Issue 2

Psychology in UX

Tunnel Vision and Selective Attention

How can people overlook something that's right there on the screen? If you've ever observed a usability study, you've probably had many occasions to ask yourself this question. Users don't look around much. They often stay highly focused on the screen section that they're engaging with or that they assume contains the answer to their problem. We saw a clear example of this user tunnel vision in Australia earlier this month, when we tested users in Sydney on the corporate website of Westfield, a retail property developer. One user was trying to find out when Westfield entered the U.K. market and carefully stepped through the timeline in the company's history section.

Color, psychology and design – UX Planet

Color is a beautiful thing that creates different emotions in humans. We see things and differentiate similar objects with the use of color. We feel colors as an object that creates different emotions when seen. Colors produced in the visual system of the human brain. In real life, the colors do not exist. We create colors using our brains, which means colors stay subjective in nature and, not objective.

Human Cognition

The Billion Dollar Mind Trick: An Intro to Triggers

Yin asked not to be identified by her real name. A young addict in her mid-twenties, she lives in Palo Alto and, despite her addiction, attends Stanford University. She has all the composure and polish you’d expect of a student at a prestigious school, yet she succombs to her habit throughout the day. She can’t help it; she’s compulsively hooked. Yin is an Instagram addict. The photo sharing social network, recently purchased by Facebook for $1 billion, captured the minds of Yin and 40 million others like her. The acquisition demonstrates the increasing importance–and immense value created by–habit-forming technologies. Of course, the Instagram purchase price was driven by a host of factors including a rumored bidding war for the company. But at its core, Instagram is the latest example of an enterprising team, conversant in psychology as much as technology, that unleashed an addictive product on users who made it part of their daily routines.

Fitts's Law: The Importance of Size and Distance in UI Design | Interaction Design Foundation

Fitts's Law provides a model of human movement, established in 1954 by Paul Fitts, which can accurately predict the amount of time taken to move to and select a target. Although originally developed according to movement in the physical world, in human-computer interaction Fitts's Law is typically applied to movement through the graphical user interface using a cursor or other type of pointer. Fitts's Law has been formulated mathematically in a number of ways; however, its predictions are consistent across the many different mathematical representations.

Conversational UI

Technical and social challenges of conversational design

A couple of weeks ago, I ran an experiment on my website. I made it conversational. The feedback, responses, and media coverage have been absolutely amazing. I received over 300 emails within the first 24 hours. Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to talk to my website. It was a great chat. 🙌 Some of you asked me to share my insights. Since this whole thing started as a conversation, I’d like to keep it as one. So here we go. 💬

Conversational UI Principles — Complete Process of Designing a Website Chatbot

In this article I’ll show you a case study describing an entire process of designing a conversational UI for a B2B website, including fragments of the conversation script, basics of the communication theory and some of the tips and tricks I think make this project a bit unique.

Books and Resources 📖

UX Books on Psychology & Behavior – uxdesign.cc

There are hundreds of interaction design books out there —that highlight best practices and give you practical guidance on how to create great interfaces. But what about understanding the users’ behaviors? What are some of the best books out there that focus on psychology and human behavior? Take a look at the list below with our favorite books in that space.