Design Psychology talks

Design psychology applies what we know about how people perceive, think, decide and form habits to the design of products and interfaces. It draws on cognitive psychology, behavioural science and economics to explain why people notice some things and miss others, why they choose as they do, and what makes them come back.

For product and design teams, this knowledge helps explain behaviour that usability testing alone may not. It informs everything from how information is laid out to how choices are presented and how a product supports people in reaching their goals. It also carries responsibility: the same insights that help users can be used to manipulate them, which is why ethics is a recurring theme.

The talks here cover four sub-topics. Cognitive psychology is represented by Jeff Johnson’s Designing with the Mind in Mind, Susan Weinschenk on vision, hearing and the brain, and Ash Donaldson on cognitive dissonance. Behavioral economics includes Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Richard Thaler’s Nudge, Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice and Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing. Habits and behavior change features B. J. Fogg on changing habits for better health, Nir Eyal on habit-forming products and Dan Lockton on design for behaviour change. Persuasive design includes Maurits Kaptein’s talks on persuasion profiles, Nathalie Nahai’s psychological principles of persuasive product design, Andy Budd on persuasive design and Anders Toxboe on designing with persuasive patterns.

Other talks look at motivation and emotion, from Kathy Sierra’s Badass: Making Users Awesome and Stephen Anderson’s Hooked on a Feeling to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow, Jesse Schell on designing for pleasure and Amy Jo Kim on game mechanics. Harry Brignull’s talk on dark patterns shows the other side: interfaces designed to trick people. The recordings span 2007 to 2018. Many of the ideas discussed, from social proof to loss aversion, are covered in the UI-Patterns.com persuasive pattern library.