UX Design and Human Psychology
UX Design means User Experience Design. The ‘user’ is a person (a human being), ‘experience’ is an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone and ‘design’ is to plan. That means we as UX designers deals with the experience of the user, to make the user's experience better every time they use the product.
So, to make the user's experience better the UX designers dig deep into human psychology to understand ‘how does the human brain perceive things’.
For better understanding and to simplify the process there are some Laws of UX brought to light by some famous people, considering these laws we can make our designs more accessible to the user.
If we think about human psychology as a whole, it's a very complex topic to understand completely. But if we focus upon the basic human activities we will be able to understand that there are some similarities in them.
Some Examples:
- ZEIGARNIK EFFECT- It says People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
We often remember things we have started but forgot to complete or it is not completed for some reason other than a task that has been complete already.
Every time I kept any task incomplete or left any order incomplete, the application itself gives us a notification that the task is incomplete its needs to be completed in this way you will keep in mind the incomplete task.
Some people also make a to-do list so that they can easily remember the task that is needed to be done.
In the above examples, the left image is showing that you have not completed the topics through a progress indicator. and on the right-hand side, Flipkart reminds you of your incomplete order by mobile notification.
2. JACOB’S LAW- According to this law users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Most people avoid changes. They are comfortable with the things they are familiar with.
In the above image, the same thing happened these are some of the hotel booking sites that are using similar patterns for searching a hotel (like location, check-in check-out, and no. of guests and then search). If they suddenly change this pattern the user might get lost or confused about how to go forward and probably leave the site.
Hence this law says that when making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version.
3. FITT’S LAW- This law says that the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
It says that the target should be close to the user and the size of the target should be bigger so that it can be easily assessable by the user and the cognitive load is less.
As you can see in these examples that there is only one target that is being prominent at once and they are large enough so that the user can easily achieve the target without any cognitive load.
4. LAW OF SIMILARITY-The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.
Above is an example of the law of similarity which is using rectangles and squares of different sizes to categories the type of music. The first thing which we notice when we open this website is the shapes, which indicates that our brain naturally notices the pattern and tries to organize similar ones.
By using different shapes for the different categories of music our eyes can easily scan and understand to decide without putting much effort into thinking.
The law of similarity is a very straightforward yet powerful way of creating experiences and interfaces that are easy to navigate and cause little cognitive friction.
5. POSTEL’S LAW-The Postel's law says that “be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send”.
This law is my favorite because this applies not only to the digital world but also to our personal lives which says that we should be willing to give more and expect less from others.
A UI UX Designer should be very empathetic to its user and should be tolerant of any of the various actions the user could take or any input they might provide.
The above image shows that while we start typing on the address search bar it automatically shows related options so that the user does not have to recall(or put cognitive load) and get the proper complete address without filling separate fields for them (like a separate field for Pincode, locality, state, etc).
It also applies the heuristic principle of flexibility and efficiency of use which says a UI design should provide the user the flexibility of picking whatever method works for them.
