How does UX implicate Psychology into Design?

It is very much out there that User Experience Design is a science. All of this is owed to the manner in which UX designers work on products; by studying human behavior. And what is the science that concerns itself with human behavior? You guessed it right, it’s Psychology.

A simple fact. UX itself is a tool known for its human-centricity. Potential-Customer Research is a big part of it. A product undergoing a “UX wash” is tested for its ability to make its user feel comfortable and engaged.
Understanding human behavior and psychology lies at the core of UX.

• There’s this one term that goes around a lot when we talk about UX — Heuristics. Hearing that word when you’re just learning about UX can get overwhelming; it doesn’t have to though. A Heuristic Analysis is simply a testing process. The UX designer takes on the role of a potential user and interacts with the product repeatedly. This brings up all the design discrepancies the product has and the designer fixes them. In this way, designers proceed towards a solution through trial and error.
• Perception, an expert UX Designer’s greatest strength. Perception is an individual’s unique way to process the information they receive from their sensory organs. While talking about UX in the Web, Visual Perception is the main component. What the user sees will have a great impact on the quality of their interaction with the product. Correct use of space, symmetry, and color while designing makes it easier for the human brain to process the visual stimulus they receive from the product.
  
  The inverse of this is also true. Text in tight spaces, poorly colored graphics & visuals, irregular shapes can decrease a product’s perceptibility.
• Digital Assistance; mimicking physical-world objects on digital platforms. Let us take an example of E-Commerce. All the variety of online shopping apps seem to have a “Cart”, a virtual version of the actual shopping cart. It does the same task as its physical counterpart — temporarily hold a product while the customer goes around looking for more items to buy.
  
  But, there is no cart. A cart is supposed to be a “bucket on wheels” that you push around in the shopping complex. This is how the principle of Digital Assistance comes to play. UX designers make complicated, technical features of a web-based platform into something a customer can relate to and will feel more comfortable using because it’s familiar to them.
• The Pareto Principle. More commonly known as the 80/20 rule, it states that roughly 80% of the outcomes we receive from our work are a result of just 20% of the input.
  
  By carefully analyzing, a UX designer is able to calculate which part of their design is the 20% which will go on to produce 80% result. Figuring that enables the designer to prioritize and direct their resources and time to that part that has the most potential, making the whole process exponentially efficient.
• Brand Images — The Premium Effect. Every other psychological principle we have talked about above is more or less directly linked to fixed scientific principles that are universally applicable to everyone. The Premium Effect, however, has its links with Social Psychology.
  
  There’s a very simple example. You can always tell whether the quality of the leather on a leather jacket is good or not simply by touching it, enlightening you immediately that the product is premium. UX designers seek to make you feel the same way about Web-based services. Smooth transition effects, color gradients are simple tools but add a premium feel to the product.

Psychology is very closely based on the science of User Experience. A UX designer’s task is to design the manner in which a user interacts with a product. The interaction is simply designed around the user’s behavior.

These psychological tools become very essential in the way they help the designer understand their user and thereby implicate this onto their product. The user is bound to be pleased with a product if it is made for them.

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