How Design Influences Your Feelings

The way we interact with websites and how they make us feel isn’t something that’s purely by chance. There is an entire section of design dedicated to studying human behavior and creating UX that reflects that behavior. Design psychology is a combination of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social approaches, and human computer interaction. It’s the reason most websites put their most interesting content or their most popular items at the top of the page. It’s the reason we can look at a little icon of an envelope and immediately identify it as email. Design psychology aims to have an interface elicit an emotional reaction from a user as they interact.

There are ways to analyze emotional reactions to design. Some are as simple as gut checks or visceral reactions but there are other ways to go a little deeper than initial reaction. The formulaic sentence “I FEEL _____ because my NEED for _________ was or was not met” allows users to take their feelings and understand what has made them feel that way. Using nonviolent communications along with an inventory of needs, users and designers can analyze what makes an interface successful and what could be improved.

via nngroup.com

This can be applied to any interface across the web. Applications, services, social media, even shopping sites all evoke emotional reactions from us. For example, I chose two horror centric news sites, FANGORIA and Bloody Disgusting. Both provide articles and coverage of anything horror related, and both have similar layouts in terms of how they present their articles. But for two sites that cover the same content, they are on opposite ends of the design spectrum. FANGORIA’s website is minimal and clean, displaying their articles in the simplest format. The only advertisements on their site are ads for their own magazine. In contrast, Bloody Disgusting is interactive, counterintuitive, and very busy.

I enjoy both websites and read both on a daily basis, but when I sat down and analyzed how they made me feel I found that I preferred interacting with the FANGORIA site more. Personally, Bloody Disgusting is more in line with my personal aesthetic preferences but when it came to navigation and useability, it left me feeling frustrated. The advertisements, the autoplay video that I was unable to close, and the sheer amount of content left me feeling overwhelmed and uncomfortable. In contrast, even though my gut reaction was being underwhelmed with FANGORIA’s site, overall, it was the more enjoyable site to use. I think if they could integrate the digital magazine animation they use in their archive, their website would be the perfect read for horror fans.

In the end, I feel my takeaway from my comparisons is that there is a very fine line between minimalism and maximalism. Usability and readability should be first and foremost the main concern and shouldn’t be buried under a handful of other features. But on the other hand, if a site is too bare bones, it leaves something to be desired for the user. Design psychology is about finding that balance and giving the user the best possible interaction.

Cover photo by Fakurian Design on Unsplash

References

Goyal, M. (2019, July 8). Combining UX Design and Psychology to Change User Behaviour. Medium. Retrieved September 13, 2021, from https://uxdesign.cc/combining-ux-design-and-psychology-to-change-user-behaviour-39d27730434a.

Han, C. (2019, March 15). 7 Principal Psychological Phenomena in UX Design. Medium. Retrieved September 13, 2021, from https://blog.prototypr.io/7-principal-psychological-phenomena-in-ux-design-1104e09fc974.

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