10 facts to know about design and psychology. Number 9 will blow your mind.

I remember how I was introduced to the term User Experience for the first time (summer of 2012 I guess…). One of my teachers at school invited us to listen to a talk on a very specific topic: User interface design principles.

I was a student of Computing Science and to be honest we were really bad at design. By that time I was interested in website design and generally trying to follow guidelines from tutorials and some “good design practices”.

But during this learning journey, what caught most of my attention was this thing: We are not our users. That day I learned that articulating design is a combination of technology, business rules, and people needs; that blew my mind.

From that time to now, I have learned how Psychology can make you a better designer. Now, let me give you a walkthrough of this with the following 10 points:

1 .-Psychology can make you a better designer

Of course, Psychological theory can help any designer to articulate better decisions. Psychology provides knowledge basement of theories, principles, and criteria for a better understanding of human behavior.

2.- Design and Psychology are good old friends

Well, Psychology and Design walk hand in hand since a long time ago. As design professionals, we need to understand how people behave and think; if we want to succeed in the creation of digital products.

We can say that psychology is implicit in the design process in a very natural way. It’s regular that we guide our design process with the following principles:

• Semiotics
• Gestalt
• Color theory
• Emotional design

However, is good to understand how psychology works to avoid complications. Psychology can help you address specific problems like the number of options in your navigation menu; the number of steps in your checkout process; or finding the right tone to turn casual visitors into clients by using appealing language.

3.- Psychology can help you with almost all design challenges…

As I mentioned before, a descriptive approach to Psychology can help you to address specific questions in your design challenges. On the other hand, not all theories apply to all situations. Trying to fit a psychological theory into a basic design does not always improve that design (Take the so popular gamification system as an example).

Remember:

Every time you find a specific problem in your design process you can look for a psychological theory to help you solve it.

What you can’t do is taking an existing design and then try to apply a new psychological theory for no reason. (Hello gamification again).

Wider problems need other methods:

Even with great content, HBO-MAX can’t stop their users from moving to other streaming platforms.

4.- Sour, sweet or bitter; Psychology has different research perspectives

Depending on your project, you can choose different methods to apply psychology in your research: these methods are descriptive, experimental, or correlational.

A descriptive perspective is good to give a snapshot of the current status of a situation. It shows what is going on, but not why.

On the other side, an experimental perspective shows how manipulation of variables affects a group of conditions.

And finally, the correlational methods research the relationships between variables.

These perspectives are a great point of view on how to use psychology methods in wider and basic design problems. Remember, you need a clear goal in mind to think and plan the way you will solve it (also budget and time).

5 .- Great Designs understand how the brain works

Our behavior is guided by specific characteristics our brain has developed after millions of years of evolution. Understanding these characteristics is vital for making designs that result attractive and engaging to our people.

Our brain is divided into three different parts:

Old brain (Instinct)

The old brain is the one in charge of the most basic instinct and quick decision-making. Sounds familiar? The first impressions that every product does to people are important.

Emotional brain (Emotions)

This part of our brain helps us to associate past experiences with positive or negative emotions: anger, pleasure, happiness, and more. I’m sure you feel good when you receive a confirmation email with a kind message and your name on it :)

Thinking brain (Rational)

The thinking brain or analytical brain is the part responsible for all analytical activity. It’s the part that helps us to analyze before taking a decision.

Think of the next scenario: You had completed a purchase at Amazon; you were very excited because you find the perfect gift for your mom’s birthday. Now it’s time to enter the details of your address and payment methods, in this part our brain should be able to understand how to complete the purchase, how to fill in the details, and choose the right payment method (Paypal pls).

6.- If you want successful products, you need to match what is in people's minds. Hello Mental Models!

Mental models are those beliefs that users create about how things work or things they know about how to use a product, normally created to make their lives easier.

First, one question:

Will you eat a banana with the peel?

A) If the answer was: yes…

Ok. Well, that’s weird, but ok nobody is going to judge you.

B) If your first thought was: What in God’s name????!!

I think I can give you a short explanation of why: Our brain understands past experiences.

What is the experience of eating a banana?
What is the process?
What are the sensations? Flavor, texture, etc…

That’s how mental models work, it’s the understanding that people have of a thing in the real world. For example how doors work, how to turn on/off lights or objects, and more.

Great products are those that make match to people’s mental models. A product that has a different mental model can be less intuitive.

7.- Understanding the concept of mental models can help you make sense of usability problems

There are a bunch of methods to understand people’s mental models such as:

• Interviews
• Observation
• Task analysis
• Prototyping
• User journeys
• Research

It’s important to keep in mind that thanks to these methods, designers can have a better understanding of the mental model associated with the product or in the industry they are working with. Designers can improve or refine the areas detected.

There is one rule that says:

Don’t try to fix something that works well. Fix what is wrong and keep what works well.

8.- “Intuitive” is not only an overused word

How many times have you heard this from a client?

“I want my interface to be intuitive”

That’s a really ambiguous requirement, right? But it’s clear. Through psychology, we can make our products more intuitive by giving small footprints to people about what’s about to happen. The shape of the objects, colors, or the position are other elements that can aid people to complete their goals. There’s a lot more to say about intuition but I think we can leave that talk for another post.

9.- There are 10 Things that we need to know about people

…

Did you know that you can’t tickle yourself?. Ok, a little bit off-topic.

…

To start creating better products, we need to start making the right questions.
And a great point of start is understanding these 10 points about people.

• How do people see?
• How do people see?
• How do people read?
• How do people remember?
• How do people think?
• How do people get focus?
• What motivates people?
• People are social animals
• How do people feel?
• How do people make mistakes?
• How do people decide?

10.- Psychology will boost your skills to understand and work with people

Understand the value of psychology is a step ahead in the path for every designer, we have theories, papers, study cases, and a vast list of principles to use as guidance. Thought psychology is possible to understand people's emotions and motivations behind. It also reinforces the power of research to back up better product decisions. As an extra, it also opens the door to discussions on teams and makes it easy to work together.

Conclusion

To be honest, the Psychology word can feel intimidating at the beginning, especially to people that just started in the technology field (Computing Science as me). But the more you think about delivering better products, the more interesting the topic becomes to you. There is a lot of resources online, public papers, and books to start creating a more human framework of design.