Bringing psychology and technology together is at the heart of UX design because UX is people. However, you do not need a degree in psychology to understand the basics of how humans function. Most psychological principles that are relevant to UX are easy to understand but make a big difference when applied correctly. Since the beginning, NN/g has always preached that the best designs are built for people as they really are — not who we wish they were.
Don Norman (one of our principals) calls himself a cognitive designer because regardless of the type of products you are working on, what matters is that you design systems for how people think. The following resources will help you explore and understand many of the psychological principles that help create the best user experiences and achieve an organization’s goals.
Attention
Although most people feel like they notice everything going on around them, their ability to do so is very limited. Humans cannot focus their attention on everything at once — their brains automatically filter out anything that doesn’t seem useful.
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Users tend not to look beyond what they immediately notice — even if important info is right on the screen. |
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People often miss changes that are small and occur outside of their area of focus. |
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Change Blindness Causes People to Ignore What Designers Expect Them to See |
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Changes in certain design elements frequently go unnoticed by users. Designers must help users to notice these changes. |
Gestalt Principles
People perceive order in the world around them. The Gestalt principles describe heuristics that people use to decide whether certain stimuli are part of the same whole.
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The Gestalt principles describe how people perceive visual elements and group them into bigger objects. |
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Items enclosed within the same border or container are perceived as part of the same group. |
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People tend to fill in blanks to perceive a complete object whenever a set of external stimuli partially matches that object. |
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Elements with similar characteristics are perceived as part of the same group. |
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Elements that are close to each other are perceived as part of the same group. |
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This principle refers to how people distinguish an object (the figure) from its background (the ground). |
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Elements arranged in visual paths and sequences are perceived as part of the same whole. |
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Elements that are synchronized or coordinated in movement are perceived as part of the same group. |
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Explicitly connected objects are perceived as being a single unit. |
Memory
Human memory is limited and imperfect. The limits of human memory affect people’s ability to process information and shape the way information is stored for long periods.
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Memory Capacity and Limitations |
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People will remember very little of what they see on the web, so designs should aid their short-term memory. |
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Working memory is a type of short-term memory that stores information relevant to the current task. Systems should avoid straining users’ working memory by providing ways to offload information into an external memory. |
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User interfaces should not force users to memorize information; it should be provided for them to reference. |
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Usability Heuristic 6: Recognition vs. Recall in User Interfaces |
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People can hold only around 7 chunks of information in their short-term memory at one time. |
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Present information in meaningful chunks to help people process and remember it. |
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Reducing extraneous cognitive load improves the usability of any interface. |
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How and Why Information Is Remembered |
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Exposure to a stimulus increases people’s ability to retrieve information that is related to that stimulus. |
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People tend to remember peak events (whether positive or negative) and final events. |
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People remember imprecise locations of interface elements. |
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The Power Law of Learning: Consistency vs. Innovation in User Interfaces |
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As people are repeatedly exposed to the same stimulus, their ability to remember it increases. |
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Relevant, high-quality visuals placed next to associated text can enhance users’ ability to understand and remember content. |
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The Picture-Superiority Effect: Harness the Power of Visuals |
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People often remember visuals better than words. |
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People tend to remember unfinished tasks better than completed ones. |
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Sensemaking
People are not like cameras. They do not objectively capture information and process it the same way as anyone else would. People constantly try to make sense of the world by relying on their own experiences and understandings. However, sometimes these perceptions are accurate and sometimes they are not.
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The way people think something works influences how they will interact with it. |
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Users click on links that seem most closely related to their tasks and interests. |
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Information Foraging: A Theory of How People Navigate on the Web |
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Users continue searching for information only when the benefit of doing so seems to outweigh the cost. |
Decision Making and Choice
Having more options does not always lead to greater satisfaction. Making choices (especially complex ones) is difficult and requires significant mental effort. Guiding users through decisions by making things simple will improve their experience in every context.
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People shy away from situations where they might lose something because they prefer sure wins. |
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Compensatory vs Noncompensatory: 2 Decision-Making Strategies |
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People weigh the pros and cons of each alternative only when they must choose among a small number of options. |
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In many situations, people will choose the first option that meets their basic criteria. |
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Providing more choices and options makes decision making more difficult by increasing the mental effort required of users. . |
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More features in a product can easily reduce its usability. |
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Simplify decision-making workflows to help users make choices they’ll be satisfied with. |
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Combining Hick’s Law with other design techniques can make long menus easy to use. |
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UX practitioners are people too, and thus also susceptible to decision biases. |
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Clearly highlight key differences between options to help users select the right option. |
Motor Processes and Interaction
Interactions between humans and technology are inherently limited by human abilities and their willingness to act. To create the best user experiences, systems need to adapt to people, not people to systems.
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The total amount of resources required — both mental and physical — in any web interaction makes up the interaction cost. |
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The higher the interaction cost, the less likely it is that users will take an action. |
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Users expect systems to respond quickly. Their patience varies based on the context. |
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Users can click on page elements more quickly and accurately if they are large and close to their cursors/fingers. |
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Motivation
UX designers must create usable designs, but they must also create designs that people are motivated to use. However, leveraging what we know about human motivation in ways that harm people is both unethical and harmful for a business.
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Meeting the three fundamental human needs increases user motivation and satisfaction. |
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Self-Determination Theory: Users Want Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competency |
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Users appreciate the freedom to interact with designs in ways that align with their priorities |
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Users aren't lazy, they're efficient: people tend to take the path of least resistance when using devices. |
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Fresh Start Effect: How to Motivate Users with New Beginnings |
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People are more motivated to make commitments after life events that encourage new beginnings. |
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Deceptive patterns used in video games make an engaging experience into a negative and addicting one. |
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Social media has become increasingly gamified through the quantification of traditionally qualitative interactions. |
Cognitive Biases
Patterns that describe systematic ways in which people deviate from rational thinking are often called biases or heuristics. These biases are mental shortcuts people use to save themselves from doing extra mental work when making sense of the world.
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People tend to think that others have the same views and attitudes as themselves. |
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People judge a person or thing based on a single observed attribute. |
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People (including UX practitioners) tend to seek out information they agree with and reject information they don't agree with. |
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People overestimate the prevalence and importance of information they were recently exposed to. |
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People give more attention to negative comments and experiences than to positive ones. |
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Initial information that a person is exposed to can affect their subsequent decisions. |
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Decision Frames: How Cognitive Biases Affect UX Practitioners |
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The way information is presented changes how it is interpreted and what decisions are made. |
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Because of certain predictable biases, respondents will not answer honestly in badly written surveys. |
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Becoming fixated on one way of seeing a problem makes it difficult to come up with varied and creative solutions. |
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People often modify their behavior if they know they are being observed. |
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People generally do not change defaults. |
Persuasion and Influence
Although they may not realize it, many people are not firmly decided on a course of action until they take it. Psychology describes how people give weight to certain types of information as they choose courses of action and the factors that can nudge their decisions.
Trust is foundational to all relationships — including relationships between users and websites. It is important for designs to establish credibility and win users’ trust to develop a long-term relationship.
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The Reciprocity Principle: Give Before You Take in Web Design |
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When people are given something freely, they generally feel a need to repay the kind gesture. |
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People reference opinions and behaviors of others to guide their own behaviors. |
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People are persuaded by the opinions and actions of those they like and are similar to. |
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Scarcity Principle: Making Users Click RIGHT NOW or Lose Out |
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When people have limited access to a resource, they perceive it to be more valuable. |
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Those with recognized authority (in virtually any domain) hold strong persuasive power over others. |
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Someone committed to a course of action feels pressure to follow through with it. |
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Deceptive patterns are design choices that make it more difficult for a user to take their desired actions. |
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Don’t Trick Users: 2 Ways to Avoid Deceptive Design Patterns |
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A few careful considerations can help designers avoid deceptive patterns. |
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Sneaking refers to a deceptive pattern that tricks customers into agreeing to something they did not intend to. |
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The Rhetorical Triangle for Stakeholders: Make Your Point and Get Your Way |
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Logic, credibility, and emotional appeal craft a convincing argument. |
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Jakob Nielsen summarizes a book on persuasive design written by B.J. Fogg. |
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Trust |
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Users do not want to commit to an ongoing relationship and share personal information before they trust an organization. |
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Certain design choices have power to help or hurt users' trust in a website. |
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People weigh the advantages and the dangers associated with sharing personal data. |
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When evaluating users' credibility perceptions, first identify which page elements they notice, then what they think of them. |
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Emotion and Delight
Don Norman wrote, “without emotions, your decision-making ability would be impaired.” Emotions play a critical role in daily functioning and determine which experiences will delight people.
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Emotions are an important part of human functioning. |
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Humans tend to have emotional reactions to products at three levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. |
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Some methods are better than others for evaluating visceral, behavioral, and reflective delight. |
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A Theory of User Delight: Why Usability Is the Foundation for Delightful Experiences |
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Designs can delight users at two levels: on the surface and on a deep, fundamental level. |
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When a design is attractive users tend to perceive it as easier to use (whether it really is or not). |
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The Aesthetic Usability Effect and Prioritizing Appearance vs. Functionality |
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Functionality and usability should not be sacrificed to prioritize an attractive appearance. |
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Users ultimately experience joy by getting something done, not from creative visuals. |
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First Impressions Matter: How Designers Can Support Humans’ Automatic Cognitive Processing |
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The initial visceral reactions users have to a design affect their subsequent experiences with it and perceptions of it. |
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People attribute human-like characteristics to systems that reflect their personality back to them. |
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Attitudes toward Technology
The way people use technology affects their lives. Designers must take care to impact people in positive ways through the designs they create.
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Users begin with one task and then get sucked into "the vortex" by getting distracted. This often causes negative emotional reactions. |
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Children’s Exposure to Digital Technology Causes Parental Anxiety |
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Many parents have strong concerns about the effects of technology on their children. |
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