8 more psychology principles to apply to content design
Right, so this is part 2 of my UX takeaways from Susan M. Weinschenk’s book 100 things every designer needs to know about people.
In the previous post, 7 psychology principles to apply to content design, I wrote about the rationale behind the fundamentals of UX such as using clear fonts, progressive disclosure, and neutral language in user research.
In this post, I’ve extracted principles from the book’s chapters on what motivates people, how people behave as social animals, how people feel, and how people decide.
People are more motivated as they get closer to a goal
Experiments showed that rats would run faster as they approached the end of a maze where there’d be food. This is true for me too as I’d always find the energy to sprint the last kilometre of my weekly 5km run. Perhaps it’s because I would also reward myself with food after the run?
It’s because of the goal-gradient effect: the shorter someone is to their goal, the more motivated they are to reach it.
But in marketing terms, this means that if there was a rewards program, users will tend to accelerate their behaviour as they progress closer to their reward. But their motivation also plummets right after a reward. This is called the post-rewards resetting phenomenon. So marketers need to work around that by thinking of targeted solutions to draw these users back into the cycle.
As people are also more motivated when there’s an end in sight, having a progress bar is a standard UX practice for any user flow that requires users to go through multiple pages.
What I found interesting is that people tend to focus more on what's left than what's completed. For example, between a 12-box reward card with 2 boxes already stamped vs. a 10-box reward card without any boxes stamped, people would fill the former card quicker even though both cards require 10 more boxes to be filled. People are somehow more motivated by the illusion that some progress has already been made.
2. People are motivated by social norms
There has been plenty of studies done to prove that people can be swayed to change their behaviour according to what’s most common in their society. In the book, an experiment proved that the most effective statement to encourage people to use less electricity is: “Your neighbours used less electricity”.
This brings to mind a documentary I saw a while back on how Singapore uses similar nudges to encourage positive behaviours. There’s a section which talks about a Singaporean who suffers from endometriosis, a condition that causes her severe pain. Sitting down alleviates some of that pain, but as her condition is not noticeable to other passengers on public transport, she finds it difficult to get others to offer her their seat.
An experiment was done to change the wording on the tag she wears when she’s taking the public transport. It was found that by mentioning that giving up their seat was the “norm” among Singaporeans, more strangers were encouraged to give up their seats to her on public transport:
Screenshots from the documentary: The Science Of Persuasion & More Tips To Sway Minds | Nudge
Perhaps a takeaway from this is that, if we want to help users to make certain choices or take certain actions within a digital experience, we can think along the lines of including notes that point to what users like them might select. For example, based on a user’s profile, a product with a 3-tier pricing plan can be marked as “preferred by students” or “chosen by most small businesses”.
3. Speakers’ brains and listeners’ brains sync up during communication
It’s proven that people absorb a message better if it’s recited to them by someone else, than if they were to read the message. This is because as we listen to someone else speaking, or watch a video where a person is speaking, our brain starts to work in sync with the speaker’s!
Always think about repackaging content into different formats, and not just rely on copy if we want the message to be understood clearly. (Certainly some food for thought for all us purist writers out there.)
4. Positive feelings about a group can lead to groupthink
This fact is rather counterintuitive, as you’d think that being in a team where everyone gets along would result in better collaboration… Well, studies have shown that if all members of the team are good friends, they would tend to avoid saying or doing anything that might disrupt the group’s harmony.
And this can be counterproductive at the workplace as good ideas tend to emerge from the healthy debate of different perspectives. So it’s a good reminder to always encourage professional discussions.
A good tip mentioned in the book is that if you’re fortunate enough to work with teammates you’re buddies with, it might be a good idea to get someone outside of the group to review decisions that were made within the group. Groupthink or not, I always find that getting feedback from a colleague who doesn’t have full context of the project I’m working on really insightful, as they can bring brand new perspectives.
5. You can engineer better group decisions
This is another good tip for the workplace: it’s better to start group discussions based on facts before sharing individual opinions.
It’s found that if people start sharing their individual preferences right from the start, the rest of the group would pay less attention to the relevant facts and lean towards opinions instead.
But once the team starts to share their opinions, others must have the opportunity to agree or disagree, before moving to make a shared decision.
6. People use “look and feel” as their first indicator of trust
We’re all superficial in some sense. We have to make hundreds of split second decisions all day, every day, and we make judgements firstly on how something looks to us.
In a research done to find out why some participants considered a health website untrustworthy, participants pointed out that it is the design, such as the look, navigation, colour, or text size that didn’t feel right. But when it comes to the factors that would make a website trustworthy, the participants mentioned that it would be the content that would convince them.
Funny how we can draw parallels to Tinder here… We judge something by its looks first, and if we want to know more, we dig deeper into its contents and decide whether we can trust it or not.
It also speaks to the symbiotic relationship between aesthetics and substance, branding and copy, UI design and content… A digital experience first needs to gain the trust of the target users’ attention through good visuals, and continue to hold the users’ attention with solid copy.
7. People want more choices and information than they can process
This is another preference that humans have that goes against their own benefit. When asked to choose between having more or less choices, people would always choose to have more choices. But having too many choices tends to paralyse our thought process.
Known now as the “jam” study, it was proven that having more jars of jam would attract more people to taste the jams, but having less jars of jam resulted in higher purchases.
More choices are attractive, but less choices convert better.
So more doesn’t always mean more. When designing a digital experience, we should resist the impulse to overwhelm users with large number of choices. Instead, consider grouping 3 to 4 categories per step and using progress disclosure to reveal further choices gradually. This approach can make the experience more digestible and potentially lead to better conversion rates.
8. People think choice equals control
In a curious experiment, rats were given a choice between 2 types of paths that led to the same amount of food: a direct path, or a path that branches out and therefore require choices to be made. The rats continuously preferred the path that branches out!
The same theory was tested with people at a casino where they had to choose between a table that had one roulette wheel or a table with two roulette wheels. Guess which one most of them chose despite the 3 wheels being totally identical? The more the merrier right?
People equate having choices to having control, and people like feeling in control of their decisions.
So when it comes to designing a user flow, don’t just think about the fastest path to complete the task. We can create a more engaging and positive experience by giving users the ability to make choices within their journey. For example, by providing multiple entry points, the option to switch devices, or ways to revert certain actions.
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That wraps up all 15 lessons from the book which I believe content designers can apply to their day-to-day work:
People scan screens based on past experience and expectations
People’s ability to read a font affects their perception of the content
People read faster with a longer line length, but they prefer a shorter line length
People reconstruct memories each time they remember them
People process information better in bite-sized chunks
Some types of mental processing are more challenging than others
People interact with conceptual models
People are more motivated as they get closer to a goal
People are motivated by social norms
Speakers’ brains and listeners’ brains sync up during communication
Positive feelings about a group can lead to groupthink
You can engineer better group decisions
People use “look and feel” as their first indicator of trust
People want more choices and information than they can process
People think choice equals control
