5 psychological effects that can and should be applied in UX/UI. How famous psychological experiments help to create quality and effective digital products.
Psychology plays a crucial role in UX/UI design. From managing cognitive load to creating an emotionally rich experience, every aspect contributes to a more intuitive and user-friendly design.
A good interface reduces load by making it easier to use. To do this, we need to understand how the human brain works.
Understanding the psychology of user engagement and motivation is key to creating quality web design. Technology continues to evolve, but the fusion of psychology and UX/UI design will remain the basis for creating working digital products.
Distantly, this piece echoes the articles "Laws of UX/UI: Part 1" and "Laws of UX/UI: Part 2", check them out for sure. There are a lot of laws and principles there too, based on psychological, mental and behavioral characteristics of people.
So, discoveries from the field of psychology and how you can use them.
1. The Proteus Effect
What is the essence of it?
The Proteus Effect is the tendency for people to evaluate other characteristics of a person or object based on their initial impressions or overall impression. For example, if we find someone attractive, we tend to assume that person has other positive qualities, such as intelligence, kindness, or reliability, even if we don't know the person personally.
Proteus is a character in Greek mythology with the ability to change appearance, from which the name is derived. The term was introduced in 1923 by American psychologist Edward T. Hallowell and is still used today.
How can you apply it?
In the context of UX/UI design, the Protean Effect can manifest itself in the fact that users may evaluate certain aspects of a design based on their overall impression of the product or interface. For example, an attractive visual design can create a positive impression, which in turn can make users more inclined to evaluate other aspects such as functionality and usability in a more favorable light.
It's also a good move for sales pages. The product is pretty average? That's okay, it can be made more attractive by wrapping it in a nice cover. Add a nice impression by listing the company's benefits. Work on the design of the site. And among other analogs, the user will be inclined to choose your product.
2. "The Invisible Gorilla"
What's the point?
Users have selective attention. They focus on certain objects, often losing sight of other things. Attention is not a limitless resource, it is impossible to notice all details at once. Therefore, we often select the main thing and sift out what we think are unimportant objects.
Researchers Chabris and Simons for a fascinating proof of this effect received the Nobel Prize, by the way. They showed a group of people a clip of basketball players throwing the ball to each other. The subjects were told to keep track of how many times certain players passed the ball. And in the center of what was happening in the video appeared the team's mascot in a gorilla suit. As it turned out, the vast majority of the subjects didn't notice it when they were asked about it after the video was shown! Because they were focused on something else.
How can you apply this?
When creating a specific user path on a website or app it's important not to create unnecessary noise on the page, so that users can easily focus on what's important. And guiding the user clearly through the funnel without distracting them is your key objective. Laconicity and smart use of white space help us in this.
Another aspect of selective attention is blindness to change. A person may not notice a small detail if they are already used to it not being there. So try to state what's important to convey right up front. For example, error conditions when filling out a field. When a person is focused on the form, he may not see that he made a mistake somewhere. A user can easily miss a notification if it doesn't address their primary goal of filling out fields and taking a conversion action. Make the bars bright and obvious, enough to overwhelm even a gorilla on a basketball court.
3. The Holdauser effect
What is the point?
The Holdauser effect shows that people prefer to choose the middle option, which is between two extremes, when presented with a choice. This is because the middle option is usually perceived as the safest, most universal and acceptable.
It was proposed and described by American psychologist Edward Holdauser in 1906. And is still relevant today.
How can you apply it?
This principle is also known as the "Middle Option Effect." In the context of UX/UI design, this effect can be applied to offer users a middle option for a product or feature that will be most appealing and usable. For example, if a photo processing application is being developed, you can offer the user a middle option for brightness or contrast settings that will work best for most photos. This will help simplify the selection process for the user and improve their overall experience with the product.
In marketing, it is not uncommon to offer three plan options. Accordingly, the middle one is chosen more often, so it will be the offer you need to sell.
In the material "How to minimize rejections in freelancing" we talked about the fact that it is possible to offer a client three variants of performance/pricing. This is also an opportunity to put the Holdauser Effect into practice. Check out the article, you may find a lot more useful there.
4. The Weber-Fechner effect
What is the essence of it?
The Weber-Fechner effect is a psychophysical law that describes the relationship between the intensity of a physical stimulus and its perceived strength or brightness. The essence of the law is that the perception of changes in the stimulus depends not on the absolute change, but on the relative change in the intensity of the stimulus.
This effect is based on the research of German psychologists Gustav Fechner and Ernst Weber back in the 19th century. In an experiment, participants were presented with different stimuli, such as sounds, light, or the weight of an object, and asked to rate the intensity of the stimulus. The scientists observed that the perception of changes in the stimulus was proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of the stimulus intensities.
In practice, it will be clearer. For example, if the light level increases from 10 to 100 units, this will be perceived as a greater change than an increase from 1,000 to 1,090 units. Although in both cases the difference is the same in fact, it is felt differently. Because 10 to 100 is a noticeable change from dark to light. And 1000 and 1090 are both too bright, and the other too bright.
How can you apply that?
The law means that to create a sense of uniform change in the perception of a stimulus, you need to increase its intensity in proportion to its initial level.
In UX/UI, this can be applied to adjust UI elements such as sound volume or screen brightness so that changes are noticeable and comfortable for users.
5. Hawthorne effect
What is the essence of it?
If subjects in an experiment know they are being observed, they will change their behavior almost 100% of the time, producing an irrelevant result.
This observation is proven by a study conducted by Henry Landsberger in 1955 to determine how changes in working conditions affect worker productivity. As part of the study, different changes were implemented at different periods of time: increasing or decreasing lighting, changing work schedules, providing breaks, etc.
Surprisingly, no matter what changes were implemented, worker productivity improved. For example, after increasing lighting, productivity increased, but when lighting was reduced back to baseline, productivity still continued to increase.
This unexpected result led to the conclusion that the very participation of workers in the experiment and the attention paid to them by their observers (in this case, the researchers) had a significant effect on their behavior and productivity. And they had little dependence on the innovation - the very fact of observation (and the employees' knowledge of it) played a major role.
How can you apply this?
First of all, you should realize that user testing and research only makes sense if it's done using the right experimental strategies. Therefore, surveys, app pre-launch and other activities of this nature should be "clean". The user shouldn't know what exactly you're researching.
This also applies to focus groups, which are often used before starting work on a product. If you initially explain why this survey - the results may be erroneous and will not correspond to the real situation.
It's worth trying to collect feedback unobtrusively or use other approaches. You can run blind A/B tests, investigate user behavior in real time without notifying them, analyze the heat map of the site. Or deliberately mislead test subjects - call an abstract research goal to test other aspects of their behavior, actually interesting to you.
Learn to make a competent design
The funny thing is that the effects and studies described were conducted on average 100 years ago. And at that time, no one knew about web design. But the essence of human nature has not changed. And understanding these aspects helps us make cool websites and apps, improve digital user experience, and develop something modern and convenient. Take on board discoveries from other fields of science, expand your horizons. And if you need to hone your skills and learn the basics first, welcome to the online course "UX/UI Legend"!