Understanding the UX psychologist
UX is trying to break through the abstractions of devices, computers, eyes, ears and get right to the brain. To understand this process we’ll need to stand in the context of UX and talk about how we incorporate psychology into what we do.
Perception
What eyes perceive is just the beginning of the road; the brain is who really sees. Many times we finished our designs and we think, “they are great!” but have you ever stopped to think on how they are seen in another perspective? Don’t trust your opinion of what you think users need; do user research to provide the features that people really need. Ask yourself these questions:
What does the user perceive?
What catches our attention?
How we organize the information?
How are colors perceived?
In what directions do we scan?
Keep in mind…
Decorative fonts are hard to read.
Try to avoid red text on a blue background or vice versa.
Based on the canonical perspective, people can recognize objects on a screen best when they are slightly angled and have the perspective of being slightly upward.
Neuropsychology
It deals with the neural anatomy of the brain and the psychology of all human thought and behavior. It’s how everything “happens”.
In UX I have a subconscious understanding of what is going to occur with the senses and in the brain, so like the psychology Susan Weinschenk said “most mental processing occurs unconsciously”.
If you can make that people do a small action then it will be easier that they effectuate a large action, for example sign up for a free membership and then upgrade to a premium account.
Memory
People have limitations so keep this in mind when you are designing.
Show people a little bit of information and let them choose if they want more details, remember, users don’t want to work or think more than they have to, this means that people will do the least amount of work possible to get tasks done.
Make information easy to scan.
Using headers and short blocks of info or text is a good idea.
People can’t multi-task, scientist have known for decades that the human brain has trouble simultaneously processing more than one stream, so don’t expect them to.
People can only remember 3-4 items at a time, don’t make them remember things from one task to another or one page to another.
Analyzing the behavior
UX designers condition people to take actions that facilitate the experiences we are trying to create. Here we talk again about user research, when you know your public you will give them the features they need.
If you want users to fill a form, give them something they want and then ask for them to fill out the form, not vice versa.
Activate the mirror neurons, if your idea is for users to do something then show someone else doing it. Don’t teach them, give examples.
Attention, show them something different
Everything that we haven’t seen before catches our attention, that’s why everything that is novel and different make us want to try it.
Grab their attention using bright colors, beeps, large fonts and tones.
Don’t flash things on the page or start playing videos, if you don’t want them to be distracted, but if you want to grab their attention, do those things.
Use grouping to help focus where users should look, remember things that are close together are believed to go together, be careful colors can be used to show whether things go to together, but be sure to use another way to show the same info since some people are colorblind.
People have mental models
People always have a mental model in place about certain objects or tasks. User research gives you a lot of information and one of the important insights that it gives you it’s about the mental models they have.
In order to create a positive UX, you can either match the conceptual model of your product or website to the users’ mental model, or you can show users a different mental model.
TIP: Using metaphors is always a good idea to help users get a conceptual model.
UX is the feeling, emotional response, assessment and user satisfaction regarding a product, a result of the phenomenon of interaction with the product and the interaction with their provider.
