Psychology in UI/UX design: 8 Best Practices for Effective Designs 

Human psychology and user experience go hand in hand. Let’s say you hire UI/UX designers – (Designer A and Designer B) for your business. Designer A creates an exceptional design. At the same time, designer B designs a user-centered product. 

You would ask, which design is BETTER OR BEST? 

The user-centric design outperforms best as it draws the audience’s attention, increases user satisfaction, and boosts conversions. 

While Design A failed miserably as designer A didn’t put himself in the shoes of the target audience, and how they would perceive the design or interact with the product. 

Designer B has a fair amount of knowledge about the psychological principles that can be applied in UI/UX design. So, he creates an impactful digital design that provides engaging experiences for users. 

In this blog, we’ll do a quick walkthrough of what psychology means in UI/UX design along with 8 UX designing principles you MUST know to create a GREAT digital product. 

What does Psychology mean in UI/UX design? 

Psychology plays a vital role in creating a great UI/UX design. It’s about understanding what users need, how they think, and what motivates them to take action. 

You can design engaging user interfaces by putting yourself in the user’s shoes. Ask yourself – what users would perceive in their mind when they land on your app or website. 

How would users feel for a moment when they interact with your website or see your products – does the font size appear to be too small, or is the information not well presented, or the color is too bright, or CTA buttons are not placed strategically? 

If that’s the case, you need to use a laser-focused approach and reiterate your design. Anyone can create user interfaces but if the UI/UX design won’t meet user goals then it would be a big failure. 

When you don’t understand the user’s psychology, you can’t solve problems for people who use your product. 

Let’s say you dump too much information on the screen, then it results in cognitive overload. It means that you’re putting stress on the user’s memory and making it hard for them to access information. That reduces your app engagement and hence lowers conversions.  

That’s how understanding human psychology lies at the heart of the UI/UX design process.  

What are some of the top 8 Psychological principles for creating engaging UI/UX designs? 

Let’s say you design the user interface for an e-commerce site, and you’ve added the search bar at the bottom of the web page. That leads to serious design errors and usability issues.  

As you don’t find out the mental block from the users’ perspective, there occurs a gap between what you create and what they expect. 

Knowing these psychological principles is important when creating a UI/UX design because you get to know how users think and behave in a certain way they do. 

Let’s discuss each psychology principle in UI/UX design in detail

1. The least effort principle (Simple designs are BEST)  

As the name itself says- Least effort meaning simple designs are considered the most attractive ones. People prefer to complete things with the least possible effort. Don’t add extra details or elements on the screen just because you want to create a fancy design. 

Whenever placing elements on the screen, don’t just describe the process, show them.

The book “Don’t Think” talks about how people want to get their work done with little effort. They don’t want to stick to things that talk about how technology works. If things take too long for them to understand, they will be far behind in taking action.  

The same psychology concept applies to UI/UX design. Users are most likely to stick to web interfaces that offer seamless navigation and provide them with a quick way to figure out things. If they can’t find information or a product they’re searching for, they run. 

In the example below, GoodWill website offers a simple user interface for its target audience such as shoppers, donors, and job seekers. They created a user-centric design and organized different tabs for each user. This allows them to choose the one that aligns with their goals. 

2. The Hick Hyman law  

Hick Hyman’s psychology principle applies to the area of UI/UX design. This principle implies that as you present a greater number of choices/options to users, the longer it takes for the user to decide. 

That means more choices act as a stimulus for the user and that stimulus increases the reaction time. REMEMBER – Less is always faster.  

Let’s say you are designing a product page for an e-commerce app, the greater number of options you add on the screen restricts them from moving ahead. 

You should provide them with bite-sized information/choices so that users don’t feel overwhelmed. Hence, users can spend more time interacting with the site. 

When you overcomplicate the design process, you put a cognitive load on users which affects their experience. As a result, they will take more time to make a decision.  

So, how do UI/UX designers applies hick’s law theory in designing user interfaces-  

• Provide limited options on the screen so that users won’t take too long to decide. 

Minimal choice = less decision time  

• Highlight the most popular or recommended choices so that users know what to prioritize. 

• Add search and filtering options on the screen to help the users find the product with ease. 

Amazon uses a search and navigation bar to help users make quick decisions. They don’t need to run complex searches as everything is organized into different categories and subcategories. 

Furthermore, this psychology principle inspires Apple to create minimalist designs, and uncluttered user interfaces providing users with more essential information and options. 

Another example of a brand that applies Hick’s principle is Google’s homepage. Google’s homepage is minimal and subtle where the user can type the word and start searching for a product, service, or information. They haven’t added any extra information as it could distract the user from typing. 

In a nutshell, fewer choices result in quicker decisions and thus enhance the user experience on the site. 

3. Progressive disclosure 

As digital products are increasingly complex, the UI/UX designer needs to find a way to match the user’s psychology and their design.

The progressive disclosure principle implies that the designer should focus on providing essential information upfront and then offer secondary/less important information at the request of the user. 

The best example of a popular brand that applies the progressive disclosure principle is Google which offers an advanced search functionality in the secondary screen as they don’t want to confuse users. 

It’s advantageous for users who want to run an advanced search or apply filters to narrow down the search results. That’s why they hide this feature, want users to search comfortably and provide a larger set of options when the user demands it. 

4. Fitts’ law  

Psychologist Paul Fitts came out with this concept called Fitt’s law when evaluating the human motor system. The finding of this principle is that the time required for a pointer (mouse cursor, hand, or finger) is directly proportional to the distance of the target and its size. 

Source  

Whenever designing user interfaces, be strategic towards placing interactive buttons in easy-to-reach corners such as near the screen edges. 

That means enlarging clickable areas and reducing the distance to key navigational elements makes the browsing experience smoother and hence results in enhanced user experience. 

Another thing you can adopt while creating UI/UX design is shorter drop-down menus as they are easy to use. The less travel time a user needs to reach the target, the faster they can take action. That’s why large targets result in shorter movement times.  

More importantly, when creating the clickable button, avoid using smaller targets as it results in touch target errors. It’s inevitably true that people are more likely to click on bigger targets. 

Also Read: UI vs UX : Understanding the Key Differences

The example given below is a bad UI/UX design that violates Fitt’s law. You can see that CTA buttons are too thin, stacked with each other and there’s less gap between elements. Hence, users are more likely to click on the wrong button. 

To create engaging user interfaces, designers should be aware of this concept and should know about the placement of interactive buttons. They would keep the elements bigger, ensuring the appropriate sizing and spacing of elements.  

To trigger an immediate purchase, use contrasting colors that should be visible and make the microcopy as appealing as possible. 

5. Jakob’s law 

Users tend to relate to their past experiences and if your site is different from others, then the usability of the product is less. If the app design fails to meet their preconceived notion, then it would become harder for them to stick with your site for long. 

In a nutshell, users expect websites to behave in a similar fashion and provide the exact type of experience they get from previous websites. That’s called “Jakob’s effect”, an important principle in UX design.   

For example, when designing a new site, users expect the search bar to be present at the top of the page. 

They want the navigation option to be located at the top of the page. 

By applying Jakob’s effect in designing the new product, you reduce the friction for users, and they can seamlessly navigate your site. 

But Jakob’s law still applies today because users spend most of their time on websites and mobile apps, so they know that websites offer a horizontal navigation experience. While mobile apps allow users to navigate through a hamburger menu. 

They believe that certain patterns work this way, and they expect future websites to behave in a similar way so they can access the product with ease.  

In a nutshell, if you create a website design exceptionally well, and users struggle to find commonality while using the product, then this may worsen the site experience.  

Violating this UX design principle increases their mental effort, and they won’t be able to complete their transactions.  

6.Von Restorff (Isolation effect)  

This psychological principle impacts your UI/UX design as it talks about how people are most likely to remember unique and standout elements on the screen. Make the important features or special offers on your website visually distinctive so that users can remember it for long. 

The isolation effect talks about when there are multiple similar objects on the screen, then the most important elements should be highlighted differently. That’s the reason why CTA buttons are of different colors than the rest of the elements.   

The idea behind making CTAs distinct is to elicit the user to take action. 

So, if you want to draw in audience attention, you can apply this effect in your UI/UX design process and make your website, application, or web interface stand out. 

Here, Amazon intentionally uses Von Restorff’s effect to glue users. They highlight the best deals of the day or come up with limited offers so that users can act instantly. 

Users feel special seeing those discounted products but it’s a psychological trick that designers use to differentiate their offers from the other website elements. 

7. Scarcity principle 

Scarcity’s principle purpose is to create a sense of urgency by highlighting that a limited number of products are available on this product page. That means it appeals to users that they are the most valuable items. This convinces them to take quick action. 

The scarcity principle applies the same traditional economic theory meaning when the supply of a product/service is limited, its demand subsequently increases. The product becomes more valuable to the customer. 

Studies have even proven that subjects that are rare or limited in nature are more precious. The desire to obtain your product increases when the items are in limited supply or availability.   

Myntra works on the Loss aversion concept meaning people fear losing items once they’re gone. 

Myntra’s website came up with Independence Day sales or Black Friday offers just to entice customers to purchase goods. People react to such urgency because the fear of losing the item is more than paying a price for it. 

When creating an e-commerce site, you can play with customer psychology by adding countdown offers on your website or showing that a product is scarce or limited pieces are left. 

Such psychological principles in UI/UX design convert visitors into customers and hence increase your site conversion rates. 

8. Color psychology 

Every color symbolizes something so the colors you choose for your digital product should reflect your brand and evoke people’s emotions. 

For example – Red talks about being deterministic and bold, while blue represents a feeling of calmness and confidence.  

While choosing any color for your digital product, you should think about what impact it will create emotionally in the mind of the user. Every color affect user behavior differently and conveys different meanings for different cultures. 

Great product designers always know that there exists LOGIC behind choosing every color. 

Let’s say the background of your website interface is blue and you added a CTA that’s blue in color, then your CTA won’t stand out and you can’t garner the attention of users. 

This is because the right colors can make a significant impact. It’s better to indicate your CTA button using contrasting colors. 

While choosing a color for your digital product, you should understand your target audience. For Western audiences, red becomes the symbol of love while Eastern culture considers red a sign of fortune. 

Studies show that color preferences matter a lot as it takes 90 seconds for someone to form an opinion about your product. 

Let’s study a few examples of how brands use the color psychology concept –  

• Netflix uses red color in its logo and website interface as people come on its website for entertainment purposes.  

• Facebook uses blue color for its website to make people feel confident while sharing content with others.  

• Spotify believes that using a green color provides soothing experience to users when they explore through a series of songs and podcasts. 

While choosing a color for your website or digital product, keep a note of the following things-  

• Know the gender of your audience. Is your website targeting men or women?  

• Study the color relationship with different cultures. 

• Use the A/B testing approach while choosing colors and see which gets more clicks.  

Wrapping up 

Now, you understand that you can’t design a BETTER product unless you know how human psychology works and what makes people tick for longer. Just because you think that a design is GREAT doesn’t mean that people will react the same way. 

Following the above-mentioned design principles helps you to create impeccable designs that retain your users, provide a satisfactory experience to them, and skyrocket conversion rates. 

At BigOhTech, our top-rated UI/UX designers have 9+ years of experience creating STANDOUT UI/UX designs for businesses of all sizes ranging from startups to renowned brands. 

We start our design process by conducting user research through surveys and focus group interviews. After serving 100+ clients who need design services, we know the top tricks and best UI/UX design practices to create an engaging experience for visitors.