiences and expectations of the real world.
We all have our own internal representation of the world. This is a mental model, also referred to as “deeply held images of thinking and acting.” It applies to perceptions of digital experiences.
“Because users now spend so much time online and interacting with digital products, they have expectations on how they should function,” Kirby says. “Deviating from these expectations could prevent users from successfully using your product.” One expectation is for the UX to be straightforward.
5. Busy designs overwork human brains.
The brain gets tired. We keep talking about everything it’s doing, short-cutting, and speeding through. If a design is too busy, the brain tries to parse out what’s most important. If it can’t, all the information can be interpreted neutrally. Many times that translates to forgettable. As a creative designer at Salesforce, Olivia Copsey keeps this top of mind.
“I once heard that our brains are made for having ideas, not storing them,” Copsey says. “Design that is the simplest — but that maintains character — will be the most impactful.”
6. People remember feelings even when they forget details.
Emotion can leave a lasting impression. While the amygdala and hippocampus also support memory function, “emotion does not always enhance memory.”
In her user research, Copsey has seen this prove out. “It just shows that we need to make design that creates a feeling,” she says.
With a mother who’s been in social work for over 20 years, she has been drawn toward emotion since she was young. After initially going to college to major in psychology, she was leaned toward art, communications, and graphic design. Her career has been spent at the intersection of them all, similar to many Salesforce Designer team members.
7. People are motivated by desire.
Desirability describes how much people want to use a product. Usability can be incomplete without a sense of willing enjoyment. It’s something Scott Hodgman takes into account in his work as a customer success director at Salesforce.
“I work a lot with attitudinal metrics, desirability, and usability,” Hodgman says. His background includes a master’s degree in the psychology of religion, especially underlying perceptions and cognitive dissonance. These themes of inner life and outer behavior are at the core of a more empathetic lens on humankind.
8. If someone has a problem, then they also have a psychological construct contributing to its continuation.
There’s usually more to a problem than meets the eye. It could have been forming for years through related and unrelated experiences. “Sentiment is a complex construct built up and fossilized over time,” Hodgman says.
“Concepts like perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors reinforce narratives about an experience or application.” Much of this may not present immediately to others. It can live beneath the surface or not yet be in someone’s realm of awareness.
9. People don’t always say what they mean.
This might be because it’s difficult to articulate a problem. No matter the cause, active listening leads to better understanding. The ability to observe a situation before solutioning can guide a more relevant, useful, and delightful design. Empathy is at the heart of design thinking. So is the ability to draw the roots of a solution back to the key insights of the observed problem.
“You have to watch and listen to see what is really going on before proposing a solution to what is at hand,” says Katie Luby, who’s part of the Salesforce Professional Services team as an account partner. “People may not always be able to tell you the root cause of a problem. However, their approach to solving it with workarounds can give clues to a value-based solution. You can take what works and make it better.”
10. The same person can have different goals and needs.
No one is just one archetype. People switch modes of thinking and behavior according to what’s at stake. Something with low stakes might mean the gain of verbal praise (e.g. rating of your profile). However, something with high stakes might mean losing a relationship or reputation (e.g. your bank balance affecting your credit).
“In any digital engagement, you have to think about how to approach your consumer,” says Luby, who studied anthropology and human-centered communications design. “Is the need urgent? Or is it something I want to contemplate and learn more about? Those are things that will influence the content and options you provide.”
11. People’s problems are full of complexity.
Holding more than one archetype, or more than one facet at a time, is part of the human condition. Michael Albers is a product designer for the Emerging Technologies team at Salesforce. Having designed AR, VR, and the ground-based command stations for NASA’s satellites, Albers is no stranger to complexity.
“A lot of designers search for very clean answers,” Albers says. “But these clean answers often happen through over-simplifying the problem. Sometimes, simplistic solutions remove the nuance necessary for solving a messy problem, whereas a collection of related-but-specific tools can be more appropriate.” He embraces the bigger picture and the whole person — even when it doesn’t initially make sense.
12. Humans have an inherent quirkiness.
Humans have a surprising way of mentally perceiving and physically moving through the world. If you don’t think it’s quirky, you might be taking it for granted. Isn’t it amazing that people can rapidly detect motion? That emotions can drive physical response? Remembering this supports design work and lets us come back to how humans work.
“Our understanding of human perception and physiology has to drive the development and optimization of the user’s experience,” Albers says.
While much will change in the future, this truth is a constant.
“At its essence, psychology asks us to think and consider other people and how they interpret the world,” says Olivia Copsey. “Anyone who thinks critically about how we exist and make sense of the world as humans already has a leg up in their designs.”
Interested in digging into human-centered design? Take the Getting to Know Relationship Design trail on Trailhead today.
The more designers know about the science of the mind and behavior, the better. This knowledge can be built formally or informally — from Trailhead modules to reading design books. We have a list.
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