7 ms·

UX Crash Course: User Psychology

113 points by JoelMarsh 12y ago

usablebytes 12y ago
Thanks. It's a good quick run-through with the fundamentals and lives up to the title. I wish there would be simple and short illustrative examples/case-studies - or links to it - in the lessons to prove each point.
Aardwolf 12y ago
My psychology is unfortunately different than most users, which means UI's suck for me nowadays. I want more information on screen, more settings, more logic. The UI trend however seems to be less information on screen, less settings, and more "The UI knows better what you want than you do" :(
- tommi 12y ago
  Can you give an example of an case where you want more settings instead of more suitable UI for your needs?
  - Aardwolf 12y ago
    Sure. Allowing to set ranges yourself rather than infinite scrolling that makes it impossible to go back to number X. A setting to always show little icons instead of only when the mouse hovers over it. Settings to organize lots of data the way you want. Settings to let a single mouse click on a bookmark star put it in the place you want rather than some place where you don't want it. Settings to always expand all content in a thread rather than showing things collapsed first so that you need to open each individually. Settings to put the refresh button next to the forward and back button. A setting to have multiple rows of taskbars in your favorite Linux desktop env. Settings to fix anything that's annoying and designed for less knowledgeable users or users with small screens basically.
  - silverbax88 12y ago
    One example that sums up most: Twitter. I just want to see/display the feed, not have the UI decide which ones to deem 'important'. I'd like for the app to allow the power of CSS to let me choose a layout as opposed to just picking one that doesn't really work for me. The overall problem is that what UI designers think 'a more suitable UI' is, probably won't be for many users. Think of it like the open-office plan. It's horrible for employees, most people absolutely hate it, it lowers productivity, and yet corporations have people on staff who are implementing it as fast as they possibly can because it's more "suitable".
- userbinator 12y ago
  Can't agree more, but it could be a cultural thing too - see all the discussion around Western vs East Asian web/UI design, for example. So your psychology might actually be the norm for an Asian user, if by "most users" you mean the West.
  - Aardwolf 12y ago
    Well, I'm not Asian so I don't know. I'm a programmer tho. So for me things should be logical and controllable in orthogonal ways, and if there is lots of information display it in ways designed for maximum efficiency of absorbing information (good controllable aggregations, good use of the visual system and screen real estate, fast scrolling, ...).
- silverbax88 12y ago
  I think this actually represents a massive gap between what UI or UX designers believe and what users actually prefer. Consider this: Microsoft Windows (prior to Windows 8) was by all accounts a clunky, poorly conceived UI...that allowed users to modify it to look just about any way they wanted. Now we have applications like Twitter and Facebook constantly re-arranging their users layout, and the most recent changes have been to increase font size, reduce the information on the screen, all of the things that many users (such as myself) do not want. I find this perplexing...how did we as a UI culture going from having bad design that I could control to having bad design that I can't control?
JonoBB 12y ago
I'm really not quite sure what to make of this advice: http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-course-user-psychology-27-of-31 http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-... > If your marketing department wants to know anything about why the user is cancelling, put it in the form. Two pages of boring questions is a great way to reduce conversion. > Break the form into many pages so it takes longer. Include links to FAQ pages. And avoid using defaults; it maximizes the number of conscious choices for the user. > Ask them to explain their reasons for cancelling, and require at least 100 letters of text. Explaining is hard when your reasons are emotional. Really? Obviously I don't want to make it too easy for users to cancel, but to make it too hard just seems petty to me. Asking them to fill out the reasons for cancellation is a great idea (and worked really well for us), but forcing them to write at least 100 letters is just horrible. Also, there are some users that you really do want to cancel. You know, the ones that suck up twice as much support as anyone else and complain incessantly. Surely its more important to be focusing on why users are cancelling, not luring them through a maze of "two pages of boring questions"? Does anyone reputable actually do this? There is a sweet spot somewhere in between, but this seems to be irritating and would just make me want to write complete junk responses.
- JoelMarsh 12y ago
  Author here. I agree. After a few minutes of after-thought I have updated the article to reflect this feedback. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the input.
  - tommi 12y ago
    > Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes. As a user, I hate you for that.
    - dovel 12y ago
      I agree with this sentiment. Here's some UX for you - the user owes you nothing. Sure have an optional form or field for cancellations but 5 minutes? How is this beneficial for anyone? So, it's a free product - they will just never cancel their account and you will have inactive users sitting there. Who is this good for? So it's a paid product - they will cancel their account and tell everyone about the ridiculously long winded process they had to go through to cancel it.
brianjoseff 12y ago
Hey Joel- great stuff. Can you post your sources? For example, in the Cognitive Bias Lesson in the Decoy section, where did you get this factoid: "even though nobody chooses [the decoy], if you remove it, about 60% of people will choose the cheapest option instead.". Thanks for assembling these lessons!
- JoelMarsh 12y ago
  That particular example is from Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational". All of the cognitive biases are described on Wikipedia. The links are in the articles.
fat0wl 12y ago
I did end up skimming a few more sections to see if it picked up & it was still all hollow, common sense stuff eventually descending into predatory gamification/addiction tactics. I know there are a lot of burgeoning startup types on here but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that responsible developers should strive to make a product that serves a real need for users. I want to make software that retains customers through convenience, features, value. This guide reads more like those old guides for how to use SEO to drive traffic to your dung-heap. I don't know how others feel but I want to create a good experience for my users, not convince the masses that they are my users so I can go to some freemium lowest-common-denominator model. Is web dev the wrong place for me or are we just in a bubble phase for these people who try to use their "clever interfaces" to regress humans to some animal state? (If you look at the chapter headers in this guide I don't think I'm out of line... its literally about addiction, sex, etc.)
- Yetanfou 12y ago
  We seem to be in a phase where there are many solutions being developed in search for problems which either are so trivial as not to be worth solving or which don't exist in the first place. The PC and the 'net were the incubators for this phenomenon which really took flight when the 'net became small enough to fit in the average pocket. Now there are 'apps' for everyone and everything, all vying for your limited attention. Alls you need to do is go back in time a bit, say 150 years, to see some parallels with the way that newfangled electricity thing was seen as the solution for all life's problems. Doctors waving Geissler tubes over their patients to cure, electrical beds to improve women's sex drive, electrical hairbrushes because, well, it's electrical and thus cures rheumatism and constipation, electrical baths - both dry and wet - to improve health and stamina, electric underwear to 'cure any ailment'. And now? Electricity has certainly revolutionised society, but not by using it to cure constipation or zap innocent bathtubs. The web also revolutionised society, and the mobile 'net is poised to extend that revolution even further - but not by creating dating apps or yet another calendar-planner-todo-list-organiser.
  - theblackswan 12y ago
    add whatsapp to the list.. today world is spending 90% of time in 99% of useless stuff. It such a great time to work in fields of physics, quantum, nano, medicine,space etc which will uplift humanity to a great level.. But seems all the resource($+manpower) is behind the fif*.. Entertainment and more entertainment is what we are into.
toddkaufmann 12y ago
tl;dr (but I may revisit in the future). I used to think UX meant a wider "systems" approach to the man-machine interface, incorporating findings from CHI, cognitive science, user studies, etc. Now it seems like it is becoming a name for the design of marketing your product in the experience economy, not helping perform a task more efficiently (unless the "task" is selling to the user). I'd like to see some discriminating term separating this from the UI-to-the-machine (UIttM ?) where streamlined presentation of the right info just-in-time is important, versus the "create more clicks for A/B testing" sales growth-hacking / I can make a web page with fonts. I dunno, maybe this is a false dichotomy and reflects some kind of design thinking that UX is a term to apply to everything. Did a UX person design the pattern on my toilet paper?
- collyw 12y ago
  You only need to look at the Android UX principles page to see that what you are saying is true. https://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html https://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.... Back when I was at university (not so long ago), usability was like you described - it helping the user get their task done efficiently. Not the more modern version of "delighting the user in surprising ways".
boyander 12y ago
As a developer, the only thing that I have to say is: Why are you using a million canvas on your page? Are you trying to do some kind of benchmark? Please improve this.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
theblackswan 12y ago
The best sub-cancellation form I ever come across was designed in a way which will provoke you to either fill the feedback form or drop the plan to cancel. It said " {{{We must have done something bad. We feel sad you are leaving. Tell us where it went wrong, we will improve to get you back. <Form Link> . You can also give us a feedback and choose to stay till we get back better."}}} It was appealing, communicative and gives and option to stay. I was tempted to give feedback and stay..
harrybr 12y ago
Joel, this work appears to be heavily plagiarised in places. I've only had a quick browse, but it looks like you've cribbed content from UX textbooks and online sources. Some people would consider this unethical, particularly since you have something to sell on your site (your book on 'Persuasion, manipulation & brainwashing.'). The solution is simple, you need to clearly cite and link to your sources. As well as making the source authors happy, this will be very helpful for readers who want to do further research.

113 points by JoelMarsh 12y ago

Thanks. It's a good quick run-through with the fundamentals and lives up to the title. I wish there would be simple and short illustrative examples/case-studies - or links to it - in the lessons to prove each point.

Aardwolf 12y ago

My psychology is unfortunately different than most users, which means UI's suck for me nowadays. I want more information on screen, more settings, more logic. The UI trend however seems to be less information on screen, less settings, and more "The UI knows better what you want than you do" :(

tommi 12y ago
Can you give an example of an case where you want more settings instead of more suitable UI for your needs?
- Aardwolf 12y ago
  Sure. Allowing to set ranges yourself rather than infinite scrolling that makes it impossible to go back to number X. A setting to always show little icons instead of only when the mouse hovers over it. Settings to organize lots of data the way you want. Settings to let a single mouse click on a bookmark star put it in the place you want rather than some place where you don't want it. Settings to always expand all content in a thread rather than showing things collapsed first so that you need to open each individually. Settings to put the refresh button next to the forward and back button. A setting to have multiple rows of taskbars in your favorite Linux desktop env. Settings to fix anything that's annoying and designed for less knowledgeable users or users with small screens basically.
- silverbax88 12y ago
  One example that sums up most: Twitter. I just want to see/display the feed, not have the UI decide which ones to deem 'important'. I'd like for the app to allow the power of CSS to let me choose a layout as opposed to just picking one that doesn't really work for me. The overall problem is that what UI designers think 'a more suitable UI' is, probably won't be for many users. Think of it like the open-office plan. It's horrible for employees, most people absolutely hate it, it lowers productivity, and yet corporations have people on staff who are implementing it as fast as they possibly can because it's more "suitable".
userbinator 12y ago
Can't agree more, but it could be a cultural thing too - see all the discussion around Western vs East Asian web/UI design, for example. So your psychology might actually be the norm for an Asian user, if by "most users" you mean the West.
- Aardwolf 12y ago
  Well, I'm not Asian so I don't know. I'm a programmer tho. So for me things should be logical and controllable in orthogonal ways, and if there is lots of information display it in ways designed for maximum efficiency of absorbing information (good controllable aggregations, good use of the visual system and screen real estate, fast scrolling, ...).
silverbax88 12y ago
I think this actually represents a massive gap between what UI or UX designers believe and what users actually prefer. Consider this: Microsoft Windows (prior to Windows 8) was by all accounts a clunky, poorly conceived UI...that allowed users to modify it to look just about any way they wanted. Now we have applications like Twitter and Facebook constantly re-arranging their users layout, and the most recent changes have been to increase font size, reduce the information on the screen, all of the things that many users (such as myself) do not want. I find this perplexing...how did we as a UI culture going from having bad design that I could control to having bad design that I can't control?

JonoBB 12y ago

I'm really not quite sure what to make of this advice: http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-course-user-psychology-27-of-31 http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-... > If your marketing department wants to know anything about why the user is cancelling, put it in the form. Two pages of boring questions is a great way to reduce conversion. > Break the form into many pages so it takes longer. Include links to FAQ pages. And avoid using defaults; it maximizes the number of conscious choices for the user. > Ask them to explain their reasons for cancelling, and require at least 100 letters of text. Explaining is hard when your reasons are emotional. Really? Obviously I don't want to make it too easy for users to cancel, but to make it too hard just seems petty to me. Asking them to fill out the reasons for cancellation is a great idea (and worked really well for us), but forcing them to write at least 100 letters is just horrible. Also, there are some users that you really do want to cancel. You know, the ones that suck up twice as much support as anyone else and complain incessantly. Surely its more important to be focusing on why users are cancelling, not luring them through a maze of "two pages of boring questions"? Does anyone reputable actually do this? There is a sweet spot somewhere in between, but this seems to be irritating and would just make me want to write complete junk responses.

JoelMarsh 12y ago
Author here. I agree. After a few minutes of after-thought I have updated the article to reflect this feedback. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the input.
- tommi 12y ago
  > Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes. As a user, I hate you for that.
  - dovel 12y ago
    I agree with this sentiment. Here's some UX for you - the user owes you nothing. Sure have an optional form or field for cancellations but 5 minutes? How is this beneficial for anyone? So, it's a free product - they will just never cancel their account and you will have inactive users sitting there. Who is this good for? So it's a paid product - they will cancel their account and tell everyone about the ridiculously long winded process they had to go through to cancel it.

brianjoseff 12y ago

Hey Joel- great stuff. Can you post your sources? For example, in the Cognitive Bias Lesson in the Decoy section, where did you get this factoid: "even though nobody chooses [the decoy], if you remove it, about 60% of people will choose the cheapest option instead.". Thanks for assembling these lessons!

JoelMarsh 12y ago
That particular example is from Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational". All of the cognitive biases are described on Wikipedia. The links are in the articles.

fat0wl 12y ago

I did end up skimming a few more sections to see if it picked up & it was still all hollow, common sense stuff eventually descending into predatory gamification/addiction tactics. I know there are a lot of burgeoning startup types on here but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that responsible developers should strive to make a product that serves a real need for users. I want to make software that retains customers through convenience, features, value. This guide reads more like those old guides for how to use SEO to drive traffic to your dung-heap. I don't know how others feel but I want to create a good experience for my users, not convince the masses that they are my users so I can go to some freemium lowest-common-denominator model. Is web dev the wrong place for me or are we just in a bubble phase for these people who try to use their "clever interfaces" to regress humans to some animal state? (If you look at the chapter headers in this guide I don't think I'm out of line... its literally about addiction, sex, etc.)

Yetanfou 12y ago
We seem to be in a phase where there are many solutions being developed in search for problems which either are so trivial as not to be worth solving or which don't exist in the first place. The PC and the 'net were the incubators for this phenomenon which really took flight when the 'net became small enough to fit in the average pocket. Now there are 'apps' for everyone and everything, all vying for your limited attention. Alls you need to do is go back in time a bit, say 150 years, to see some parallels with the way that newfangled electricity thing was seen as the solution for all life's problems. Doctors waving Geissler tubes over their patients to cure, electrical beds to improve women's sex drive, electrical hairbrushes because, well, it's electrical and thus cures rheumatism and constipation, electrical baths - both dry and wet - to improve health and stamina, electric underwear to 'cure any ailment'. And now? Electricity has certainly revolutionised society, but not by using it to cure constipation or zap innocent bathtubs. The web also revolutionised society, and the mobile 'net is poised to extend that revolution even further - but not by creating dating apps or yet another calendar-planner-todo-list-organiser.
- theblackswan 12y ago
  add whatsapp to the list.. today world is spending 90% of time in 99% of useless stuff. It such a great time to work in fields of physics, quantum, nano, medicine,space etc which will uplift humanity to a great level.. But seems all the resource($+manpower) is behind the fif*.. Entertainment and more entertainment is what we are into.

toddkaufmann 12y ago

tl;dr (but I may revisit in the future). I used to think UX meant a wider "systems" approach to the man-machine interface, incorporating findings from CHI, cognitive science, user studies, etc. Now it seems like it is becoming a name for the design of marketing your product in the experience economy, not helping perform a task more efficiently (unless the "task" is selling to the user). I'd like to see some discriminating term separating this from the UI-to-the-machine (UIttM ?) where streamlined presentation of the right info just-in-time is important, versus the "create more clicks for A/B testing" sales growth-hacking / I can make a web page with fonts. I dunno, maybe this is a false dichotomy and reflects some kind of design thinking that UX is a term to apply to everything. Did a UX person design the pattern on my toilet paper?

collyw 12y ago
You only need to look at the Android UX principles page to see that what you are saying is true. https://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html https://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.... Back when I was at university (not so long ago), usability was like you described - it helping the user get their task done efficiently. Not the more modern version of "delighting the user in surprising ways".

boyander 12y ago

As a developer, the only thing that I have to say is: Why are you using a million canvas on your page? Are you trying to do some kind of benchmark? Please improve this.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

theblackswan 12y ago

The best sub-cancellation form I ever come across was designed in a way which will provoke you to either fill the feedback form or drop the plan to cancel. It said " {{{We must have done something bad. We feel sad you are leaving. Tell us where it went wrong, we will improve to get you back. <Form Link> . You can also give us a feedback and choose to stay till we get back better."}}} It was appealing, communicative and gives and option to stay. I was tempted to give feedback and stay..

harrybr 12y ago

Joel, this work appears to be heavily plagiarised in places. I've only had a quick browse, but it looks like you've cribbed content from UX textbooks and online sources. Some people would consider this unethical, particularly since you have something to sell on your site (your book on 'Persuasion, manipulation & brainwashing.'). The solution is simple, you need to clearly cite and link to your sources. As well as making the source authors happy, this will be very helpful for readers who want to do further research.