Designing with Psychology in Mind
Josh is at An Event Apart in Boston to talk about Designing with Psychology in Mind.
He begin’s with Kurt Lewin’s equation:
Behaviour is a function of a person and their environment.
That’s quite a modern view that clashed with the prevailing wisdom of the time. Lewin’s equation is applicable to design because although we can’t change the person we can influence behaviour by altering the environment on the web. We create the environment. We create a universe for our users. In a way, we are playing God.
One of the most infamous experiments that demonstrates how much environment and behaviour can influence people is the Stanford prison experiment.
This change in behaviour was described as The Lucifer Effect. We often assign actions to the nature of the person but we ignore the external influences. This is the fundamental attribution error.
On the web, we often try to change people’s behaviour. Amazon is trying to change people from offline buyers to online buyers. On his own blog, Josh is trying to change people’s behaviour from casual readers to subscribers. Web designers change behaviour. Well, that’s what psychology is. So now we have another hat to wear, that of psychologist.
Behaviour first, design second. What behaviour are you supporting with your design?
We can use the egocentric worldview. We can’t help but see ourselves as the centre of the world. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is useful. Personal value precedes network value (for users). Josh wrote about this as the Del.icio.us lesson. Even if the social value didn’t exist, Del.icio.us would still provide real, personal value. Hunch is making good use of this principle. You provide Hunch with tons of useful information but you do it for your benefit. It turns out that most people represent themselves truthfully online even though, famously, on the internet, no-one knows you’re a dog.
Now for a test …an awareness test.
Humans have a single locus of attention. We can actively think about only one thing at a time. Jef Raskin talks about The Humane Interface. We are often interrupted from our locus of attention. The iPhone is successful even though it doesn’t have a large screen. That doesn’t matter because it’s so task-focused. There’s only ever one activity on the screen. In almost every iPhone app, there is only one thing to do. People love these applications. People don’t want to do other things at the same time. Compare the “regular” Amazon site with the iPhone version; the iPhone version is much more focused. Don’t distract people. Apple pitch their fullscreen view as work without distractions.
Just like Writeroom.
Social proof: show signs of life. Yelp feels vibrant and in use. So does Amazon. According to Dunacn Watts, network effects can lead to a feedback cycle of popularity. So social proof can literally control what becomes successful. Avatars are a great way of showing social proof. Porter’s Law:
Avatars increase in size and realism over time.
Positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and penalty are all behavioural influencers.
The behaviour you’re seeing is the behaviour you’ve designed for.
People are reacting to what you have designed. Tumblr has some great positive reinforcement in its sign-up process that’s carried through to your first couple of posts. Positive reinforcement works but it doesn’t work over the long term. Know when to stop giving positive reinforcement and switch over to passionate engagement. Design to get people into the flow. There’s a lot to learn from gaming:
One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for very long.
People get bored by social networks because they are not being challenged. The only task is to answer connection invitations. Keep adding things to keep challenging users. It’s a Red Queen arm’s race. This is what Kathy Sierra talks about; creating passionate users.
Wait. Isn’t this all a bit …evil?
So, when and how do we turn on the light to let the dogs drool?
Isn’t this manipulation? Facebook’s original Beacon interface was definitely manipulative, possibly even evil, enabled through the design. They redesigned to give users more power and knowledge …although it took a few iterations.
We must determine what success is. If people are using something, why are they using it? Are you making people happier with your product?