Psychology allows us to comprehend people’s behavior and, since UX is all about user’s interaction with our product, system, or service, it is an important tool in our UX toolbox (and you don’t have to be a certified psychologist to start using it).

There are many ways to incorporate psychological concepts, constructs and theories into UX. Color psychology is a good example. In this article, however, I’ll focus on what David Travis and Philip Hodgson discuss in their book Think like a UX Researcher. According to them, many employers require job applicants to have a psychology background because they often know and apply four basic principles in the field.

The first statement, that users typically don’t think like we do, is easy to understand. We, as researchers, are looking at the product or service from a different perspective than the user. We are paying attention to details in a critical point of view — paying attention to important things related to our work. This kind of technical-analytical perspective occurs in most professions, and we’re not exempt from it. Consider this example: two individuals are watching a movie, one is a medical student and the other a literature professor. The movie tells a story about the daily life of doctors in hospital who perform insane operations. During the movie, the medical student gets upset and raise the argument that a specific scene couldn’t possibly happen in real life, whereas his friend is just chilling and eating his popcorn because he doesn’t have the ability to perceive and criticize the medical procedure being performed. What this example tells us is that, as UX researchers, WE don’t think the way medical students do, and the same is true when we compare ourselves to our users. As such, it is essential to remember to hear their voices and not (only) ours.

The second principle, users do not have good insight into the reasons for their behavior, teaches us about our human poor ability to explain our own behavior. Why we do things and why we did things. Although we like to think our decisions are rational all the time, a lot of our actions come from unconscious, from habit and from context. After that, our long-term memory has its own way of feeling the gaps, and it comes in handy specially when we want to tell a good story.

“In practice, this principle means that asking people to introspect on the reasons for their behavior is seldom useful. You are much better off designing experiments where you can observe people’s behavior”. — David Travis and Philip Hodgson

The third principle tells us that the best predictor of the user’s future behavior is his or hers past. What this means is that observing people’s actions gives us better insight and clues about how they will behave in the future. Travis and Hodgson refer to this approach as Action Research. According to them, action research is more effective in predicting the future because it goes beyond asking people questions and observing their behavior. Action research is also different from Intention Research, commonly used in marketing research, in which people are asked if they’d recommend the brand to a friend, for example. The former involves a more profound understanding.

The fourth principle comes from the 1930, when a psychologist called Kurt Lewin proposed a formula stating that the behavior of people changed depending on the environment they were inserted, being the natural environment the best place to observe and understand a person’s actions, or the user needs. You are probably thinking about unmoderated usability testing and ethnographic right now, and you are right to do so, that’s the motive researches uses these methodologies.

The fourth principle comes from the 1930, when a psychologist called Kurt Lewin proposed a formula stating that the people’s behavior changed depending on the environment they were inserted, being the individual’s natural environment the best place to observe and understand his or her actions, or the user needs. If you are thinking about unmoderated usability testing and ethnographic methods right now, you are right to do so. That’s one of the main reasons researches use these methodologies.

That’s great, Luísa, but how do I apply this to UX research routine)?

As just said, these principles are translated into different kinds of methods, and although they might seem easy to understand in theory, or intellectually speaking, they might be sometimes counter-intuitive.

That’s the reason trained psychologists and anthropologists are usually required in the market, they are familiar with these methods.

The advice here is to practice and to read the most you can about psychology and research methodology, exercising to think like a UX Researcher. Some research methodologies that the understanding of these principles can be useful are:

Contextual Interviews — Allow you to observe individuals in their natural environment, giving you a much better understanding of how individuals work.

Usability testing — Identifies individual frustrations and also problems with your website through individual sessions where a real user completes tasks on your website.

Incorporate Contextual Interviews and Usability testing

In a usability test, you normally have all users attempt the same scenarios, resulting in comparative information from a number of individuals attempting the same point. In contextual conversations, you observe the behavior of people in their own environment and doing their own work.

Nevertheless, you can combine contextual conversations and functional tests by taking situations during contextual interviews. Observe people doing their own work in their environment and ask them to try out some of your tasks. Interview users during a usability test to find out what questions, concerns, and tasks they’d associate the website with. Let people do their own tasks, but also let them do some of yours.

Website usability screening is often informal and conducted like a contextual interview. Still, usability screening can range from casual and qualitative to quite official and quantitative.

Here are some links to enhance your knowledge about psychology and UX

Cognitive Psychology — A resourceful font about psychology by Interaction Design Foundation.

How to Change Your Career from Psychology to UX Design — A very complete article about psychology and user experience from Interaction Design Foundation.

Color Psychology — Brilliant Helping Hand in UX Design — This article focus on how color affects user’s attitudes and behavior, like the emotions each color evoke, for example.

5 Cognitive Psychology Theories that Contribute to the Quality of UX Design — Nice article that relates 5 five types of theories with user experience and how they apply in real cases.

6 Laws Of Psychology For Good UX Design — This one tell us about some familiar laws sometimes also known as “Laws of Design” as they are regularly used by designers, like the Gestalt principles.