[HN Gopher] The Psychology of Design
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The Psychology of Design
Author : sanmak
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-05-01 09:23 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (growth.design)
(TXT) w3m dump (growth.design)
| prattatx wrote:
| The article lacks reference to the original peer reviewed
| research establishing these behavioral phenomena. While the
| intent is application, those who question should be able to dig
| into each distinct bias and the research behind them. Some, or
| many, of these may have helped us dominate as a species.
| seumars wrote:
| I really have a hard time with people who insist on framing UX
| design like some kind of social science that guarantees _great
| design_ and _meaningful experiences_. This is yet another guide
| on design "laws" and "proven techniques" coming from the a single
| vendor, this time growth.design, using Design Thinking business
| jargon to add more faux legitimacy to their consultancy work.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I wish you explained why you felt this way, because I don't
| understand.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm not the commenter you replied to, but I'm a designer who
| agrees with the sentiment. To me, it seems pseudo-scientific
| at best, creepy and manipulative at worst. It's like when I
| see a pop science book that is aimed at executives, with a
| sub-title like "how the latest quantum physics research can
| give you an edge in business!" Whatever validity the
| psychological principles underlying these observations may or
| may not have, they are almost certainly being misconstrued
| and oversimplified to sell easy answers to a lay audience.
| itisit wrote:
| I call it Thought Leadership Marketing. Comes in many forms:
| whitepapers, mini-docs, reports, seminars, etc. All geared to
| demonstrate the specious superiority and sophistication of a
| given firm.
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I can't trust this article and instantly turned off by the
| excessive use of Emojis. You might argue - what's the problem?
| I'd say, what's the need! Do they add any value? Why combine
| semiological characters with an otherwise perfectly fine and
| widely accepted English orthography? Are they accessible? Is
| there a emotion being conveyed? Why add cognitive load? Is the
| design severely broken or dysfunctional without Emojis? Are you
| able to write well and convincingly without using Emojis as a
| crutch? Is there an ambiguity where emotional importance can make
| or break the central arguments being presented in text?
| lstamour wrote:
| So I tried it. I combined https://stackoverflow.com/a/64084994
| for emoji detection with https://stackoverflow.com/a/25578365
| to loop through the page and remove them. The result was an
| emoji removal script I could easily paste into Web Inspector's
| console tab to remove all the emojis:
| https://gist.github.com/LouisStAmour/e067d5b7adc0fb7c19f1a56...
| (click "Raw" for easiest copy-paste)
|
| Right away, the headings and list at the top of the page are
| much more readable. I find myself anchoring not to the emoji
| but to the actual headings on the page, like "Meaning".
|
| But then we've the list, with all those circles that used to
| contain emoji...
|
| If you want to remove the circles, use:
| document.querySelectorAll('.rll-bias__icon__wrapper').forEach(x
| => x.parentElement.removeChild(x))
|
| And then adjust the padding left: .type-post
| .post-content .rll-bias__container { padding-left: 30px }
|
| Having done the last CSS tweak above, the first thing I notice
| is that a lot of the checklists are in a "Coming Soon" state
| and feel less overwhelmed by the visual icons, but more
| overwhelmed by the length of the lists.
|
| The lists, on the other hand, immediately feel less visually
| approachable because my mind is asking for simple visual
| examples of each, but those aren't present until I click, at
| best.
|
| It's interesting. To me, the emojis add an artificial sense of
| "completeness" to the page that make the page visually rich but
| don't necessarily add to the experience as much as creating new
| visualizations for each list item would. And they obscure how
| much of the list isn't finished yet, in terms of having
| examples and a detailed explanation.
|
| But reading the list with emojis, there is definite value,
| especially because it has me questioning what each emoji means
| to the list item. Some of them seem very literal to the point
| where they're not helpful - some distort the meaning, such as
| "Framing" or "Contrast" whose emojis represent a different use
| of the word (a picture frame vs framing an argument; happy/sad
| extremes vs isolating an element to draw attention to it).
|
| And I can't download the cheat sheet without turning off my
| adblocker/tracking protections, it seems.
|
| The more I read the page without emojis the more I realize,
| it's a list of definitions. One could imagine this
| alphabetically sorted at the back of a book on this topic.
| Useful? Yes. But easy to apply? Not really.
|
| If these were cards or checklists or if I could swipe through,
| see a random example, and remind myself of how I could
| creatively one of these principles to a problem at hand, I
| think I'd find these very useful. Alternatively, I could see
| myself looking over an entire site and asking myself, for each
| of these principles, where it might be useful or violated in a
| current design, then marking comments for future improvements.
|
| Thinking about it without examples makes it feel too much like
| a flash card memory quiz. Quick, what's the "Von Restorff
| Effect"?! It's a bit mentally taxing. :D It's only when you
| expand and add examples that I feel I've enough context to
| remember more than just the name of something.
| tgv wrote:
| > You might argue - what's the problem?
|
| Bad design, that's the problem. It severely hinders reading.
| sbuk wrote:
| Perhaps you're not a visual person. Words are great, but
| attention is finite and conveying meaning and nuance solely
| using the written word is hard (see Hacker News comments
| generally - mine included!). Pictograms, diagrams and even
| emoji's if used well can convey more with less. This site is
| perhaps a bit over the top, but (at time of writing) 1/4 of the
| comments are positive, so it's clearly of value to some (one is
| questioning the validity of UX, the other is just an opinion).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| To conclude that pictograms are useless from my comment is
| not reading it incorrectly. Pictograms are incredibly useful
| in everyday life - from road signs to warning labels. A good
| book on this topic is Semiology of Graphics by Jacques Berkin
| and the classic 1936 book on International Pictographical
| Language which is what ISO 7001 standard is based on.
|
| To clarify again, I _do not at all_ mean that pictograms are
| useless. Emojis are very useful in conveying emotions. Adding
| them as bullet points is decoration. I like Emojis in
| conversations and instant messages.
|
| I suggest reading long forms of text with emojis, I think
| they're an impedence. If I were to put a bet, Emojis mixed in
| long form articles would be _severely_ more difficult to read
| in an objective pyschology test - I am a very visual person
| for the record but I find this term off-putting.
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Those emojis are like rainbow puke that actively hinder the
| reading of the text. The bright colours jump out so much that
| it's harder to stay anchored to the text. Rather ironic.
| hinkley wrote:
| There is something that feels wrong with this page that I don't
| think I experience with other content that uses icons.
|
| I wonder if the human brain is starting to segregate emoji from
| iconography the way we instinctively don't look at ads on
| pages. (Last year I insisted a web app did not have a feature
| and after conversing with the vendor they showed me it was
| there, in a little ad-shaped rectangle to the right side of the
| page. My brain did not let me look at it)
| squid32 wrote:
| Damn, I am amazed at the number of commenters hating this! I was
| unfamiliar with most of the concepts and some really make sense,
| and I like the lighthearted presentation.
|
| Of course this is also a kind of self-marketing, but it seems
| fair considering the amount of work that probably went into this.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| It's hated because it's respun content. This site is older much
| better (imo): https://lawsofux.com/
| papito wrote:
| If you want a non-shallow piece on what good UX actually means:
|
| "The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything"
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-ma...
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| the scrolling is messed up. the 'sticky header' at the top
| disables scrolling while it pops in and out of sight. more reason
| never to use animated sticky headers - just put position fixed on
| it and be done with it.
| lstamour wrote:
| LOL. I removed the emojis - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27008515 - and then expanded
| all the available items to expand, hid some of the clutter and
| exported the list to PDF to read through it. Little did I expect
| that one of these would actually be a joke.
|
| It says a lot about the page design that items that look really
| similar, with emojis next to them, are indistinguishable from one
| another and thus information -- or jokes -- can hide in plain
| sight thanks to design decisions that downplay and don't
| highlight what might actually be relevant content. The fact that
| the lists are so long and this is buried down near the bottom of
| the last list says something about this.
|
| Only one comment of 128 comments mentions the Batman Curse
| according to a quick CTRL+F. ;-) And if you read that comment, it
| mentions a missing Law. ;-)
|
| > The Batman Curse
|
| > Animal attacks at a young age can sometimes turn people into
| vigilantes
|
| > THE BATMAN CURSE DEFINITION
|
| > Studies have shown that a child's brain can produce unique
| hormones in reaction to dangerous animal encounters. During
| puberty, 1 out of 10 children will start seeing the effect of ADN
| alterations. Their brain becomes wired to look for justice.
|
| > THE BATMAN CURSE EXAMPLES
|
| > A recent surge of vigilantes cases in Watopia alerted
| authorities to investigate the Batman curse. One individual was
| arrested and revealed that he was attacked by bats when he was 6
| years old.
|
| > Who needs a reference? Everybody knows it's true, Fail*Design
| (2020)
| tmilard wrote:
| As one enngeneer who became a gui designer for the love of it, I
| can recall all the rules he describes: - Great rules
|
| I also stress the facts that most engenees are so bad to
| understand the reality of these human rules on design...
|
| Once, in a blog post a designer said this: - "Most engeneers are
| visualy Handicapt : Deal with it" I feel this is very true
| Okkef wrote:
| Random bold text and over use of emoji is not my kind of thing.
| [deleted]
| jmann99999 wrote:
| I like this. The information section is a good checklist of
| reminders. I'm sure much of this comes naturally to an everyday
| designer. However, to someone who dapples in UX periodically,
| this is helpful.
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(page generated 2021-05-01 23:01 UTC)