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Signifi.id
4 Elm Park Road
South Norwood
London
SE25 6UA
E: hello@signifiid.com
T: 020 0027 6984
M: 07721 318 629
Psychology & Design
(via Einstein & Elevators)
Most designers go through formal education and training of some description. They learn the basic skills needed to work in the industry. But their education is only just starting as the best designers are always learning.
The debates about which additional skills designers should train in are endless. Should they learn how to code, to write effective copy, or study business management?
All these skills are unquestionably valuable, but I would argue that above all these the one area that every graphic designer should have a good grounding in is Psychology and Human Behaviour.
All humans have a “blueprint” for how we understand and process the world around us. A matrix we use to navigate our world and interactions. Understanding how people process information, make decisions and interact is, I think, a crucial skill for any designer.
Good designers will use key principles from psychology as a framework for our work – acknowledging how people engage and interact with the work we present – but most importantly understanding why they respond.s
Every business person (& every designer) knows the terms “user experience” and “call to action”. But knowing the terms and knowing how to achieve them are very different things.
Where to start?
One of the biggest challenges is knowing where to start. Which principles from psychology are the most useful? How do these concepts and principles translate in the real world, and in our work?
I’m not a psychologist. I write this as a designer with over 30 years of experience, who has seen the value of applied psychology. It has helped me to create more effective communications material, more engaging customer experiences and more effective advertising.
1. Hick Law
One of the primary functions of a graphic designer is to present information in a way that is engaging, relatable and understandable, to a specific audience.
Good communication strives for clarity. As Albert Einstein is famously reported to have said: ‘If you can’t explain it to a six-year old, you don’t understand it yourself.’
Hick’s Law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices presented.
It’s our job to make the information as clear and understandable as possible. Focusing on the key points that are relevant to our audience. What do they need to know to take the action we wish – be that to buy a product, give to charity, or find the quickest and safest exit from a building when the fire alarm sounds.
Hick’s law was formulated by psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman in 1952 after examining the relationship between the number of input stimuli and an individual’s reaction time to it. (If you are so inclined, the formula is RT = a + blog2 (n)).
Thankfully, we don’t need to understand the maths to apply the theory. The concept is clear. The time it takes for users to respond directly correlates to the number and complexity of options available. More choice. More time needed to decide.
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by options?
I know someone who wanted to paint their lounge but simply could not choose a colour.
After months of looking at countless colour charts, there was still no-decision. Her husband finally bought some tester pots and painted strips down the wall of each. Focused in on a small selection, they made a final decision and bought the paint that same weekend.
Hick’s law means that a complex interface with lots of options will result in longer processing time. It is related to another fundamental theory in psychology known as cognitive load.
Cognitive load
Cognitive load refers to the mental processing power being used by our working memory. Which is a concept we are all familiar with from our computers – if we want a fast computer we bump up the memory spec.
Our brains, like our computers, have limited processing power. When the amount of information coming in exceeds the space available, cognitive load is incurred.
The result is in a drop in performance. Tasks become more difficult to complete, error occurs, details get missed and we get frustrated. (Which usually adds to greater stress which then exacerbates the overload!)
So, designers (and any communicators in fact) should aim to make everything as simple as possible.
This neatly brings us onto Miller’s Law
2. Miller’s Law
Miller’s Law states that the average person can only keep 7 items (± 2) in their working memory.
Cognitive psychologist, George Miller, published a paper in 1956, on the limits of short-term memory. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misinterpretation of this over the years leading to some well-meaning misapplications.
For example, the ‘magical number seven’ has been used to justify unnecessary limitations in design. Many web and user interface designers will have encountered limiting interface menus to no more than seven items.
Chunking
Miller’s investigations into short-term memory did not actually focus on the number seven, but rather on the concept of “chunking” information. And on our ability to memorise things accordingly. Chunking is really just breaking things into manageable blocks.
When applied to design, chunking can be an incredibly valuable tool. When we chunk content in design, we are effectively making it easier to process and understand.
Users can scan the content and quickly identify what they are interested in
The most accessible example of chunking can be found with how we format phone numbers. Without chunking, a phone number would be a long string of digits, which increases the difficulty to process and remember it.
But a phone number that has been ‘chunked’ – or formatted into groups – becomes much easier to process and memorise.
Likewise, when faced with a document of solid text our brain immediately starts to object. The “wall of text” will not engage many readers. In comparison, well-formatted copy with appropriate paragraphs, headlines, subheads feels much more accessible.
Another example of chunking being used effectively in design is within the layout. Designers use this technique to help users understand underlying relationships and hierarchy of information, placing content into distinctive groupings.
In information-dense experiences, chunking can be leveraged to provide structure and accessibility to the content. Not only is the result more visually pleasing, but it’s more scannable and relatable.
3. Jakob’s Law
Jakob’s Law (short for Jakob’s Law of Internet User Experience), states that users spend most of their time on other websites, and they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
This is based on internet use but the thinking can be applied to everyday life, which I’ll expand on later.
In 2000, usability expert Jakob Nielsen described the tendency for users to develop an expectation of design patterns based on their cumulative experience.
Obviously, if all websites follow the same design patterns, that could result in user boredom. But there is value to be found in familiarity.
As humans, we inherently look for, recognise and build mental patterns to help us understand and navigate the world around us. This results in the creation of mental models.
Mental models
A mental model is what we think we know about a system, especially about how it works, based on experience.
In other words, we use the knowledge we already have from past experiences when encountering and interacting with something new.
Whether we are talking about a website or a car, we form models of how a system works. Then we apply that model to new situations where the system appears similar.
Mental models are valuable for designers because we can purposefully create designs to match our user’s mental which improves their expereicne and means they are likely to spend more time on our website.
The task of shrinking the gap between our own mental models and those of our users is one of our biggest challenges to designers (and any communicator). In my work I use a variety of methods including user interviews, client personas, journey maps, empathy maps, focus groups, ethnography studies and many more.
As a client, it’s not necessary to understand all the processes – but knowing why your designer may be suggesting these and what they can achieve is valuable.
The outcome is to gain a deeper insight into how your target audience thinks. Not only the goals and objectives, but also their pre-existing mental models, and how that applies to the product or experience we are creating.
Let me give an example of how psychology can affect our behaviour.
The Automatic Elevator Conundrum
The Automatic Safety Elevator was first patented in 1853. In 1857, Elisha Otis made the first passenger elevator and in 1874, Alexander Miles added automatic doors. But the public remains sceptical and didn’t like to ride in an elevator which did not have and or ‘pilots’ or ‘operators’. Who continued pushing the buttons well into the 1900s.
We are all very familiar with the modern elevator (minus the pilot) and many psychological theories are to be found at use within these small metal boxes, all dealing with different user issues.
Early elevators were slow, they were steam-powered. People complained about the lack of speed, and engineers spent many hours trying to make them faster. User testing found that the perception of the speed was in fact much slower than the reality.
People were bored and had an exaggerated sense of time because they had nothing to do but stare at the blank wall and consider their safety -being suspended in the air, in a metal box attached to a cable.
The answer to our collective existential crisis? Mirrors. People became distracted and were no longer preoccupied with the fear of falling. On a follow-up survey, customers commented how much faster the new elevators were, even though the speed was exactly the same. The elevators mechanical engineering had not changed at all.
We also often hear ‘music’ in elevators, purposefully chosen to help keep us calm and stop our thoughts turning back to our mortality.
But there is even more psychology at play in this small space. In 1945, there was a huge ‘pilots’ strike in the USA and the need to get people to use elevators without a ‘pilot’ became an imperative.
Despite the other efforts, people still felt uncomfortable using elevators that were fully automated. But why did having a ‘pilot’ pushing the floor selection make any difference? The issue was not about them pushing buttons, it was about their human presence. It gave people a feeling of security that someone was on-hand to help should anything go wrong.
Adding a few additional buttons was the answer. The Stop, Help and most importantly the Alarm call buttons swiftly became the norm and later came the door-close and door-open buttons too.
Once the public felt they had some control and would not be suck in the elevator without being able to get assistance, they were happy to ride.
Our psychology impacts our every action – and designers can key into our brains programming to good effect. Which leads naturally to a question of ethics.
Ethical use of these principles
Designers can use psychology to create more intuitive products and experiences. But they must use this knowledge ethically.
These techniques can be used to exploit how our minds work and so could be used to create more addictive experiences, apps and websites.
When was the last time you were on a subway, on a sidewalk, or in a car and didn’t see someone glued to their smartphone?
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the mobile platforms and social networks that connect us also put a lot of effort into how they can keep us glued to our screens, and they’re getting better at it every day.
The effects of this addiction are beginning to be acknowledged. From sleep reduction and increased anxiety, the race for our attention has created some unintended consequences.
The psychological impact of our smartphones has now become a hot topic. Research has highlighted how they have started to change how we form relationships, and indeed, how we view ourselves.
Is there a solution?
Designers should strive is to create products and experiences that support and align with the goals and well-being of the user.
The first step in making ethical design decisions is to acknowledge how the human mind can be exploited. And we must consider much wider metrics, looking beyond simple usage data.
Data can deliver a lot of insights, but what it can not tell us is why users are behaving a certain way, or how the product is impacting their lives.
We must be receptive and listen to what users say, and then employ qualitative research to inform how we evolve our designs.
Like everything, design and psychology can be used for good or for ill. Being aware is the beginning of more effective design materials – but knowledge carries responsibility too.