Behavior psychology and product design
Why should product designers look into ever changing behavior?
Product design is one of the most talked and discussed topics today. More and more professionals are getting into researching and working in this field. But there is an area we tend to forget when coming to application development. We think that we are designing the product for people who we identify in the early stage of the process, but we forget that they are humans.
Humans are a species that possess a myriad of varying behavior. Changes in this human behavior, however, is hard to track. For example, at the dawn of the new year, we make quite a lot of resolutions including and not limited to changes in diet plans, going to the gym and doing something new. But as months go by, we sometimes forget or start to build resistance towards the goals we initially set. That is called a change of behavior. We should keep in mind that we are designing a product to people who are just like you and me.
Lets talk about products
If we are to call ourselves product designers, we must contain a reasonable knowledge in psychology. When designers have knowledge in cognitive and social psychology, it would be an additional advantage for them to understand how people think about problems or scenarios that they come across in real life.
With the knowledge in behavior, psychology allows the designers will know what to do when encountered by problems and scenarios and how much motivation is needed to change the behavior of the users.
Another technique we can use is to create a memorable experience for the user by offering user onboarding, positive surprises and creating curiosity for the user to proceed forward in the process of the task.
So any idea how to do this?
In creating any product and presenting it to the client, the first thing comes to their mind is “why would I use your product? What does it do better than product X?”.Then you have to answer the question with boring examples and showing off all the bells and whistle in your product and still, the users seem to be impressed of what you are saying.
So how can you make your products talk for you? Well, it is quite easy. You can make your products actionable, engaging and persuasive as possible. In my article, I came across a methodology that was created by an organization called Opower, that supports designers to do effective product designing. This methodology will help the designers to create products that are understandable and discoverable by product users.Lets see how we can do it
Make your application stand up from others :
Designing a product that attracts human attention is a quite a tricky task. The product should stand out from other products and the users must get the feeling that the product is designed just for addressing the problems of the users.
It can be achieved by making the product eye catching for the users by adding attention grabbing motion designs, engaging story telling to the application in situations where the user does not feel like continuing forward.
Another method is to customize the content for the people you are presenting the product. If the design is customized based on the values, behaviors, and the interests of humans, they react strongly towards the application and its process.
Another thing we can do is to create a memorable experience towards the user by giving user onboarding, positive surprise to the user and create curiosity towards the user to proceed forward in the process of the task.
Support and influence their decisions :
So when the humans are engaged in your product and going through the process to complete tasks, you have to give them proper guidance to them to take actions.
To do that the designers must give recommendations to the users to take actions.
The flow of the product is designed supporting the users showing what steps that they have to complete with the use of clear guidance and options will help the user to complete the task efficiently. This approach will be clever because humans tend to do something when clear instructions and suggestions are given to them to complete a task.
Support their actions :
Most of the time people give up on using products due to the complexity of the tasks they have to complete to get to their goal. If we can guide the users by walkthroughs by shaping the experience of the users to engage more with the application, it will not frustrate the user when engaging with the application.
Since the users do like to make the application processes to be complicated, we can break down the target into small achievable targets to the user so he/she can achieve the targets easily.
We can provide only the related information and reduce the application noise. Also, we should think about when to trigger the action during a process without making the user frustrated.
Continuously track behavior
In product design, it’s always good to keep a continuous communication with the user groups who are going to be using the application. We can reward users who are using the application incrementally so that they will come back to using the product regularly.
Humans like being rewarded.
If your application can provide a status, prestige users will use your product more and more.
What did I learn from all of this?
The ideas of being a product designer are not to make good looking designs to your customers.
We should have a proper understanding of how human mindset works, what motivates them to use the application, what are the triggers that have to be designed to give users the best experience.
As a product designer if we consider a behavior approach to product design we can understand what are the areas we can improve to give best user experience to our users. It is not just about looking into the behavior of humans. We can get a better understanding on how culture, social status, attitudes and emotions that change overall experience.
