Psychology and UX Articles & Videos

  • Social Media and Gamification

    Gamification brings the visual design and the mechanics of games to other products. As we examine our ethical responsibilities as UX professionals, social media deserves special consideration. Gamification in social media can make people feel as though their social lives are being scored.

  • Usability Heuristic 6: Recognition vs. Recall in User Interfaces

    #6 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to design user interfaces to facilitate #memory recognition which is easier than recall because there are more cues available to facilitate the retrieval of information from memory.

  • Why Users Feel Trapped in Their Devices: The Vortex

    Many users report anxiety and lack of control over the amount of time they spend online. We call this feeling “the Vortex.”

  • Designing for Children

    Designers should consider the physical and mental abilities of children, as well as utilize existing UX conventions. Here are 3 guidelines to consider when designing UX for children, based on our user research with users aged 3-12 years.

  • The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories

    Cognitive biases change the way that we recall past events. The peak–end rule focuses our memories around the most intense moments of an experience and the way an experience ends.

  • Designing for Kids: Cognitive Considerations

    Children’s cognitive skills are still developing, so their reasoning abilities are weaker than those of adults. To help them successfully use an interface, designs should display clear, specific instructions, leveraging kids’ mental models and prior knowledge.

  • The Anchoring Principle

    People tend to focus on a single, initial piece of information, which influences how they estimate value and make subsequent decisions.

  • Individualized Recommendations: Users’ Expectations & Assumptions

    Users appreciate personalized content suggestions and are willing to give up some of their privacy for quality recommendations, while accepting some inaccurate recommendations.

  • The Word "Validate" Undermines UX Effectiveness

    Our words define UX research goals for users, stakeholders, and teams. Turning UX research into improved design is already challenging. Why make it more so by setting unsuitable expectations with the words we use to describe research?

  • Change Blindness in UX: Definition

    Significant changes in a web page can remain unnoticed when they lack strong cues, due to the limitations of human attention.

  • What Is a Mental Model?

    What users *think* they know about your system will determine how they interact with the design. Understand users' mental models to design something that'll work well in practice.

  • Peak–End Rule: Use to Your Advantage

    Users largely judge their experience with your product or service on two data points: the peak and the end.

  • Prominence-Interpretation Theory

    Prominence-interpretation theory helps determine what shapes users’ perceptions of a site’s credibility.

  • Intelligent Assistants: Creepy, Childish, or a Tool? Users’ Attitudes Toward Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri

    Users assume that assistants have a low level of competence for complex tasks and find them to be socially awkward to interact with.

  • The Availability Heuristic

    People make decisions based on the information that is most readily available to them. Understanding how the availability heuristic works will help you design for the way people think.

  • Distracted Driving: UX’s Responsibility to Do No Harm

    I walked away from two distracted-driving accidents in one week. Can we use known UX principles to reduce harm?

  • Working Memory and External Memory

    Human working memory holds information relevant to the current task; a physical or virtual external memory can help in tasks with a high working-memory burden.

  • Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop

    Users have learned to ignore content that resembles ads, is close to ads, or appears in locations traditionally dedicated to ads.

  • The Principle of Commitment and Behavioral Consistency

    Getting users to make a small commitment and follow up on it can increase engagement with content.

  • The Authority Principle

    A perceived high-authority status of the person making a request can make people more compliant with that request. Applying this principle in UX can ease users' decision-making process.