User behavior basics

To become an expert in the field of UX, it is essential for us, as UX professionals, to understand the behaviors and needs of our users. To create a better product for our users and to understand their needs, we have to learn some basic principles of psychology. Otherwise, we will always keep wondering why users are not taking specific steps when they use our products and why they are not interacting with it in the way we expected.

As human beings, we do not like to think too much; for example, when we see a product that has tons of features, as much as it excites us at the beginning, we tend to lose interest in it later. It's not that users don't want to make an effort to look at the features, it's because most of the time we are too lazy to check the things that we are not interested in at that moment. However, in some cases, too many features or too many options inside the product can confuse users; take a look at the following example, which distinguishes old TV controllers from new ones:

More choices need more cognitive load.

Another thing that will drive the users to move their attention away from our product might be multitasking. If the user's attention is drawn toward other tasks when they are already working on the main task, they might end up not finishing any of them. The more we focus the user's attention on one task at a time, the better our results.

It is understandable that human beings make mistakes, but they get a second chance to rectify them; therefore, when a user makes a mistake while using our product, we must provide them a way to undo their moves or provide with way to fix that mistake. Actually, a user experience is good when users are not able to make a mistake; so, every time the user makes a mistake while using our product, it's our fault, not theirs. We will need to avoid designs that drive users to make mistakes.

Sometimes, we think that users will not make the same mistake twice because they will remember it, but that's untrue because human memory is too complicated and unreliable. Most people will not waste their time learning how to use our product; they just want to use it without thinking about anything else other than finishing a specific task. Our habits reconstruct our memories, which leads to memory change, so it is a must for us as UX professionals to avoid forcing people to remember the actions that they should take while using our product.

Then, how do we guide users to take actions that will prevent them from making mistakes? Well, we can get their attention by providing different or unique options inside our product. For example, take a look at the following screenshot:

Psychologically, human beings give their attention to things that are different/unique. So, as a UX designer, we will need to provide steps or actions with great usability to be able to grab our user's attention.

However, how do we know whether the user will like that specific thing? Well, as we know, the human brain is complicated and very difficult to understand. Often, users are unaware of what they want until they experience it; so that's why it's really important for us to understand the user's psychology.

If you come to UX with a background in psychology, then all the theories, rules, analyses, and experiments that you know or learned before are really important and useful for a career in UX.

So, to better understand the psychology aspect of UX, let's start by introducing the Gestalt theory.