Relevant Fields of Psychology
BehavioralEcological / EnvironmentalCognitiveSocialConsumerIndustrial / OrganizationalHuman Factors / HCIExperimentalPsychometricsQuantitative / MathematicalEducationalDevelopmentalPersonalityPhysiological / Neurological
Who are the people?Demographics, experiences, skills, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge
Where are they?Place, environment, situation, conditions, circumstances
What are the devices, objects, and tools they are using?Phones, tablets, computers, kiosks, cameras, pen & paper, chisel & stone…
Context
What are the objectives?What is the desired outcome, and is it:
Productive, focused, goal-directed, playful, exploratory, meandering
What is the value of the goals and objectives?Important, essential, necessary, optional, nice-to-have, elective
How urgent are the goals and objectives?Time-sensitive, critical, compelling, casual, open-ended
Goals
How do people sense and perceive the world?Vision, audition, and touchColor deficient visionGestalt PrinciplesImage recognitionMotionPre-conscious processing and attention
Perception
Definition:The force that initiates, directs, and sustains behavior.Why we do what we do.
Theories:Achievement, Affiliation, and PowerExistence, Relatedness, and Growth (ERG)Biological DrivesInternal vs. ExternalNot Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs…
Motivation
Why do people spend so much time on socialnetworks, and what do they get from it?
Affiliation with others (we are social creatures and seek contact)Personal achievement (competition with self and others)Social influence and credibility (“social currency”)
Motivation
Definition:The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understandingthrough thinking, experience, and the senses.
Types:Learning Decision-makingMemory RecognitionLanguage Spatial operationsProblem-solving Concept formationReasoning and logic MetacognitionAttention And many, many biases…
Cognition
Definition:A complex, subjective experience resulting in physiological andpsychological changes that influence thought and behavior.
Theories:Ekman (Happiness, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust)James-Lange (physiological reaction precedes emotion)Cannon-Bard (physiological reaction and emotion are concurrent)Schachter-Singer (physiological reaction precedes cognition)Lazarus (cognition precedes physiological reaction and emotion)
Emotion
Positive Emotions
Fredrickson (2009) discovered that we need three positive emotions to lift us up and overcome just onenegative emotion.
Have you ever said,“Meh. It could be better, but it works”?
Is the rest of the interface
three times betterto make up for it?
Definition:The actions by which an organism reacts and adjusts totheir environment and other organisms; a response to various stimuli.
Theories:Classical Conditioning (association)Operant Conditioning (reinforcement and punishment)Social Learning Theory (live, verbal, and symbolic)Relational Frame Theory (language and cognition)Drive Reduction (biology and homeostasis)
Behavior
Rewards
Participation in social services is often encouraged with rewards such as badges and points that have personal and social value and which are delivered through complex reinforcement schedules.
More than visibility – we must craft accessible experiences where we can perceive the opportunities to interact in any modality.
People are less likely interact if they do not perceive the opportunity to interact, even if they need or want to interact.
Perceivability
PredictabilityThe ability to accurately and confidently predict the outcomes or results of an interaction and that it will move us toward our goal(s).
People are less likely to interact if they are not confident in their predicted outcomes or if they believe the results are not what they want or need.
FeedbackMeaningful information about the status and outcomes of an interaction and the process(es) it started, modified, or terminated.
People are less likely to continue interacting if they do not receive meaningful information about status, progress, outcomes, or results.
After editing the gift message three times, it was still too long…
How long is it now?
How much too long is it?
What is the maximum number of characters?
HELP! What should I do?
LearnabilityWe can learn and remember interactions when we accurately predict desirable outcomes, avoid errors, and when the feedback is understandable and applicable.
People are less likely to learn an interaction if the outcomes are not expected or if feedback is absent or meaningless.
LearningWe learn to associate experiences that occur together in time and place.
We learn to repeat interactions that reward us and avoid interactions that punish us.
We can learn by watching and observing as easily as by doing.
LearningWe generalize across similar situations and transfer knowledge and skills from one context, device, or domain to another when they are identifiably analogous.
ConsistencyConsistent appearance, behavior, reaction, meaning, and outcome makes it easier for us to:
• Perceive the opportunity to interact,
• Predict the outcomes more accurately,
• Better understand the feedback,
• Transfer learned interactions, and• Learn new interactions through generalization
and discrimination.