What is essential for the survival of designers in the ever-evolving scenario of UX and UI?
If you take a look at the digital world, everything is transient owing to the new trends that sprout every day from both the user and competitor’s end. Designers need to stay relevant to the latest trends, be it minimalism, dark mode, 3D elements, voice user interface, bold fonts, or combined graphics along with real images. Later on, these trends form the basis of core principles and practices of UX and UI designs.
In this blog, we will discuss a few psychological principles of UX/UI designs that will help you create a stunning user experience through amazing UX/UI designs. It will make your brand identity stand out from the rest. But, before moving to the basic principles, let’s move ahead with the aesthetic-usability effect on the UX/UI of your website.
So, let’s begin!
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Have you been to a website that lacks direction?
Feels frustrating, right?
Now, compare a website where you know what to do exactly after having just a glimpse of it. The key lies in the intuitive design of the website, where the user can focus on the task at hand without having to compromise on functionality and aesthetics. This is what makes the user interface easy, comprehensive, and functional that eventually enhances the user experience.
Designers need to create a balance between the functionality and aesthetics of the website design. And, this is where social, behavioral, and cognitive psychology comes to play. All these factors influence a user’s decision, where aesthetics comes secondary and an intuitive design is what users look for.
If you don’t want users to abandon your website, then consider the aesthetic-usability effect. Other than this, a few psychological principles are affecting the UX/UI that you must consider for a better ROI.
So, let’s quickly jump onto it.
5 Psychological Principles that You Need to Consider for Design
Psychology of Choice
We make countless choices each day, some are easy and some are tough. The more choices we deal with the more it takes longer for us to make a decision. Moreover, we feel more fatigued when it comes to making choices. This specific system of more choices is called Hick’s Law that states the more options you are offered, the more it is challenging to arrive at a decision.
When you are trying to create an intuitive design to help your users achieve their goals, speed is important. Here Hick’s Law helps you achieve that speed by providing fewer options so that the end-user doesn’t get frustrated and waste time selecting from a pile of options.
Prioritize the key elements of the design and keep the choices limited. Also, make sure that you break down the complex process into simple steps. Create menus for common in-app actions and group them in one. This grouping of common functions will help eliminate unnecessary elements and keep them simple. It will reduce the time to arrive at a decision helping the users to achieve their goal faster.
Keep All Interactable Elements in Reach
You might have seen that the farther your thumb is from the mouse, the longer it takes for you to interact with the element you want. This specific concept relates to the Fitts’ Law that focuses on the distance and emphasizes keeping the important elements of the website in close reach of the users. And, yes it’s a fundamental principle of comprehensive and intuitive UI design, which all users prefer.
Make sure that every interactable element that you have on your website should be big enough so users can easily spot it and select it without wasting time. If we talk about the ideal size of the elements then they should be between 42 and 72 pixels wide. It will help you hit the target because it is easy to spot which will catch the user’s attention and they will click on it even if the cursor is slightly away.
Fitts’ Law advocates the use of reachability heatmaps in the super-sized screen era, which is essential for an intuitive UI/UX design. It ensures that the crucial elements of the website are in the easy reach of the users and the common actions can be taken instantly. This ease of reachability will help users to arrive at an informed decision much faster.
Read Also: Here is the Difference between UI and UX Design
Right Positioning of the Items
If you have ever been to a store, you will observe that important and popular items are kept on display; so the users can easily spot them. Likewise, a brick-and-mortar store, place crucial items on the website with impactful words rightly. It will help your users easily recognize and memorize those powerful words.
Here are a few examples of power words that you must incorporate in your website:
- Massive
- Discount
- Big Billion
- Soaring
- Save
- Monetize
- Fast
- Hurry
- Giveaway
- Limited
- Skyrocket
- Sale Ends Soon
- Quick
- Reduce
- Profit
- Jackpot
- Free
- Last Chance
- Ultimate
- More
- Special
- Surge
- Six-Figure
When you use these words, people have an easy time recalling these words and they are encouraged to act. Use these words throughout your website content working from the top towards the end. Why are we emphasizing the position or order of the power words be used? As we discussed in the example mentioned at the beginning of this point the position where the items are placed also impacts the user’s decision.
Putting crucial items with impactful words in a significant position helps users to remember the words. Thus, it makes your website more intuitive and users more comfortable.
Selective Disregard to Pinpoint Crucial Aspects
We all are experienced users of products and websites and thus we learn to recognize crucial items on a website. An average user gradually understands a website and instinctively ignores irrelevant items. This specific behavior is called selective disregard, where a user stops paying attention to irrelevant items or elements and focuses on things that give it a mental stimulus.
Thus, designers must use this behavior to their advantage and get the users to hit like on important aspects at a lightning-fast speed. We recommend you to use every element keeping the user’s expectation in the mind. Think what could be the most necessary thing for a user because until and unless anything is not necessary the user’s mind will automatically filter irrelevant information. Thus, always design with selective disregard.
Stop Tricking Users
If you browse through websites, you will discover some websites employ dark patterns by crafting a user interface aimed to trick users into doing something they didn’t want. You will find it in either ad or a call to action that pops in brightly colored buttons with positive affirmations on specific websites such as insurance. The ultimate goal is to increase the traffic and trick users into signing up for recurring subscriptions.
In this technique, designers often focus on built-in expectations of customers and play around with people’s fears. But, we recommend you not to prioritize your business over your users. Instead, pinpoint opportunities for people through your design to gain people’s trust. By pinpointing opportunities, we mean delivering value to users.
When users find value in your products they will automatically rush to your website and it will intersect with your business goal of traffic, engagement, and conversion.
Read Also: 10 Principles to UI Design as a Founder
Final Word
When it comes to UX/UI in designing, understanding your audience’s expectations is the best way to begin. And, for gaining a better understanding you can co-relate the psychological principles of UX mentioned above. They will help you to keep the right mindset while designing and thus achieve the needed practicality.
If you are also struggling to build amazing UX/UI designs, consider checking Graffersid- Top UI/UX design company, based in Indore. Here you will find an experienced team of designers who create stunning designs keeping your business goals and customer’s expectations in mind. You can contact us here to get a quote or for a quick inquiry. We will be happy to assist you!
