If you want to be an amazing web designer, it is important that you understand the psychology of the people because it is people who are going to use the website you have designed.
So, in this post we’re going to cover the three principles that you really need to understand if you want to be great at web design. It is rock and roll.
Hey everybody and what is up, my name is Zach. Welcome back to our free web design course. Today, we are going to talk about Psychology. It’s something really so important because, at the end of the day, much of what we do as designers is to influence the people.
You might not want to think about this in an evil way, but our designs are actually to change people’s minds, to make them do what we want them to do.
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Now, this can be done in an evil way-just think about propaganda in history-but usually what we’re doing is for good causes, communication, or mostly just to sell stuff. That is what our customers want to do in general: sell products, sell companies, or whatever.
The idea is that in order to do this-to communicate and make an impact on how people are using the website and understand what exactly we want to convey-we need to be aware of some basic key principles about psychology and the mode in which people act and think, so we will try to lead them to the conclusion we want.
In this article, I’m going to cover the top three principles I believe that you should know if you want to get into web design.
And just because there’s so much more to learn about it, I’m going to give you at the end some resources to dive deeper into psychology, which I highly recommend because it’s super interesting.
The things that will be learned aside from helping you with design work will make you a better person in terms of interaction with other people since everybody is affected with these psychology rules. So, let’s get started with the first principle.
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Mirroring
The first principle is called “mirroring”. Now, what is mirroring? Well, research has proven that we have neurons in our brain, which are called mirroring neurons.
That means we act and feel according to what the people in front of us are doing. So, when you see a person angry, shouting at you, you automatically get angry, perhaps shout back.
From an evolutionary perspective, that was a way to establish empathy. You often will find a person using a gesture, and then the other person just mirrors that without even noticing.
Why is that important in web design? We use a lot of imagery – happy people, sad people or people physically doing something on screen. This gets the user’s brain into the same mood as the people in the imagery.
If you want to get users in a mood of happiness or excitement, show images that reflect those emotions.
People will naturally mirror the emotions; this helps you get the message across. This is very important for the imagery and visuals on your website.
Social Validation
The next principle is social validation. What is social validation? Well, as human beings, we’re surrounded by complex things, and to make rapid decisions, we seek shortcuts.
And one of the easiest ways to decide is to look at what others are doing. We might not admit it, but often subconsciously, we follow the lead of others.
If others are doing something, we assume it’s smart or right. Instead of expelling a great deal of brainpower analyzing every decision, this serves as a shortcut-if many people are doing it, then it must be good.
That is why social proof-testimonials, logos of famous companies, or impressive numbers of users-is crucial on websites.
It shows that others have found success with your product or service, tapping into an innate psychological trigger-social validation.
This builds trust and makes the users feel like they are making the right decision. In psychology, one of the important principles is social proof, which will play an important role in web design.
Color Psychology
The third most important principle is color psychology since it is how we are wired: our brain reacts emotionally to color.
While picking the right colors is important as a designer, being able to understand the psychological effects of these colors is even more so. For example, red accelerates our heartbeat, probably because when people see blood or danger, a fight response is there.
The opposite happens with green, which soothes people and makes them less nervous; it is widely used in hospitals. Now, as designers, we have to understand what colors mean and what psychological effect colors have so that we can use them appropriately on our website.
One of the resources I refer to every time I think about color psychology is this website entitled “Empower Yourself with Color Psychology.” It is not a great design, but it gives us great information on the psychological effect of different colors.
Those are the key principles I believe you should know. Yet, there is so much more to learn. For instance, the Cognitive Bias Codex includes approximately 180 various biases, shortcuts that our brain does in order to make its decisions quicker.
Some of the shortcuts assist in making a good decision; however, many times they just lead to poor decisions. We still have the same wiring from our ancestors, that is, we live in a different society now, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with these biases.
You can Google the list or find it on Wikipedia to read about each bias, and it will give you great insight into your design projects. Unless you want to go through Wikipedia, the book I highly recommend is “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
The book really explains how people think and make decisions, and how biases take over our judgment. It’s a really good read for any designer who wants to understand the psychology of decision-making.
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