Category Archives: Psychology for UX Design

How to conduct heuristic inspections for evaluating software usability

Heuristics are “rule-of-thumb” design principles, rules, and characteristics that are stated in broad terms and are often difficult to specify precisely. Assessing whether a product exhibits the qualities embodied in a heuristic is thus a subjective affair. If you inspect … Continue reading

Posted in Interaction Design, Psychology for UX Design, Uncategorized, Usability, Usability Testing, User-Centered Design | Leave a comment

Quantifying cognitive load and task efficiency

If we wanted to attempt to quantify the cognitive load — i.e., the thinking and effort involved — for performing a particular task, we could write out a list of the actions or operations that a user would have to … Continue reading

Posted in Interaction Design, Psychology for UX Design, Usability, User Experience Design | 1 Comment

The impact of hardware devices on software ergonomics

A product that is ergonomic is designed in a way that helps reduces physical discomfort, stress, strain, fatigue, and potential injury during operation. While ergonomics is usually associated with physical products, the design of the a software application’s interface also … Continue reading

Posted in Interaction Design, Product Management, Psychology for UX Design, Uncategorized, Usability, User Experience Design | 1 Comment

How to build a visual hierarchy to express relationships between page elements

The underlying structure of a page’s layout can be understood as a visual hierarchy, where some visual elements on the page are subordinate to others. The visual hierarchy helps guide the user’s eye through the page, and aids users in … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Psychology for UX Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | 1 Comment

What characteristics contribute to a negative user experience?

There are many things that can cause users frustration and annoyance with software. In the previous post, we discussed some “do’s” for creating a positive user experience. Let’s now consider some “don’ts” that can create a negative user experience. Some … Continue reading

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What characteristics contribute to a positive user experience?

As designers, we’d like to know what things contribute to a positive user experience, and what things contribute to a negative user experience, so we can work on building the former into our products and avoiding the latter. In other … Continue reading

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