Psychology Behind UIUX Design

good morning everyone

today i’m going to be talking about

psychology in ux design

ux stands for user experience

now why is it important for us

to involve psychology when we’re talking

about user experience design

that’s because humans are

complicated well no surprise there

we all are very complicated we all are

very different from one another

different in so many so many ways so how

will tech company

make us choose to use their application

and that’s actually pretty easy that’s

by influencing the one thing

that is common among all of us

well actually that’s five things and

that’s our senses

touch hearing eyesight smell

and taste these are our five senses

these are

these are the sensors that app

developers will use

to influence you to make decisions so

touch hearing and eyesight are the

sensors that are available to app

developers to influence you

smell and taste no you can’t really

influence that through an app

well you can’t smell anything through

your phone and i know

when your friend sends you a snap of the

food that they’re eating

it would be amazing if you could lick

your phone

and taste the food but you can’t really

do that

but to think about it that’s a scary

level of technology to be honest

and would you really want that all right

so by a show of hands from a visual

perspective

do you think that the food on the right

is more expensive

all right do you think that the food on

your left

is more expensive

okay so what can we infer from this

the food on the right clearly has lesser

food

but since it’s presented to you in a

beautiful manner

and since it has vibrant colors it’s

clear to say

that user interface and the way it’s

presented to you

is very very important so that leads us

to

beautiful interface now how can we

design

beautiful interface that’s by that’s by

following two important points how much

information you’re trying to provide and

how are you trying to provide that

information

let’s take a look at an example shall we

let’s look at this menu

there’s so much information in the menu

it’s so hard for your brain to process

all that information on one at

at one go so that provides a certain

that kind of elicits a certain level of

stress on your brain

and that is called cognitive overload

but that doesn’t look right cognitive

overload is the amount of stress that

you put on your brain

when you’re trying to learn new content

so as you saw from the menu

there was just way too much information

that was given to you at one go

so it’s pretty hard for you to process

all that information

as you saw from the previous slide the

colors were just

way too bright and was just off and

process and colors can also be pretty

taxing

on your mind and thus making a good

choice in the amount of information

that you’re trying to provide and how

you’re trying to provide that

information

is very very important and that brings

us

to processing and perception fluency

what is this this is the ease with which

we can process information

and let me tell you i’m going to give

you two examples of how

information is being presented to you so

these are websites of two tech

giants and there’s nothing wrong with uh

with the design

but it’s just two different approaches

both of these tech companies

offer similar functionalities but it’s

just the way that they choose to

portray it or provide the information to

you

i’m pretty sure you’ve all been on this

website

i hope everyone has so let’s look at

this right

there is a search bar right in the

middle there are two buttons

search and uh i’m feeling lucky well

honestly i’ve been on this website a

billion times i’ve not pressed

that button at all

so it’s pretty clear from the layout

that

it’s search search engine is the primary

feature but they also do offer

mail news and so many other products

which is conveniently located to the top

right

hand side corner and by by clicking the

drop down box

and you’re free to access it but let’s

take a look at this website

they offer a lot of the same features as

well

but they are presenting the information

to you like this

so the news is right there the search

bar is right there

and all of the information is right

there there’s nothing wrong with either

of the approaches but it’s just the way

it is presented to you that is different

now i’m going to ask you guys to please

close your eyes for a bit

and try to feel the emotion try to feel

what comes to your mind when i say it

what do you think

uh when i say the color blue

what do you think when i say the color

green

now what do you think when i say the

color red

now please open your eyes let me tell

you what i think

all right when i hear the color blue

i think of the sky i think of the sea

it’s coming when i think about green i

think about leaves i think about open

fields i think about

grass and that’s pretty calming as well

but when i think about

red well where do we see red

on a daily basis we see red in stop

signs we see red

in traffic lights what does it tell us

it tells us to be alert

it tells us to pay attention it tells us

to to be alert and to notice something

and that’s why when notifications are

provided to us on our phone it is

red in color so every time you have a

notification from a particular app it’s

going to have a badge beside it

that indicates that you have a

notification and since it’s

red it’s going to grab your attention

and that’s why red is being used

now how do you feel when these popular

icons are gray skilled think about it

now how do you feel about them now

don’t you feel just a bit more excited

and a bit more happy to

look at them in their associated colors

i do uh let me tell you how important

colors are

to a company uh over the past decade i’m

pretty sure you’ve heard about t-mobile

the

famous telecom company they have sued

many

companies because they have used similar

shades of magenta and

this is how important uh companies take

the colors that they are associated with

now sound sound is another way

for apps to grab our attention and to

elicit

involuntary behavior and let me tell you

what i mean by that all right

so there’s this experiment that was

conducted in 1890

by a russian physiologist by the name of

ivan pavlov

so what he discovered was was that

whenever he fed his

dog he used to ring a bell and for

over the course of a few weeks he

continued doing that

and it came a point where when he

removed the stimulus

of food and he rang his belt the dog

would start to salivate

now what does this tell you it tells you

that

the the involuntary behavior of the dog

of salivating

is now paired with the ringing of a bell

and this is how an involuntary behavior

is associated with

a neutral stimulus let me give you an

example

now in our phones when our phone rings

we involuntary flinch flinch to our

phone

we reach out for it and that is why it’s

important

to give a good notification sound

let’s take a look at a few popular

ringtones shall we

[Music]

now let’s try to analyze what’s common

among these stones

they’re all they do they all have

high frequency high pitch basically

and that’s how it creates us to be

alert that makes us alert and that

elicits involuntary behavior of reaching

out to our phone

and just by hearing that notification

tones you know whether you got a message

from facebook messenger

or message or ringtone from discord and

that is the uniqueness of the apps

now let’s talk about responsiveness

humans as humans we are habituated to

responsive environments and we want the

applications to be more interactive

with us and that’s why positive

reinforcement

are built into applications let’s take a

look

at how it is done for example on

instagram or any other social media

platform

when you like a picture it’s usually

accompanied by

a vibration or a sound and this is

positive reinforcement this

makes you interact with

the app more want to interact with the

app more actually

and that’s a good thing but also if you

dislike someone’s photo or some some

content

you’re not going to be greeted with a

sound or a vibration because they do not

want to associate that with something

that you’d want to do

that’s how positive reinforcement is

done now let’s talk about positive

intermittent reinforcement now what is

this

there have been many times where i’ve

opened my

app my favorite social media app i’ve

just swiped down

to refresh the app to get new content

and new

new news feed maybe but not every time

do you get

new content this situation

is paralleled with the slot machine

up in casinos so what do you do in a

slot machine you put in a token

you pull the lever and the number starts

spinning

seven seven not seven and you keep doing

this

you put another token you pull the lever

spins

doesn’t work out but once in a while it

is going to work out

and you’ll feel happy and you’re like

okay so if i try more i’m going to get

more wins

and that is the kind of habit that’s

being

uh paralleled over here to create a sort

of an

addiction now personalization

personalization is a very very big

important part of app design so the app

should be able to work better for

you basically and how is this

accomplished this is accomplished by

building a model of you based on what

you like and

based on what you dislike and based on

your interactions with the app

so let me give you an example so in

spotify when you first

sign up and log in for the first ever

time

it’s going to ask you to select five

artists that you enjoy listening to

or three genres that you enjoy listening

to and that creates base model

of what your likes are and as you

continue

interacting with the app it would

give the model will be better built

around you based on your interactions

based on the

likes based on your dislikes based on

the songs that you’re adding to your

playlist

and all of that so as to better suggest

songs that you would enjoy

ultimately the aim is to make an

app that would be better for you

particularly to use that’s a goal

now hedonic adaptation what is this this

is

let me put in layman terms we get

accustomed to

positive and negative stimulus

so for example if i eat cookie dough ice

cream every single day for seven days

straight

i’m not gonna enjoy it anymore i’m not

gonna enjoy it as much as i had it on

the first day

and that’s because that stimulus is no

longer

providing happiness to me so

that is what hedonic adaptation is and

this will can be translated in many many

areas in our lives there’s always a

genetic set point

and the amount of happiness that we do

experience on it on a constant level

good circumstances and bad circumstances

do come and go

but that even if that happens we would

return

back to a genetic set point of happiness

so let’s take a look at this all right

this is fortnight in season one

and this is the lobby of how it was this

is

fortnite in season eight look at the

amount of changes

there are a lot of changes a lot of new

cool dance moves for sure

but the important thing to notice is

that there’s been all these frequent

updates

to get to this point and why were there

so many frequent updates

that’s so that you don’t get used to how

the app

feels once you get used to how the app

feels you want to you want something

else

it’s the same thing with me and cookie

dough ice cream now i’m tired of that i

want chocolate chip maybe

so that’s how it is so since by

providing

more updates more frequent updates and

changing how the game feels for you

they can keep you more interactive with

the app

so persuasive design this is very

important as well this is one way to

motivate the users of the app

to behave in certain way that the

developers

want you to behave you get it so

what that means is that for example

let’s take

uh let’s say the example of instagram

all right so you’ve been

sharing photos online has been around

for a long time

but then instagram came in and uh

sharing photos

was never more fun and never more

interactive and never more awesome to be

honest

so when you post a picture what happens

your followers get notified about it and

every interaction that

anyone has on that picture on that photo

or video

you’re going to be notified with the

prompt of a notification about it

and that prompt will make you personally

to interact more with the like or

comment or anything that your followers

has done with your photo and that is the

design of notifications to make you

interact with the particular app

more and this is done across many many

apps

so all of this all of the influence on

our senses

is to ultimately target the dopamine

system in our brains

so what is dopamine dopamine is the

chemical that is released to make us

feel happy and the ultimate part is if

you feel happy about using an

app you would use it more and that is

what

it’s all about so let’s talk about

social media addiction cycle let’s

see that what happens is when you

perform an action by writing a post

or sharing a picture what you do is

you wait for a reaction that is what all

of us do

i’m pretty sure the day where i post a

picture or photo or video that’s a day

when i open instagram

like 10 times more than any other day

just to see how i’m doing maybe

so what you do is you wait for reaction

it creates an anticipation about it

and it goes on so why is all this so

important

back when phones used to look like this

for all you did was call

and sms and maybe play the snake game on

your phone

and that’s pretty much it but now when

phones look like this

what you do is you have 100 other apps

out there

which are competing for your attention

and all your users attention is what the

companies want and that’s what apps are

designed for

now i want to leave you all with this

quote

there are only two industries that call

their customers users

illegal drugs and software

now that’s something to think about

thank you

you