The Influence Of Psychology In Design

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This week, we are going to talk about the influence of psychology in design and we will also consider some psychological principles that influence design.

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UX Categories, Career paths in UX, The Gestalt principles, Deceptive patterns in UX, User centred design

Now let's dive into our topic for today.

Psychology plays a huge role in design . It helps you to understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to creating an amazing user experience. As a matter of fact, user experience is not complete without knowing your user pain points and you need to figure out how to solve these problems by understanding some human factors that inform design such as concentration, impatience, fears, prejudices and limited memory.

Let's briefly take a look at some psychological principles that influence design.

1. Von Restorff effect

This is also known as the “isolation effect”. This principle states that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely going to be remembered. This rule can be used when you want to distinguish a certain action that a user must take while interacting with your product. An example of this is a CTA(Call-To-Action) button or links or text.

2. Serial Position effect

This states that when people are given a list of items, they are more likely to remember the first few and last few while the items at the middle tend to look blurry. While designing a product, it is important for you to make sure that the most important or captivating information is the first thing the user sees when they come in contact with your product.

3. Hike’s Law

This states that the more options a user has, the more difficult it is for them to make a decision and the more choices they have, the longer it will take for them to make a decision. Hike’s law can help you as a designer to determine how many features you should provide on each page of your website or mobile app and how this influences how your users approach decision making in general. One efficient way to implement hike’s law is by categorizing the options.

As stated earlier, it is important to keep these principles in mind while designing a product to ensure that you give your users an unforgettable and amazing UX.

Do you know more principles in addition to the ones stated in this article that influences design?

Please do well to share your thoughts with me in the comment section.

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I hope you found this article helpful.

Until my next post, bye for now.