Psychological approach to Design
How psychology can help to create better products — part 01
We humans, we designers always look at things in a different way. We sometimes consider what happens in the world happens as they are because of a reason. Some times we try to change the world. That’s when the User Experience design steps in. As User Experience designers we use our knowledge and ideas into fixing real world problems. We create designs that make powerful effect towards how people think and behave. But there was always a question.
Is User Experience is all we need?
I tend to think of this question of telling my self it is all I need to design a product that is discoverable and understandable by anyone who will be using the product. But I was looking at product design in a different angle without thinking how the psychological impact on the product we design.
Most of the people think that the product design is to make things look good and futuristic. But it is not only that. As product designers, we should be able to think “Who are we designing for?” To understand that we should be able to use the magic word called psychology in our products. We use psychology to get a better understanding of what real people need and it is helpful to find out behaviors, motives, and emotions of the human when they are interacting with the application. psychology will always improve the quality of the design as well as the effectiveness of the solutions that the designers are providing to the users.
But the question was what how to effectively tackle the corner cases in the design that product designers encounter. Then this happens
Gestalt Principles
This is one of the most commonly used and highly inspired sets of psychological principles that are used by most of the product designers nowadays. Gestalt theory was founded by Max Wertheimer in the late 20th century. This psychological theory talks about the experience of perception and related patterns of simulation. In simple terms, this theory shows how humans unify visual elements into groups.
So lets have a look in to them one by one
Proximity
Proximity means that when the objects are close to each other they tend to preserved together to one single group which means closeness of the elements which are represented.
If we take the visual perception of example 01 we can see in the image 01 there are 12 groups as 3 rows and 4 columns with even elements. It clearly shows a clear visual hierarchy and a proper structure of the presentation of the information provided.
If we take the visual perception of the image on the image 02 you will be able to see a different grouping allowing the viewer to understand the presentation of information in a different manner.
Our brain understands and gaps between elements would create the grouping of the elements that we design and reacts towards them. If we properly use the elements in our designs and utilize the space meaningfully we will be able to create much more effective designs.
Closure
In design, we encounter many parts that we find discontinuation of the application process or presentation of elements. This kind of situations happens when complex processes or designs appear in products. When the product design hits a break point or a missing part our brain tends to find what are the missing points so it can fill in the gaps. But if we don’t visually present the missing gaps the users tend to get frustrated or give up on the application process to reach the end of the journey. I will show how we designer encounter closure by image below.
In example 02, the idea of the design is to show a list that can be swiped and be used in a mobile application.
In image 01 we can see that the list continues though and the user is able to see more elements and proceed to swipe the list to see the other elements that are there for the use.
In the image 02, the design pattern seems to be complete and the user does not feel like there are any other list elements that he or she can access to continue the process. This is a common problem that most of the product designs suffer these days. This may lead to complete failure of a product simply because the users didn’t find what they were looking for. They didn’t know that there were other elements in the design which would have to help them to complete their process.
We can mitigate this kind of design issues by providing proper guidance to the users allowing them to understand the design that we are providing to mitigate their issues and providing a proper solution for their problems.
Similarity
In the theory, when design we should be able to present the elements with similar functionality as visually matching to each other. If the elements we design have same meaning and hierarchy level should have a similar visual presentation.
In example 03, image 01 we can see that there is no visual difference between the grouped elements making them hierarchically similar and visually matching.
In the image o2, we can see that there is a difference in the presentation of the elements due to the size and color change of the elements. This creates a difference in the hierarchy of the information that we are presenting. So in order to mitigate these type of issues we should be able to present the data which are similar in functionality without any hierarchical difference.
Conclusion
Well, you might be wondering why I came to a conclusion so fast but I am still looking into the use of psychology in product design to create more understandable, discoverable and more meaningful design. I have come across these theories and have practically used them to improve the quality of the User Experience that we are providing as product designers.
As product designers, our main intention should be to understand
1) The user perspective, their limitations towards understanding and using a product
2) The user’s behaviors would help you predicting how the users would interact with the products that we are giving to solve a particular problem.
3) Improve the guidance to the user’s journey to support them to reach their goal.
4) Help the users distinguish between the grouping of information so the users will not get frustrated when finding relevant information.
5) Understand how to create meaningful product solutions to existing problems that the users or the clients have.
So these are my findings during the past couple of weeks on understanding how the Gestalt theory works. I would be able to write more when I encounter other psychology theories as well. So keep your eyes peeled to more articles regarding psychology in the coming weeks and I always like to listen to your constructive criticism so I can improve my self.
Referrals
https://uxdesign.cc/ux-psychology-go-hand-in-hand-how-gestalt-theory-appears-in-ux-design-18b727343da8
