The Science Behind User Experience
A great user experience is the perfect blend of concepts from psychology, design principles for an elegant UI, and continuous feedback from the users. Most of the time, designers completely neglect the importance of the psychology. This leads to user interfaces that create high cognitive load for the user. In cognitive psychology, cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. Computers work efficiently with applications that take up little memory. The human brain also works with more concentration, higher retention and less fatigue when a task takes up less cognitive load as compared to a task which is confusing or has steep learning curve.
The human cognitive system is designed so that all our senses work to reduce the psychological load. Our brain just focusses on the details that solve the given problem and not on the full specifications. Our eyes supplement the brain in this activity. For example, while reading this, you are not aware of the words written in the line above the word or below. In this case, the task for your brain is to process the word that is perceived by your eyes which is the most relevant at the moment and not any other word above or below that word.
In user experience design, properties which are self visible for example, a triangle on a map or the bold font, help create focus which facilitates the cognitive activity of the brain and reduces load so the user doesn't have to spend time searching for the relevant details. Also, most of the time, users don't read the content, they scan it. This is the reason that self evident properties like different shapes, sizes, colors, fonts, orientations and so on are used to emphasize the main concepts.
Have you ever wondered why all you mobile applications have the Hamburger icon for navigation? Because, we are very familiar with it. The moment we see it, we recognize it. When you see a thumbs up button, does it remind you of Facebook like button? If yes, then again, it is because we are familiar with it. Familiarity has a direct relation with cognitive load, the more experience a person has with similar things, the easier it is to identify them which reduces psychological load. This is the reason why many good user interfaces use standard design elements that are familiar to a large part of the target audience.
Not all motion is bad. Let's suppose that you are alone in a forest and you see out of the corner of your eye some bushes rustling. What do you feel? That someone or something is behind the bush? You were able to feel that something is moving on your right side even though it wasn't in the line of sight. consider you are chatting with someone on Facebook and there is a pop up on the bottom left of your screen indicating about a new notification. The motion of that popup broke your concentration for the good. But, if there would have not been any popup, and your brain being focussed on the chat window, you would have missed an urgent notification. Therefore, motion can be useful in the case of urgent notifications. Motion can also cause the user to lose concentration if not used properly. Consider the blogs or online streaming websites which generate popup or moving ads while you are reading the text or watching a movie.
Curiosity is the mother of invention is a very old saying but is true in the case of cognitive science and user experience. Curiosity is the gap between known and unknown. If a person is curious about anything, he/she will find it exciting to research more about it and this research will take less cognitive load as compared to the task that is not interesting. Think about yourself, you have read this article till this point because you found it interesting. You had knowledge of design but something was missing and this article helped to bridge that gap. Many games use this technique to keep their users engaged and to generate revenue. People prefer to learn more about the things they partially know about. A good user experience design closes that information gap and keeps the users curious.
Understanding the mind of our target users can definitely help in building smooth user experiences that are easy to learn and use. A user interface causing high cognitive load will eventually frustrate the users and will make them lose interest.