By Teo Wei Lin Denise
Web Design Meets Psychology
Psychology is the science of mind and behavior. It aims to understand humans better in areas such as perception, cognition, emotion and behavior. Human psychology is studied in great detail to be able to preempt how people react to different stimuli. In retail, we study people to give customers what they want and increase satisfaction; in economics, we study people to be able to predict and analyze things like national growth and employment; in art, we study people to understand about self-expression and appreciation. In web design, we also need to study people to be able to connect and engage our target audience. Web design is not just about meeting the needs of our audience; it is also about delivering an experience. With 234 million websites as of December 2009, it becomes a competitive issue to ensure that your website stands out above the rest.
From a web designer’s perspective, the good news is that not all websites are designed with their audience in mind. Many are built without considering a specific target audience. It should be the responsibility of the web designer to find out who will be eyeballing his website and making a concerted effort to understand his target audience. Web designers should first collect information and have decent knowledge about users even before picking up a pencil to conceptualize and wire frame.
This write up aims at examining aspects of human psychology that are relevant in the world of web designing and look at some ways web designers could approach this delicate job.
From a web designer’s perspective, the good news is that not all websites are designed with their audience in mind. Many are built without considering a specific target audience. It should be the responsibility of the web designer to find out who will be eyeballing his website and making a concerted effort to understand his target audience. Web designers should first collect information and have decent knowledge about users even before picking up a pencil to conceptualize and wire frame.
This write up aims at examining aspects of human psychology that are relevant in the world of web designing and look at some ways web designers could approach this delicate job.
We will begin our exploration with the aspect of art. A huge component of web design is art – the colors, images, textures used by the designer and what emotions, thoughts and impressions are developed by the user.
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder Skill
Humans are naturally attracted to things we call “beautiful”. Denis Dutton, a professor from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand specializing in the philosophy of art and aesthetics, was featured on TED for his talk on "A Darwinian Theory of Beauty” and wrote a book called The Art Instinct where he suggests that humans are hard-wired to seek beauty. Art is a need that is built into our systems, a complex and subtle evolutionary adaptation comparable to our facility for language. The origin of humans seeking beauty traces back to the fundamental human instinct to survive and hence the need to reproduce. Beauty has served as a means to draw attention from the opposite gender to ensure reproduction and survival of the species. Today, the role of beauty has evolved to also be a way of deriving happiness and esteem. Be it witnessing something beautiful or self-perceived beauty, these satisfy our esteem and self-actualization needs, making us feel good. According to Dutton, beauty is far from just being “in the eye of the beholder”. We find beauty in something that is done well. He traces the first few pieces of art created by mankind and from there realizes that people perceive an object to be beautiful for the skill that was needed to make it.
From the above findings, we can expect that our users are seeking beautiful websites. And an important factor that plants the word “beautiful” in their minds is the perceived skill level in the design of the website. The amount of effort put in and level of expertise displayed in a web designer’s work translates to the attractiveness level perceived by the user.
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian Theory of Beauty
From the above findings, we can expect that our users are seeking beautiful websites. And an important factor that plants the word “beautiful” in their minds is the perceived skill level in the design of the website. The amount of effort put in and level of expertise displayed in a web designer’s work translates to the attractiveness level perceived by the user.
Mirror Mirror on the Walll
Research about user experience has revealed an interesting fact about the way art works. From experiments conducted, it has been shown that 9 times out of ten, when asked to draw a person, most people will draw someone of their own gender. What we draw in many ways is a version of ourselves. People are inclined to things that express themselves. In design terms, this means that the product of art must express a language of colors, shapes and themes that is the visual equivalent of the personalities of the target market. Web designers need to bear in mind that they should not be designing according to what they like, but instead what their target audience likes. A website that mirrors and reflects what your users think, feel and like makes that special connection to them, creating a feeling of comfort and self-expression.
Orderly Chaos
The perception of art is also closely related to brain hemisphere dominance. Let us first begin about introducing some important facts about our brain.
The human brain has two hemispheres: the right brain and the left brain. The right brain deals with more subjective things like intuition, music, art and creativity. The right brain works by first looking at the visual reference as a whole, be it a landscape, object, or piece of artwork and then noticing the finer details of the object. The left brain deals with things like logic, language, analysis, science and mathematics. It looks at a visual reference and first sees the fine details then fits the pieces together to form the bigger picture. When we look at an object, our brains do not work separately; they function together and give you information about the object from both objective and subjective aspects.
Although the two hemispheres of our brain function hand-in-hand, people can be more right brain dominated, left brain dominated or in some cases, do not have a particular hemisphere that dominates. Brain hemisphere dominance has huge implications on the way we design. Right-brainers are more inclined to art and music due to right brain domination, thus have greater tendencies to prefer abstract art that encompasses disorder and lack of regularity. They embrace open discussions with no boundaries and tend to be what is perceived as the more ‘creative’ people. Left-brainers are more inclined to more orderly art styles due to their tendencies to think in more logical and systematic ways. They feel comforted with the presence definitions and structure. Depending on the nature of the website and thus the audience that gets attracted, web designers should steer their design styles appropriately. A site that aims at audiences who are more right brain dominated should go for more abstract and less orderly design styles, whereas if the site aims at left brain dominated audiences, more systematic design approaches should be used. Examples of right brain dominated audiences include areas like art and music, left brain dominated audiences are probably those that are interested in areas like science, finance or mathematics.
Right and Left Brain
The human brain has two hemispheres: the right brain and the left brain. The right brain deals with more subjective things like intuition, music, art and creativity. The right brain works by first looking at the visual reference as a whole, be it a landscape, object, or piece of artwork and then noticing the finer details of the object. The left brain deals with things like logic, language, analysis, science and mathematics. It looks at a visual reference and first sees the fine details then fits the pieces together to form the bigger picture. When we look at an object, our brains do not work separately; they function together and give you information about the object from both objective and subjective aspects.
Abstract vs Orderly Art
Although the two hemispheres of our brain function hand-in-hand, people can be more right brain dominated, left brain dominated or in some cases, do not have a particular hemisphere that dominates. Brain hemisphere dominance has huge implications on the way we design. Right-brainers are more inclined to art and music due to right brain domination, thus have greater tendencies to prefer abstract art that encompasses disorder and lack of regularity. They embrace open discussions with no boundaries and tend to be what is perceived as the more ‘creative’ people. Left-brainers are more inclined to more orderly art styles due to their tendencies to think in more logical and systematic ways. They feel comforted with the presence definitions and structure. Depending on the nature of the website and thus the audience that gets attracted, web designers should steer their design styles appropriately. A site that aims at audiences who are more right brain dominated should go for more abstract and less orderly design styles, whereas if the site aims at left brain dominated audiences, more systematic design approaches should be used. Examples of right brain dominated audiences include areas like art and music, left brain dominated audiences are probably those that are interested in areas like science, finance or mathematics.
We Are Creatures of Habit
Computer designer and brain researcher Jeff Hawkins suggested in his talk about brain science that our brains function on pattern recognition. This is how the human brain works: when we see something (let us call this event A) for the first time, the information we collect from that experience gets stored into memory. The next time we witness A, our brain automatically recalls from memory information about our first experience of A and makes a prediction of what is to happen after A happens based on our earlier experience of A. Thus every single moment, we are constantly making predictions, be it consciously or subconsciously.
When we walk to our front door, we “instinctively” reach out to the place where the door handle is (based on our previous experiences of where it was) and we expect to feel the door handle at that same experience. Actions we execute that seem “instinctive” or “automatic” are merely actions that are running based on recalling past experiences and predicting the same outcome this time round. We do not consciously think about opening the door by moving our hand to the position and inspecting if the handle is at that position before executing the act of opening the door. We merely do it subconsciously without any conscious thought. When the reality does not meet our prediction, we then notice a change and consciously give attention to that matter.
Once we understand that our brain functions on repetitive stimulus-response patterns, it then makes sense why it is so highly emphasized that good web designs should encompass consistent styles, themes and layouts. When a user navigates from page to page, we do not want to surprise the user and distract him from the important content on that page with an entirely different layout. We expect that clicking on the logo of the website brings us back to the home page because of past experiences that confirm our predictions. When we want to navigate around a website, we expect that links can be found at the top, sides or bottom of the page because our past experiences tell us so. Web designers should design with the following approach in mind: whatever that we seek to get the user’s attention, strive to make it unexpected and different from the norm so that s/he notices a change that is not in accordance to his/her prediction; whatever that does not require attention and should be intuitive and user-friendly should be done according to how the user expects it to be. A user that actually makes a conscious ponder about how to get to a page denotes that the navigation approach is out of the user’s prediction boundaries and hence is perceived as not intuitive.
Jeff Hawkins: Brain Science
When we walk to our front door, we “instinctively” reach out to the place where the door handle is (based on our previous experiences of where it was) and we expect to feel the door handle at that same experience. Actions we execute that seem “instinctive” or “automatic” are merely actions that are running based on recalling past experiences and predicting the same outcome this time round. We do not consciously think about opening the door by moving our hand to the position and inspecting if the handle is at that position before executing the act of opening the door. We merely do it subconsciously without any conscious thought. When the reality does not meet our prediction, we then notice a change and consciously give attention to that matter.
Once we understand that our brain functions on repetitive stimulus-response patterns, it then makes sense why it is so highly emphasized that good web designs should encompass consistent styles, themes and layouts. When a user navigates from page to page, we do not want to surprise the user and distract him from the important content on that page with an entirely different layout. We expect that clicking on the logo of the website brings us back to the home page because of past experiences that confirm our predictions. When we want to navigate around a website, we expect that links can be found at the top, sides or bottom of the page because our past experiences tell us so. Web designers should design with the following approach in mind: whatever that we seek to get the user’s attention, strive to make it unexpected and different from the norm so that s/he notices a change that is not in accordance to his/her prediction; whatever that does not require attention and should be intuitive and user-friendly should be done according to how the user expects it to be. A user that actually makes a conscious ponder about how to get to a page denotes that the navigation approach is out of the user’s prediction boundaries and hence is perceived as not intuitive.
Moving Ahead
Now that we know a little about who we are and how we function, we can then proceed to create truly inspiring and engaging web designs. Learning about human psychology may take much time and effort, but the effort pays off when, as a web designer, you are able to bridge that special connection between your website and the user.
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