What makes you click on a button on a website you’re browsing? Why do you feel compelled to enter your email in a subscription form? UX design principles and psychology are closely intertwined, despite the fact that this connection is not always obvious to users. Over the years psychology has proven to have effective research methods, which can go a long way in describing and exploring users’ behavior. No wonder, it’s so natural for UX designers to apply those findings to build websites and applications users eagerly interact with. Of course, the overall success of an app doesn’t hinge solely on the effective UX design. Your product should be capable of solving a particular problem of your users. It should possess the basic functionality and be supplemented by auxiliary microservices. To boost your app’s chances of success, you also need to come up with an effective marketing strategy and promotion campaign, which may eat up to 70 percent of your app development budget. (That’s where an online app development calculator may come in handy.) That being said, it’s exactly UX design that can act as a real game-breaker in determining the popularity of your app. So, in today’s article, you’re going to tell you more about the laws of UX design principles every app developer should be aware of.
Here’s Our Top 3 UX Design Principles
#1 Aesthetic Usability Effect
It comes as no surprise that people are more inclined to choose things that look more beautiful and attractive than their less visually appealing counterparts. The same applies to UX design. You may tinker with laying out the functionality of your app, brainstorming ideas, and sifting through FrameWires and design instruments to provide the best possible experience to your users. But the first thing your users notice and comment on is your site or app’s color scheme. This proves the fact that users are more eager to interact with the visually appealing products. And there’s even a scientific explanation behind that. More than twenty years ago, experts from the Hitachi design center found there was a stronger correlation between the user’s ratings of aesthetic appeal of a device and its perceived ease of use than the correlation with the actual ease of use. According to our friends, app developers in Dallas, you should take care not only to impress your users with effective visuals and UI design, but also make sure that your app’s usability and functionality is up to par.
#2 Zeigarnik Effect
Though it may sound surprising, psychologists are convinced that people tend to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks. This effect is now known as the Zeigarnik effect, which got its name after Bluma Zeigarnik, the Russian psychologist who studied memory back in 1920. She arrived at the conclusion that incomplete tasks are easier to remember than successfully completed ones because people keep feeling the tension and compulsion to bring it to a conclusion. The Zeigarnik effect also can be used in UX design. And you can use it to create a deeper user engagement by applying the gamification principles. It is a common practice to motivate players to immerse in games. So, by using rewards and credit systems, starting challenges, setting goals, encouraging users to publicize their achievements can go a long way towards delivering a better user engagement. It’s also a good idea to use progress bars if you want to spark your users’ interest in your app or some specific activities. Completeness meters are also successfully used by social media, checkout forms, and job portals. And you may want to put them to good use, as well.
#3 Hick’s Law
Have you ever found yourself unable to decide which item to pick among the abundance of options available? There is a reason for that. And this reason is Hick’s Law, also known as the Hick-Hyman Law.
William Hick and Ray Hyman, who worked in tandem to study the relationship between the intensity of a stimulus and the amount of time required for a person to respond to this stimulus. According to Hick’s Law, the more complex and manifold the choices (stimuli) are, the more difficult it is for users to decide which option to give preference to. With this law in mind, you need to make sure not to overwhelm your users with multitudes of choices and irrelevant UI elements. When combined with other UX design principles like usability, simplicity and monotony, Hick’s Law may help you ensure your users get the best experience possible when interacting with your product.
