People react user experience at 3 levels of emotional processing, as defined by Don Norman: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Understanding these different levels is important for better UX design.
Effective storytelling involves both engaging the audience and structuring stories in a concise, yet effective manner. You can improve your user stories by taking advantage of the concept of story triangle and of the story-mountain template.
People tend to prefer information that confirms their existing beliefs and to undervalue information that contradicts their beliefs. With the appropriate research methods, the confirmation bias can be recognized and avoided in UX design.
Dark design patterns intentionally trick users into doing things they don't want to do. This is different than persuasive UX which nudges users without deception.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to preferentially seek out or believe data that confirms your expectations. For example, thinking that one part of the UI is well designed and another is bad, might you give more weight to observations of usability test participants having trouble with that second feature.
Humans have a deep need for autonomy, relatedness, and competency in their life. Catering to these needs in UX design can drastically increase user satisfaction.
Addressing these 3 fundamental psychological needs in our products increases user motivation and well-being. Users will be more engaged and more likely to use our designs.
The reciprocity principle states that people, when given something upfront, tend to feel a sense of obligation to repay what has been provided. Login walls reverse this sequence and require users to disclose personal info before allowing access to content. People often resent this, and may not be as forthcoming or cooperative as a result.
Users’ mental models of concept categories are far less strict than you might expect. Consider keeping small numbers of outlier pages within their larger parent category, rather than creating unnecessary subcategories.
People have very limited ability to keep information in their working memory while performing tasks, so user interfaces should be designed accordingly: to minimize memory load. One way of doing so is to offload items to external memory by showing them on the screen.
If experienced designers want to learn about psychology and how it applies to user experience, should they get a psychology degree, or is it better to learn on your own?
When people think that something is rare or only available for a limited time, they will tend to act fast to secure that scarce item. This behavioral principle can be used in user experience design, but beware of overuse.
People can remember about 7 (plus/minus 2) items in short-term memory. This memory limitation has implications for UX design, but not the ones you often hear stated.
