Cognitive Psychology & UXD
Cognitive Psychology & UXD
Cognitive Psychology & UXD
Using cognitive psychology to add value to UX design creating more human experiences.
Using cognitive psychology to add value to UX design creating more human experiences.
Using cognitive psychology to add value to UX design creating more human experiences.
This week as we finally try to bring in the relationship between humans, technology and the way these interact, it is crucial learn to what drives us to perceive design, what drives us to make decisions and how learning psychology and cognitive psychology to be specific can add value to create better design and human computer interactions more fluid.
What is cognitive psychology
The term cognitive psychology comes from and involves into the study of our innate internal mental processes which include all of the workings inside our brains, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. The study of how humans think and process information--helps us UX designers & researchers understand the human brain and design interfaces and experiences that allow us to maximize usability, understandability and ease of use for our users.
Major components that make up the field of Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology explore a wide variety of topics related to thinking processes. Some of these include:
Attention - Our ability to process information in the environment while tuning out irrelevant details
Choice-based behavior - Actions driven by a choice among other possibilities
Decision-making - What drives us to make decisions and choose, shape our behavior and interactions with a product service or interface
Information processing
Language acquisition - How we learn to read, write, and express ourselves
Memory - How we memorize things and create mental models of going about some things
Problem-solving
Speech perception - How we process information the way it is given out
Visual perception - How perceive and see the physical world around us
Cognitive psychology in UX
In UX design, the term “cognitive load” as the power of mental processing required to use a feature. If the amount of information that needs to be processed exceeds the user’s ability to process it, the overall performance suffers.
The objects we experience through our senses are processed by our brain and stored in either short time memory (SMT) or long time memory (LMT). According to Millers Law, an average person can keep only 7 (plus or minus two) items in his working memory. We need to assist users in minimizing the cognitive load by presenting the information they mainly look for.
If there is an overload of information, the processing capacity of the human mind reduces. Users can be confused or overwhelmed, leading to negative UX and tasks being dropped.
“We can’t change the actual processing power of our users. What we can do is get to know their limits, and minimize their processing efforts.”
Apart from the Miller’s Law itself that are tons or other cognitive psychology principles that can work as a guidewire in helping UX designers create truly human interfaces that work together with the mental model or the users
Some of which are:
SCHEMA THEORY
This is a a branch of Cognitive Science that is concerned with how the brain assimilates and stores information. According to the schema theory, the human brain remembers pieces of information better that classified into small chunks at best.
THEORIES OF VISUAL PERCEPTION
Deals with the order in which we as humans take in information. Visual perception specifically focuses on the top-down and left-to-right flow of information. This is what us humans are most comfortable with.
THE VERBATIM EFFECT
This allows us humans to remember the overall experience that we have had from a particular situation over the specific details of the situation. Therefore, it pays well for us as designers to think about the overall ‘feeling’ that our design is creating rather than the smaller design elements.
THE CHAMELEON EFFECT
Deriving its name from the lizard like animal, the this effect states that we as humans tend to mimic the behavior of our surroundings consciously, subconsciously or both in order to blend into our surroundings more naturally.
HICK’S LAW
This law also refered to as the Hick-Hyman Law states that the more stimuli (or choices) users face, the longer time it will take for them to make a decision. This also has a mathematical formula which goes something like RT (Response Time) = A (Time to Perceive) + B (Time to Decide) Log N (Number or Choices Presented)
Conclusion:
The study or psychologies is one of the key subjects that we as designers must focus on. This helps us to truly think upon and plan more on human-centered design which is easier to use and better to understand. This can also aide designers to manipulate their users to follow a certain pattern or maneuver the decision making process but it can be considered as a dark pattern which designer must refrain from employing.
I plan to further enhance my skills and expertise in the area of cognitive psychology and learn many more avenues, psychological principles, biases and heuristics which would can help me design better and more humane experiences for my users.
This week as we finally try to bring in the relationship between humans, technology and the way these interact, it is crucial learn to what drives us to perceive design, what drives us to make decisions and how learning psychology and cognitive psychology to be specific can add value to create better design and human computer interactions more fluid.
What is cognitive psychology
The term cognitive psychology comes from and involves into the study of our innate internal mental processes which include all of the workings inside our brains, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. The study of how humans think and process information--helps us UX designers & researchers understand the human brain and design interfaces and experiences that allow us to maximize usability, understandability and ease of use for our users.
Major components that make up the field of Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology explore a wide variety of topics related to thinking processes. Some of these include:
Attention - Our ability to process information in the environment while tuning out irrelevant details
Choice-based behavior - Actions driven by a choice among other possibilities
Decision-making - What drives us to make decisions and choose, shape our behavior and interactions with a product service or interface
Information processing
Language acquisition - How we learn to read, write, and express ourselves
Memory - How we memorize things and create mental models of going about some things
Problem-solving
Speech perception - How we process information the way it is given out
Visual perception - How perceive and see the physical world around us
Cognitive psychology in UX
In UX design, the term “cognitive load” as the power of mental processing required to use a feature. If the amount of information that needs to be processed exceeds the user’s ability to process it, the overall performance suffers.
The objects we experience through our senses are processed by our brain and stored in either short time memory (SMT) or long time memory (LMT). According to Millers Law, an average person can keep only 7 (plus or minus two) items in his working memory. We need to assist users in minimizing the cognitive load by presenting the information they mainly look for.
If there is an overload of information, the processing capacity of the human mind reduces. Users can be confused or overwhelmed, leading to negative UX and tasks being dropped.
“We can’t change the actual processing power of our users. What we can do is get to know their limits, and minimize their processing efforts.”
Apart from the Miller’s Law itself that are tons or other cognitive psychology principles that can work as a guidewire in helping UX designers create truly human interfaces that work together with the mental model or the users
Some of which are:
SCHEMA THEORY
This is a a branch of Cognitive Science that is concerned with how the brain assimilates and stores information. According to the schema theory, the human brain remembers pieces of information better that classified into small chunks at best.
THEORIES OF VISUAL PERCEPTION
Deals with the order in which we as humans take in information. Visual perception specifically focuses on the top-down and left-to-right flow of information. This is what us humans are most comfortable with.
THE VERBATIM EFFECT
This allows us humans to remember the overall experience that we have had from a particular situation over the specific details of the situation. Therefore, it pays well for us as designers to think about the overall ‘feeling’ that our design is creating rather than the smaller design elements.
THE CHAMELEON EFFECT
Deriving its name from the lizard like animal, the this effect states that we as humans tend to mimic the behavior of our surroundings consciously, subconsciously or both in order to blend into our surroundings more naturally.
HICK’S LAW
This law also refered to as the Hick-Hyman Law states that the more stimuli (or choices) users face, the longer time it will take for them to make a decision. This also has a mathematical formula which goes something like RT (Response Time) = A (Time to Perceive) + B (Time to Decide) Log N (Number or Choices Presented)
Conclusion:
The study or psychologies is one of the key subjects that we as designers must focus on. This helps us to truly think upon and plan more on human-centered design which is easier to use and better to understand. This can also aide designers to manipulate their users to follow a certain pattern or maneuver the decision making process but it can be considered as a dark pattern which designer must refrain from employing.
I plan to further enhance my skills and expertise in the area of cognitive psychology and learn many more avenues, psychological principles, biases and heuristics which would can help me design better and more humane experiences for my users.
This week as we finally try to bring in the relationship between humans, technology and the way these interact, it is crucial learn to what drives us to perceive design, what drives us to make decisions and how learning psychology and cognitive psychology to be specific can add value to create better design and human computer interactions more fluid.
What is cognitive psychology
The term cognitive psychology comes from and involves into the study of our innate internal mental processes which include all of the workings inside our brains, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. The study of how humans think and process information--helps us UX designers & researchers understand the human brain and design interfaces and experiences that allow us to maximize usability, understandability and ease of use for our users.
Major components that make up the field of Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology explore a wide variety of topics related to thinking processes. Some of these include:
Attention - Our ability to process information in the environment while tuning out irrelevant details
Choice-based behavior - Actions driven by a choice among other possibilities
Decision-making - What drives us to make decisions and choose, shape our behavior and interactions with a product service or interface
Information processing
Language acquisition - How we learn to read, write, and express ourselves
Memory - How we memorize things and create mental models of going about some things
Problem-solving
Speech perception - How we process information the way it is given out
Visual perception - How perceive and see the physical world around us
Cognitive psychology in UX
In UX design, the term “cognitive load” as the power of mental processing required to use a feature. If the amount of information that needs to be processed exceeds the user’s ability to process it, the overall performance suffers.
The objects we experience through our senses are processed by our brain and stored in either short time memory (SMT) or long time memory (LMT). According to Millers Law, an average person can keep only 7 (plus or minus two) items in his working memory. We need to assist users in minimizing the cognitive load by presenting the information they mainly look for.
If there is an overload of information, the processing capacity of the human mind reduces. Users can be confused or overwhelmed, leading to negative UX and tasks being dropped.
“We can’t change the actual processing power of our users. What we can do is get to know their limits, and minimize their processing efforts.”
Apart from the Miller’s Law itself that are tons or other cognitive psychology principles that can work as a guidewire in helping UX designers create truly human interfaces that work together with the mental model or the users
Some of which are:
SCHEMA THEORY
This is a a branch of Cognitive Science that is concerned with how the brain assimilates and stores information. According to the schema theory, the human brain remembers pieces of information better that classified into small chunks at best.
THEORIES OF VISUAL PERCEPTION
Deals with the order in which we as humans take in information. Visual perception specifically focuses on the top-down and left-to-right flow of information. This is what us humans are most comfortable with.
THE VERBATIM EFFECT
This allows us humans to remember the overall experience that we have had from a particular situation over the specific details of the situation. Therefore, it pays well for us as designers to think about the overall ‘feeling’ that our design is creating rather than the smaller design elements.
THE CHAMELEON EFFECT
Deriving its name from the lizard like animal, the this effect states that we as humans tend to mimic the behavior of our surroundings consciously, subconsciously or both in order to blend into our surroundings more naturally.
HICK’S LAW
This law also refered to as the Hick-Hyman Law states that the more stimuli (or choices) users face, the longer time it will take for them to make a decision. This also has a mathematical formula which goes something like RT (Response Time) = A (Time to Perceive) + B (Time to Decide) Log N (Number or Choices Presented)
Conclusion:
The study or psychologies is one of the key subjects that we as designers must focus on. This helps us to truly think upon and plan more on human-centered design which is easier to use and better to understand. This can also aide designers to manipulate their users to follow a certain pattern or maneuver the decision making process but it can be considered as a dark pattern which designer must refrain from employing.
I plan to further enhance my skills and expertise in the area of cognitive psychology and learn many more avenues, psychological principles, biases and heuristics which would can help me design better and more humane experiences for my users.
