Psychology is one of the fundamental studies that helps designers understand their users.

Some people are used to seeing design as a purely artistic work, but there is more to it than that. Beauty and inspiration are not enough to create masterful designs. This is why designers should have some knowledge and skills of different sciences to do their work. It is not only artistic design, but also involves different areas of knowledge and practice to help them work more efficiently. Psychology is one of the fundamental studies that helps designers understand their users. Today, we will learn about the important role psychology plays in design and what principles of psychology should be kept in mind during the design process.

The influence of psychology in design

Today’s trend towards user-centered design is causing designers to rethink their approach to work and gain insight into their target audience. Donald A. Norman defined design as an act of communication in his book “The Design of Everyday Things”, which means that designers should have A deep understanding of the people they communicate with. In order to better understand people’s needs, it is recommended that designers keep in mind the psychological principles of people’s behavior, desires and motivations.

If designers apply psychology to the creative process, the results of the work may be better, because the science gives a deep understanding to the target audience. Psychological knowledge helps create designs that allow users to perform expected actions, such as making a purchase or contacting a team.

Designers may think psychology is a complex way to improve design and therefore ignore this part of the research and analysis. But you don’t need a PhD in psychology to use it effectively in your work. What you need to consider are the basic principles of constant presentation in your design. Our empirical research defines six common applied psychological principles in the design process.

Gestalt principle

This psychological theory is nearly 100 years old, but it hasn’t lost its essence. The word gestalt means “unified whole”, so the theory explores the user’s visual perception of elements. In other words, it shows how people unify visual elements into groups. The principles of user composition include:

  • Similarity: If users see objects that look somewhat similar, they may automatically view them as individual elements of a group. Similarity between elements is usually defined as shape, color, size, texture, or value. Similarity allows users to create consistency between elements in their design.
  • Continuity: It is based on the principle that the human eye moves naturally from one object to another. This is usually done by creating curves that allow the eye to flow with the line.
  • Closure: This is a technique based on the human eye’s tendency to see closed shapes. Closures work in the case of an incomplete object, but the user treats it as a complete shape by filling in the missing parts.
  • Approximation: When objects are placed in an accessible position, the eye sees them as a whole, not as individuals, even if they are not similar.
  • Figure/ground: This principle indicates that the eye tends to favor independent objects in the background. There are many examples of pictures that show two faces depending on whether your eyes are focused on the object or background.

The Gestalt principle confirms in practice that our brains tend to play tricks on us, so designers should take this fact into account during the creative process to rule out the possibility of misunderstanding.

Instinct reaction

Have you ever felt like you fell in love with a website the first second you opened it? Or can you just flick through an app that can make you sick? If so, you already know what a gut reaction is. This response comes from a part of our brains called the “old brain”, which is responsible for instinct and responds much faster than our conscious minds. Visceral reactions are built into our DNA, so they’re easy to predict.

How can designers use this knowledge? Their goal is to create a positive aesthetic impression through design. It’s not hard to guess how good this feels to people, or if you know what your target audience needs. So the tendency to use high-resolution beautiful photos or color images on landing pages, websites, or any other web and mobile product is no accident.

Color psychology

The science that studies the effects of color on people’s thoughts, behaviors, and reactions is called color psychology. We won’t delve into this today because it’s complicated, so there should be a dedicated position dedicated to it (other than that, we’re already working on it). In short, the main point of the study is that color has a big impact on user perception. This is why designers should choose colors intelligently to ensure that their pieces present the right message and adjustments.

Here is a list of basic colors and their common meanings associated with them:

  • Red: Color is usually associated with feelings of passion, intensity or aggression. It symbolizes good and bad feelings, including love, faith, passion and anger.
  • Orange: Vibrant and warm colours bring a feeling of excitement.
  • Yellow: This is the color of happiness. It symbolizes sunshine, joy and warmth.
  • Freshness: The color of nature. It brings a sense of calm and renewal. It can also mean a lack of experience.
  • Blue: It often represents some corporate image. It usually shows a feeling of calm, but as a cool hue, it is also associated with distance and sadness.
  • Purple: Long associated with royalty and wealth, as many Kings wore purple. It is also a color of mystery and magic.
  • Black: This color has many meanings. It is associated with tragedy and death. It symbolizes mystery. It can be traditional and modern. Everything depends on how you use it and other colors.
  • White: Color implies purity and innocence, as well as completeness and clarity.

Recognize patterns

You may have noticed that websites or applications combined with a theme often have common patterns in their design. The reason is user psychology. The reality is that people visit a website or use an application expecting to see something related to a particular type of product.

For example, visiting a barbershop website, users don’t want to see bright colors or pictures of cats or anything like that, because if they see it, it will definitely make them feel that the site is an untrusted resource.

However, it’s not just color and pictures that matter. Something obvious and common, such as the front page of a blog list or a list of filters on an e-commerce site, is also important for successful navigation. Users quickly get used to them, and the lack of color and graphics can make them feel uncomfortable.

Scanning mode

Before reading a web page, people scan it to see if they are interested. According to various studies, including the Nielsen Norman Group, the UXPin team and others, there are several popular web scanning patterns, among which are the “F” and “Z” patterns.

The F-shape pattern is known as the most common eye scan pattern, especially for web pages with a lot of content. The user first scans the horizontal line at the top of the screen, then moves down the page and reads along the horizontal line that usually covers a shorter area. The last one is the vertical line to the left of the copy that looks for keywords in the initial sentence of the paragraph. It usually happens on blogs, news platforms, feature editorials and other text-dense pages.

The Z pattern applies to the page rather than concentrating so heavily on the copy. The user starts at the top left corner and scans the entire top of the page for important information, then moves diagonally down to the diagonal, finishes at the horizontal line at the bottom of the page, and goes left to right. This is a typical model for scanning a landing page or website for an unloaded copy without the need to scroll down the page, which means that all core data is visible in the pre-scroll area.

By understanding these patterns, designers can place elements in ways that the user perceives to be effective and help them perform the desired actions.

At law

By law, the more options a user is exposed to, the longer it takes them to make a decision. This means that the more choices you give users, whether it’s choosing a product or an image, the more time and effort it takes to decide the next step in the interaction. The likely result is that the user makes a choice but feels unhappy after using the product, or in the worst case, they may not want to take such a big effort and just leave.

This is why it is recommended that designers keep any options, including buttons, images, and pages, to a minimum. Remove unnecessary choices to make product availability more efficient.

Psychology is an effective design tool to make the creative process more productive and the results more user-centered. We’ve told you about six useful principles, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg because there’s so much more to learn.

 

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