Having a Psychology background is already a huge step towards User Experience (UX).
Trying to get your feet wet in UX with a psychology background? Don’t be afraid.
From what I’m guessing, YOU might belong to one of two categories:
- Currently pursuing a psychology degree and interested in UX
- Already received a psychology degree and interested in UX
Did I guess wrong? Well… either way, you’re here to read my blog and I sincerely appreciate that you stopped by. Just to be clear, these are my own thoughts of incorporating psychology into UX. Let’s get started!
Introduction
The term, User Experience (UX) is one of the most popular terms nowadays everywhere in the world. There are a lot of controversies around how it’s being misused and spammed all across the industries and academia but there is no doubt that it has now become one of the buzzwords of the decade.
As a psychologist freshly out of college or having previous background knowledge in psychology, do you happen to know what “UX” means? Well if you do, that’s great! If not, you can find a lot of resources out there that explains about it.
So, just like the title of this blog, why do I think having a psychology degree is already a good starting point for UX? Let’s discover step by step of what I meant by a “good starting point.” To be clear once again, I may not be entirely qualified or experienced to share my thoughts but hey, it’s a blog, I can express what the heck I want as long as one of you nod your head.
What I meant by a “good starting point”
As a person who has been in your shoes, I’ve also been in a situation (when I started to get myself in UX) where the tech field seems like it only existed for engineers or designers. I still remember myself being afraid of the words, terminologies and the acronyms that I didn’t even understand.
To be honest though, there’s no magic to understanding all this and you shouldn’t. What you should know is that UX is currently in a high demand all across the industries across the world.
Why? Well in short, in order for industries to generate revenue, maintain their infrastructure and all that, what do they need? Yes, they need to have users or customers that use their products. User Experience (UX) is all about understanding the behaviors (ex. pain points) that the users have and approach them if necessary to help design a better experience for them so that ultimately at the end of the day, they will come back to use the products again.
“Which jobs to go for? UX Research, UX Design, UX Engineers… and so on. There are so many”
So, what kind of roles do UX professionals take? I bet when you heard about the various kinds of jobs out there, most of the UX jobs were posted from software or information technology (IT) companies. Yes, majority of jobs related to UX are from those industries. However, there are plenty of other types of industries that look for talents in UX also. For example, some of the job postings that I came across were from automobile industries, gaming industries, consulting, business and even retail. It seems like, as long as there are users, there are always work needed for the UX professionals.
So, let’s get back to the point of why I said you, as a psychologist have a good starting point. Like I said, UX is all about understanding people. By learning about psychology, you are at a point where you already have some familiarity about people in general and the reasonings behind their actions. The theories that you learned, loads of reading that you had finished reading with Red Bull in your hands and being able to empathize with people are some of the knowledge that will help you approach the field of UX.
“Wouldn’t companies want a more technical person for the job? I don’t know a single thing about design or code”
I’ve seen many people asking this question. In my own point of view, I’d say “it depends.” The tools, skills and knowledge really depends on what kind of professional role you wish to take on in your career. You just have to follow your passion and interest and as you are digging through it, the door will open for you with opportunities that you find interesting.
As a person who has a better understanding of people, the way in which you can bring your knowledge to the table could potentially come in many different ways. Depending on your expertise and your interest, you may find research more interesting. Or you may find designing more interesting. If you are like me who feels passionate about designing, develop your skills and knowledge more towards UI/UX Design with the basis of understanding people and their needs. If you are more interested in doing more of research rather than design, like understanding people’s behaviors towards the products through conducting interviews, testings and analyzing the results, take a more UX Research focused direction. However, depending on the company size, the culture and your job title, the roles and responsibilities you have will be different from time to time.
So, what can you bring from psychology to UX?
#1. Theories, rules, experimentation and analysis learned are all useful
Do you remember all those theories that you learned about perception, biases, emotions and many more interesting things from social, cognitive and even cultural psychology classes? Once you start to get your feet wet into UX and HCI (Human Computer Interaction), many pre-exposed knowledge will come back as a huge advantage in understanding how people behave and feel when they interact with the products or services.
As an example, when I first started my first term at Georgia Tech, I took a class in Human Computer Interaction. From the class, I revisited the Gestalt Principles which I learned in one of my psychology classes a while ago. Gestalt Principles refers to humans naturally perceiving objects as organized patterns and objects (visual perception).
Things like “Proximity” and “Symmetry” are a couple of examples of the Gestalt Principles. As you can see above, many of the frequently used design components that you’ve seen before follow it. To be honest, many people don’t really pay attention to these small details unless they are completely messed up and hard to perceive. Otherwise, they are naturally perceived as easy-to-follow or common design factors.
#2. Ability to understand people’s emotions, behaviors and motivations
Generally speaking, psychology is the study of understanding people’s behaviors and emotions. And behind all of that, there are motivations why people are doing what they are doing. Studying and trying to create a better UX is very similar to that. In order for products, services and the businesses to maintain, improve and survive, it is crucial to understand the “why’s” and the “how might we” questions.
For example, think of a situation where you are designing a screen with a button that allows the users to proceed to the next step. You initially expect the users to press the button you came up within a heart beat. It is expected for the customers to follow the steps necessary for them to achieve what they want. However, you may realize that when the data was collected, only 50% of the people pressed on the button and proceeded to their next step.
The first thing that will come to your mind is, “why?”
“Why is it that half of the people bounce off from the screen?”
By keep on asking questions regarding to your recent failure, you and your team will start to uncover more.
“Is it because they didn’t recognize that the button exists?”, “Do I need to move the button to a different location?”
But to be honest, even before thinking where the button should be placed, what color it should be and thinking whether or not the button is necessary, the “How Might We” questions should be answered first.
“How might we increase the conversion rate?”
All the questions asked through countless activities, brainstorming sessions and looking over at the data (which you already have practiced from studying psychology), you will come close to figuring out the problem and to shape a better solution for your users.
#3. Understanding the power of research
When it comes down to design, many young designers underestimate the power of conducting research that they believe attractive design equals good UX. Yes, good-looking designs are sometimes directly related to bringing a better user experience. And plus, if you are a good designer, it’s important to polish a trendy and attractive visual designs.
From my point of view, designs are typically much more convincing and effective after thorough research has been conducted. I always think, “if you don’t understand the pain points of the people who are using the products, how do you know where to start fixing the problem?”
To talk more, let’s imagine you are working for a online clothing company. Initially, you thought creating a good-looking landing page will bring a better experience for the users which will then increase the sales. May be this was an idea after you took a look at other company’s website which was doing well. So, you decided to start designing the landing page with your guts that it will also bring a better user experience for your shoppers.
But what if your users are very different from the other company? What if your users are younger generations who just want to see the most popular items first instead of a huge picture covering the whole screen? What if you found out after a few weeks of implementing your design change that the users suddenly dropped? It’s a disaster.
Basically, understanding the power and the influence of research is very important in shaping a product. Although I wouldn’t state that doing a more thorough research always has a positive correlation to being successful (sometimes, a spark of idea could lead to success), I think it’s very important in discovering the users’ needs and their behavior towards the product. Moreover, it also brings confidence and the reasonings behind your design choices when you present them to the audience. Last but not least, it helps you understand what to do next.
#4. Knowing how to communicate with others
In a very early stage of the UX process, you may work on retrieving information about the users in general — their problems, needs and motivations towards using your product. And also, when you are conducting some user testings of your product, you will need people to participate in your research. The findings from those sessions will no doubt, have a huge impact on how you design the product and therefore, it is super important to know how to communicate well with people. Just like you learned in psychology, building a rapport with people (participants) and then talking to them typically allows you to extract more rich and honest information.
#5. Reading and writing through many practices
Communicating well with others also come in forms of reading and writing. One of the most common things you’ve probably went through was reading a ton of books, articles and stories related to psychology. In addition to that, I bet you also wrote a few articles and papers. Well, guess what? Those experiences are very important throughout your UX process.
In my prior experiences, the ability to quickly find and to skim through the discovered information during the “Existing Knowledge” process often reminded me of the time when I read a lot of articles in classes. The techniques in finding where the rich information lies, where to go to look for resources and all those practices through many stressful and countless hours will help you in not only the early part of your research process but also when you are analyzing to start designing a solution.
What do I mean by “Existing Knowledge?” Let’s think of a situation where you want to come up with a grocery app to guide customers in finding whatever they have on their shopping list. Before you dive into anything, it’s quite obvious that doing research should be the first thing to do.
So, some of the information you may need could be:
- Previously written articles related to the shopping behaviors
- General trend of the store’s layout
- Existing applications that customers use
- Customer feedback
- Customer ethnographical information
- Any cultural influences
- Competitive Analysis
#6. Being observant
As a psychologist, many of you are probably a detail-oriented person. Some of the things I personally like to do is observing the behaviors and emotions of people around me. By doing simple things like taking a look at their monitor, I’m able to sense what that person is having trouble with, looking for and what they will do next in the upcoming days. Yes, it is a little weird but what I’m trying to say is, you are able to discover a lot more than you think if you pay attention to even little things.
Having practices in observing people and being aware of its importance are very useful skills to have. Also, it’s super useful when you engage in socially rich interaction with your users during the research or the testing phase. You will be surprised to catch some rich information from paying attention to their micro-expressions and how they behave. Sometimes, the missing puzzle piece you need doesn’t always come in a verbal form.
#7. Empathizing with people
You already know what empathy means and why it’s important in approaching and understanding people. In UX, I would say that it’s very important to care about how the users interact with the products from the users’ standpoint. For example, trying to bridge the gap between users and the technology often contributes a lot in not only improving the quality of the products but also how the users feel about them. Ultimately, being able to immerse yourself into the users’ situations will sometimes assist you throughout the process.
As an example, one of my friend who now works at Riot Games (known for the online game, League of Legends) as a UX Designer told me that “because I’m a huge gamer myself, I feel like I can design for them way better by being in their shoes.” I thought this was a great example of how important it is to think in terms of the people who are using the product rather than becoming a third person who’s just doing the job. Loving your own product and being passionate about it will lead you to being more empathetic.
#8. Collaborate with peers in teams
You’ve probably been through a lot of collaborative projects and papers by doing research, experiments and analysis together in teams. Just like that, in the world of UX, almost everything is collaborative work. Even if you are a super star being able to do many things that 2 or 3 people can do, it’s better to get insights from other people. As human beings, we all have different thoughts and ideas of how we go about solving problems and those differentiation are present among users as well.
Here, communication is very important also. Having experienced working in teams through class projects, by allocating tasks and meeting the expectations of one another are useful experiences to have when you go into the field of UX. Sometimes, if you are self-aware, you might discover some of the things that you NEED to learn to communicate better with engineers, researchers, managers and other teammates. Also, they might be able to answer some of the concerns you had about certain design constraints and implementation issues. Last but not least, I believe that as the team dynamic is better, it directly reflects on the quality of the product.
#8. Iteration, iteration and more iterations
Creating a better user experience often results from loops and loops of iterative processes. And even at the end of the day, you might still have to iterate on the current solution that you feel is like the most ideal and perfect solution that no longer need to be improved. However, the hard truth is that there is no perfect solution for everyone and people constantly want changes to their existing products.
As a UX professional from all levels, we have to be open to demolishing a “perfect” solution and to start a new one if necessary. I personally think it’s the beauty of the field of UX. There are so many things to tackle and it just never ends. And I’m sure by now, you will already know this.
Conclusion
This blog was intended to spread some of my thoughts as a psychology major going into the field of UX. I initially wanted to make this blog way shorter than it should be but I think I went overboard, talking about the things that may sound redundant. However, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and as a newbie, not an experienced UXer, there’s more for me to learn. I’m not an expert but I’m aware that there are many people around me who come from psychology background to pursuing a UX career. That was the motivation behind writing this blog.
Thank you for reading and best of luck in your future!
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