In this article, I wanted to explain the relationship between “psychology” and “UX Research” from my own perspective. So let’s start a little journey where design and psychology be alive with the existence of research.

Any psychology student constantly wants to determine the sub-field that they want to progress, but usually can’t, because each field attracts their attention at some point and they usually direct their future career according to the last opportunities that come their way. After meeting User Experience (UX), my stress for the future came to an end when I discovered that the intersection of the sub-fields that interested me was UX. If you are studying psychology, your future is not as clear as you think earlier.

Lessons and process

I’ve noticed that every lesson we took intersects with UX at some point, even those that seem unrelated at first glance. Since our main theme is to reveal human behavior in cause and effect relationship and to understand the underlying motivation and processes, the lessons provide us with a great foundation from different perspectives.

Clinical psychology

I liken user interviews to therapy sessions. In both, the aim is to reveal the feeling / feeling that the one does not fully know and work on it. The therapist should not direct the client and should get answers by asking the right questions. Simply, “are you feeling good today?” While the question is a directive and wrong question, “Do you think the x feature in the application you are using is good?” The question is just as wrong as the first one. Instead, learn how the person / user is feeling with appropriate questions and gain insight into the underlying motivational reasons. Revealing the thoughts underlying people’s interpretations of events is one of the common points of the researcher and the therapist.

I can say that the clinical courses I have taken and the educational atmosphere I am constantly in have made things much easier and even simpler for me in creating personas and analyzing the personalities I research.

Cognitive psychology

• What cognitive processes does a person go through when interacting with the design and the product?
• How are people’s attention spans and their orientation to variables?
• What is the effect of our memory on the consumption of the product?
• We see, we read, but how do we perceive them?

In recent years, when the importance and meaning of human-computer interaction has increased, examining cognitive processes increases the importance of understanding human physiological and bodily behaviors and thought patterns, and progressing in line with the results. For instance, after examining the Gestalt principles of visual perception and their applications in user experience design, you can gain a slightly clearer perspective.

Social psychology

We are all social beings and our feelings, thoughts and behaviors change according to the place we position ourselves in society and the role we play. As a result of these changes, we act with different motivations and a clear understanding of this motivation is very important for us in terms of the functionality and usability of a product /service.

In-group and out-group behaviors of individuals differ, and it is possible to produce products suitable for the relevant social structure when we can see these results.

Developmental psychology

Those who experience the difficulties of doing research with child age groups know. If you have participated in enough fieldwork during your undergraduate period, these difficulties will be minimized for you and the flow in the research process will be as smooth as possible. You can find out on the internet how you should behave to which age group, but you cannot convey the feeling of these behaviors to the other person by reading on the internet.

Anthropology and Sociology

Two valuable social sciences that are in the top 3 along with psychology in UX Researcher job postings. Thanks to the anthropology and sociology courses we take, we have created a comprehensive catalog of information on these fields. What we have to do is to select the titles that will be useful to us from this catalog and to research one layer more deeply. The characteristics of culture and society are important in a way that changes the whole research.

Research methods

The foundation of social science: research. An important common point is to test hypotheses. During the undergraduate years, we take a statistical and research-oriented courses, and smell that mindset in the air. We examine the existing research methods in depth and with their positive / negative aspects.

With the help of case studies, we do a lot of practice on which method should / should not be applied and when. Moderated usability test, A / B test or card sorting etc. we don’t do these in our courses (I wish we did), but we have learned and internalized how we should communicate with people.

In addition, the ability to understand the difference between what is written in the book and what is in real life is really important when we have one-on-one interviews with people, collect data in the lab or field environment, and have the chance to apply what we have learned.

Teamwork

When we say UX, it is about people from many different disciplines working together. The researcher should be able to understand not only the users, but also the team members and should know how their team members tell their problem in which way.

There may be group assignments in every undergraduate department, but this number is quite high in psychology. The value added by the diversity of people in these studies is an undeniable fact, because you may not always be able to work with people you get along well with in business life, and most importantly, your skills such as problem solving, crisis management, time management within the team must be developed at some point. During our training, the number of those points increases enough.

Presentations

The benefit of being a social science: being in touch with and facing people at the same time. We make presentations in almost most courses, I can say in all of our elective courses. Giving a presentation must be one of the routines of a social science student. That’s why we have the chance to practice a lot on issues such as speaking in front of the community, making mistakes, being open to positive / negative feedback, and attracting people’s attention. Knowing a subject gains value if you can internalize it and show it in a way that is necessary.

Reaction paper

During our undergraduate life, we wrote reaction papers about so many articles. It is requested that these articles are not particularly long, and that you explain what you want to tell briefly and concisely. You write a 1 page reaction paper for about 20-page article. These articles can be seen as a qualitative analysis of our insight from the article. While explaining the findings we obtained after UX Research to the brand or the relevant person, we should eliminate unnecessary details and give the other a clear understanding and refreshment on the subject. In these papers we write the research question, it’s process, the points that can be improved / changed in the next research, the findings and how you analyze these findings.

Let’s look at some of the missing points of psychology:

• During my undergraduate education at METU, we did not have an elective psychology course focused on design or digital product / services. I was trying to make up for this lack of resources on the internet.
• It would be very sweet if we had the chance to do research, which is mostly aimed at academic life, from a more field/human/user-oriented perspective, by also adding some simple marketing techniques.
• The number of students who know about the existence of the user experience area in the department is negligible. It was, actually. These days in 2022, number is highly increased. :)

Maybe in 5–10 years I will come to METU and give an elective course “101- Introduction to UX Research”, “Research methods fors UX Research” etc. who knows :)

Conclusion

We do user-oriented / people-oriented design because everything is for humans. In order to obtain design ideas, the best way to analyze the insights gathered from the users with appropriate research methods and to test the applicability of the data ensures healthy results for the product or service. At this point, I think the place of social scientists is important and I tried to explain the relationship between psychology and UX Research as much as I can. Hope to see you in more comprehensive articles after years.

I wrote this post in May 2020 as a 4th year undergraduate student.. The subject of the article, Middle East Technical University, as known as METU, is the #2 ranked public university in Turkey.