1. Psychology & Human Behavior
“A great design is a blend of pixels, meaning & emotions”
Presented By I Nishant Singh - Usability Professional TCS

2. WHAT ARE WE GOING
TO LEARN
➤ Why Psychology/Human Behaviour in UX?
➤ Activity 1: Principles of Psychology
➤ Other Psychological Methods to apply in UX
➤ Areas of Human Behaviour
➤ Emotional Advantage
➤ Psychology behind CTAs
➤ How to approach a Good Design
➤ Resources to Learn
➤ Activity 2: Improve a product (Base your solutions
on psychology)

3. WHY PSYCHOLOGY &
BEHAVIOUR IN
USER HUMANEXPERIENCES
Why don’t the user get it?
or
Why does the user like this?
or
Why some designs work and others don’t?

4. RE-DESIGN IS A
SERIOUS LOSS
TIME - MONEY - RESOURCES
DO WE REALLY WANT TO BUILD SOMETHING THAT
DOESN’T WORK?
OR
SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE HATE?

5. PRINCIPLES THAT AFFECT HUMAN
BEHAVIOUR
HOW TO USE THEM AS WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE

6. ACTIVITY TIME
GUESS THE PSYCHOLOGY PRINCIPLE USED IN THE
IMAGES

10. PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY
➤ Sense of obligation
➤ Morally bound by the rule to do something
➤ Something like a favour/act of kindness/a service
➤ More likely to return the favour
➤ Increases the probability of making business
➤ Nielsen Norman Group(NN/g) - https://www.nngroup.com
➤ In case of vice-versa, people are more likely to abandon the site
“GIVE YOUR USERS SOMETHING BEFORE YOU
ASK FOR ANYTHING IN RETURN.”

14. COMMITMENT
➤ Promise to provide a value
➤ Instills a sense of responsibility
➤ Telling users to trust your business
➤ Being loyal to the end users
➤ Building long term relationships
“PROMISE, DELIVER AND
MAKE BUSINESS”

16. CONSISTENCY
➤ Providing value as promised
➤ Being specific tells users when to expect what they need
➤ Feeling of satisfaction
➤ Avoids false expectations at wrong times
➤ Meeting the increased expectations
➤ Stronger relationship which builds over time
“DELIVER WHAT IS PROMISED AT
THE RIGHT TIME”

20. SOCIAL PROOFING (RATINGS, REVIEWS, TESTIMONIALS &
RECOMMENDATIONS)
➤ Human behaviour is guided by others behaviour
➤ Natural human tendency - to behave correctly - how its gets validated
➤ More likely to buy a product
➤ Builds trust on the product
➤ Influences the “Decision Making Process”
➤ Shopping Experiences(window shopping, YouTube views, LinkedIn endorsements, movie reviews)
➤ My Shoes - A result of influenced behaviour
“MAKE YOUR USERS BELIEVE THAT YOUR
PRODUCT IS WORTH BUYING”

22. PRINCIPLE OF LIKING
➤ Can’t resist the feeling and ultimately saying “yes”
➤ E.g. - “earning credits/cash backs/coins” - many apps use this - receive credits when others
install apps on their references
➤ Candy Crush(Principle of reciprocity also acting seamlessly here)
➤ CrownIt
➤ Why are we here?
“MAKE PEOPLE BUILD YOUR
BUSINESS”

26. PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY
➤ Being confident with CTAs
➤ Commanding tone instead of asking
“COMMANDS ALWAYS WORK,
ASKING DOESN’T”

29. PRINCIPLE OF SCARCITY
➤ Causes people to assign high value to things they perceive as being less available
➤ Human nature: Putting more subjective value on loss than on the gain
➤ Sense of loosing something valuable
➤ Things to play with in terms of the scarcity rule
➤ Number of goods
➤ Limited Time
➤ Making information scarce via newsletters
➤ What is so important that everyone is buying it
➤ Sense of high quality
➤ E.g. - Black Friday Sale(Day before thanksgiving in US), railway tickets, loosing $100 than gaining
“SCARCITY, USED IN MODERATION AND WITH TRUE INFORMATION,
CAN ENCOURAGE USERS TO MOVE MORE SWIFTLY TOWARDS
CONVERTING ON OUR SITE”

30. Principle of Reciprocity
Commitment & Consistency
Social Proofing
Authority
Liking
Principle of Scarcity
LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT THEM AGAIN

31. SOME OTHER
METHODS/RULES
TO APPLY

32. RULE OF THIRDS
➤ Aligning a subject with these points creates more
tension, energy and interest in the composition
than simply centering the subject
➤ Dull if centered
➤ Tension between the object & negative space
➤ More like a guideline than a rule
➤ Makes composition more dynamic
➤ Contrast in objects

39. MAGIC NUMBER 7+/-2
➤ Number of objects an average human mind can hold in working memory is 7+/-2
➤ More choices -> Less satisfaction
➤ More choices -> More confusion
➤ Decreases the efficiency and hence effects decision making
➤ Can be implemented where user details are required
➤ Filtering out the options
“DON’T CONFUSE YOUR USERS. HELP THEM PROCEED TOWARDS
THEIR GOALS & ALWAYS ASK IN CHUNKS”

43. FITT’S LAW
➤ Descriptive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction.
➤ “This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of
the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target.”
➤ ID - Index of Difficulty, D - Distance & W - Width
➤ CTAs for touch based devices

44. MIRROR NEURONS
➤ Neurons that mirror the behaviour of other as though the observer were itself acting
➤ Instigates copying mechanism
➤ Implemented in Learning Mechanisms
➤ E.g. - Movies, cookies :)
“IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO DO SOMETHING, SHOW
SOMEONE ELSE DOING IT”

47. DOPAMINE
➤ Body compound
➤ Precursor of substances like adrenalin
➤ Pleasure seeking chemical
➤ Gaming - pleasure people experience and the desire to continue
➤ Motivation, mindset, attention & retention
➤ Spikes during high stress
➤ Eliminate the unnecessary stress not all
“MOTIVATE, EXCITE AND LET USER HAVE THE PLEASURE
OF USING YOUR PRODUCT”

48. AREAS OF HUMAN
BEHAVIOUR
➤ Abilities and Limitations
➤ Specific user goals
➤ Multitasking & Business Goals
➤ Least work possible
➤ Patterns
➤ Scanning
➤ Mistakes - Anticipate, Predict & Prevent - Undo
➤ Confirmation through states
➤ Inline Validation
➤ Modularity - Dividing tasks into chunks - forms
➤ Interaction, User Feedback and Testing
➤ Human Cognition/Cognitive Psychology
➤ Mental Models (Shapes/Conventions/Past Experiences)
➤ Problem Solving and Decision Making
➤ Emotion Driven Behaviour

49. EMOTIONAL ADVANTAGE
➤ Frustration
➤ Rush
➤ Age Groups/Generations
➤ Memory & Knowledge
➤ Genuineness
➤ Change Blindness
➤ Distraction
➤ Extra Effort
➤ Past Experience
➤ Recall/Relearn
➤ Mistakes - Anticipate, Predict and Prevent - Undo Mistakes

51. CALLS TO ACTIONS(CTAs)
- BUSINESS DRIVER

52. PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND CTAs & HOW TO
IMPLEMENT
➤ Gifts (Reciprocity/Scarcity Principle) - To add value
➤ Size and Placement (Fitt’s Law and Rule of Thirds)
➤ Feedback
➤ Progress State
➤ Enticing Calls to Actions

53. 1. Double Diamond Design Model - British Design Council - 2005
2. User Research - Observation & Usability Testing
3. Psychology of Color, Type and Shapes (Things that can be taken advantage of)
4. Affordances
5. Feedback - Beeps/Tones/Clicks
6. Stand out(Rule of Thirds) - Visual Perception & Appeal - Eye-tracking studies
7. Make things obvious
8. Defaults
9. Improve CTAs
10. Current State
11. Confirmation for severe things
12. Minimal Design(Avoid Featuritis/Creeping Featurism)
13. Dopamine: Grab and hold attention of end-user/human
HOW TO APPROACH A GOOD DESIGN

54. MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE AC
REMOTE

55. ACTIVITY TIME
Improve a product (Base your solutions on psychology)

57. FEW GREAT RESOURCES TO LEARN
➤ INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini
➤ Research at Google: Human-Computer Interaction & Visualisation
➤ NN/g Group: Articles & Reports