Psychological Considerations in UI Design
Every design is about perception and interaction. The whole purpose of designing lies in the appeal to a target audience no matter how wide or diverse. That's when we rely on psychology as means of understanding how to apply user’s experience into the end product, increase involvement and improve the overall reception. It's important to develop a system of principles and psychological approaches that would increase efficiency of apps and websites, reach essential goals of users. Eventually, any implemented feature, any UX approach is driven by the two main elements: attention and action. The level of engagement becomes crucial.
User perceives what they expect. It's biased by experience, context, goals. Users have a hard time differentiating pale colors, small color patches and separate patches in design. Around 8% of male and 0,5% of female users of Northern European ancestry have color-blindness. No interface can rely solely on color. Peripheral vision is poor. It requires very strict and precise allocation of elements within the interface. The main actions and most important features be implemented into the design bearing the serial position effect in mind.
Generally speaking, users don't like to think that much. They focus on achieving the goal and prefer familiar paths to exploration of new design. They seek and use structure. It is easier to perceive. Visual hierarchy gets users to goal faster. Avoid making users deduce things, only explicit and exact reasons and demands for action. No extra thinking for users. People evolved to recognize things quickly, but not to recall random facts. It remains a challenge for the majority.
Humans are likely to interpret information in this way due to the way our brains have developed over time. In saying that we don’t always act in predictable ways. Part of the beauty of being human is that we are predictably irrational.