Throughout this blog, we will be discussing three psychology principles that every UI and UX designer needs to know about. Psychology plays a huge factor in a user’s experience when it comes to any website or application. By understanding how a user perceives something or how they interact with things, you can tweak your designs better and make them more useful. Therefore, in this blog, we will cover the three essential psychological principles when it comes to user experience or interface design.
The Von Restorff Effect
The first principle we will be going over has an extremely fancy name, but in reality, it’s a straightforward concept. The Von Restorff Effect says if there’s multiple of the same item, and there’s one unique item, it’s most likely to be remembered. This probably sounds familiar since it’s a fancy way of saying one of these things is not like the other. This is where people get the idea of the main call to action.
These can include a button that is an accent color, which is larger and is consistent throughout the design. There are numerous ways to use the Von Restroff Effect in every design that you do by adding contrast, breaking the repetition, and jumping outside of a grid.
There are so many ways to do it, but what you’re trying to do is draw the eye to an individually unique item and make it stand out from the pack.
Hick’s Law
It’s a very simple concept to understand. This law states that the time it takes for a user to make a decision depends on the number of options that are available to them. If the number of options increases, so does time for the user to make a decision.
You can think of this by picturing an aged Italian restaurant menu with over one-hundred items to choose from. From this point, it would be hard to decide since you could feel so overwhelmed by the number of options. Then, every decision would have different variations, and it would be much harder to order in that restaurant than in a chic bistro with a limited menu.
Serial Position Effect
The common way that users tend to remember is the first and last item in any given series. For example, if you were to hear someone list off a series of items that they had in a drawer such as keys, paperclips, rubber bands, and stamps, you’re most likely to remember keys and stamps as the first and last thing that you heard.
This is why most mobile applications will defer to the standard defacto tab bar navigation at the bottom of the screen, putting essential navigation items on the left and right sides. The primary reason for this is because it’s putting it right there within thumb reach at the bottom of your screen. Then, the number two reason would be because it’s using the serial position effect and making sure it’s putting the most important things in your memory and within reach.
In Summary
Those are the top three psychology principles to be used inside of your next design to make it more effective. These principles can help you create a better user experience for your website design and more engaging content for users. Knowing which web design company to pick will make or break the success of your site. We suggest you look at TOLS Multimedia.
