Category: psychology

You just bought an expensive pair of shoes. You have a very brief pang of regret. Did you need another pair of shoes? Did you need these shoes? Should you take them back? After about 10 seconds, you let go of the regret. “They’re great,” you say, “and they’ll be just right for the wedding…

Budget and financial counselors often advise people to withdraw cash each week and use it to pay for daily and weekly expenses rather than putting purchases on a credit card. The theory is that if you see the money leaving your wallet, you’ll spend less. The theory is correct, as several research studies have shown.…

If you talk to major retailers in the US, it quickly becomes clear that online sales and store sales are two very different things. Several of my retail clients have online shopping operations and staff headquarters in one location, and store operations and staff in a different location, often thousands of miles away. From the…

Some designers have always designed for situations where people are at varying distances from the display, for example, signage in public places like train stations or airports, or displays on a factory floor or a hospital operating theater. But many designers are used to designing for people who are sitting in front of a desktop…

Smartphone screens have been getting larger over time. Our design and implementation tools let us design the screens without having to know or design for the exact size. If the software, site, or app is designed well, what appears on the screen at any given time varies automatically according to the size of the screen.…

If you ask someone to turn a button or knob that’s 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter, that’s going to be difficult, or even impossible, to do with one hand. People have physical limitations of movement, and range of motion based on body size and physical structure. If you’re an industrial designer, then you’re probably…

Tell a friend about the last time you went to visit a family member, and you’ll notice that you’re moving your hands and arms while telling the story. Your body is gesturing without you even thinking about it. Gesturing To Manipulate A Device As designers, we’re now building in gestures as a way for users…

A lot of the interfaces that designers create are digital interfaces for screens and pages, or auditory interfaces. There is also a specialty area in human factors and interface design that is all about interfaces that people physically touch. This is called “haptics”. K.E. MacLean (2008) writes about tactile feedback and user experience. People often…

If you think about why people think, feel, and behave in certain ways, you probably think about what’s going on in their brains. You might not realize how much people’s bodies influence their behavior. The field of “embodied cognition” is gaining more ground in cognitive science, psychology, and design. It’s the idea that people’s bodies—their…

It’s my opinion (uncorroborated by any science that I know about) that people who are drawn to design tend to be perfectionists. Being a designer, and being creative, means that you have an idea in your head about how something should be, and you work on it as long and hard as you can to…