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High On Line: Applying Psychology to Web Design at #SXSW2012

Sunday, March 11 2012 at South by Southwest, Austin, TX
by Jason HrehaBehavior Designer+UX Advisor, Applied Psychologist, www.persuasive.ly, Co-founder of Dopamine, UX Advisor @ 500 Startups

Research from the StansfoJason Hreha - positive.lyrd Persuasive Tech Lab

D – dopamine

Why do we need a UX Design / Motivational framework?

  • Design with Intent Deck – 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design – decks
  • Mental Notes – ways to bring psychology to web design.
  • Influence: The Psycology of Persuation
  • Gamification – instead of thinking in a step by step way, it becomes a conglomeration of incentives, but what’s the point?

Why do these tactics work? What are we changing?

Model was created by BJ Fogg (leader of the Stanford Pers Lab) – Behavior Model

What causes behavior? (What needs to come together in order for behavior to occur?

3 things need to coincide for behavior to occur

  1. ability
  2. motivation
  3. trigger

What do you need to fly a rocket?

  1. Shell = ability
  2. fuel = motivation
  3. match = trigger

What do you notice about these 3 items? One of them is much different than the other two. The first two are always there. You can always assign an ability and motivation score to any behavior. Context shapes ability and you always have motivation based on the context, as well. These tend to fluctuate throughout the day. Based on your motivation and ability, there are times throughout the day that are better than others for a response to a trigger. If the trigger occurs when motivation and ability are highest, the behavior is most likely to occur.

Ability

What is ability? What determines a person’s ability?

BJ Fogg’s Ability Factors (6 Elements of Simplicity)

  • Time – proxy for how hard/streamlined the expected experience is
  • Money – Are we asking for too much money?
  • Physical Effort – How much effort does it take to complete the task?
  • Mental Effort – Are we asking for too much information?
  • Social Deviance
  • Non-Routine (experience)

Ability is all about simplification. It’s about getting to the core of the experience. Are we asking too much of the user?

Physical Effort - Tried to buy an iPad3 on a phone, but once he got to the huge order form, it became a barrier because he couldn’t complete the task on the device he was using.

Jason’s list for a product design project

  • Amount of money required
  • amount of text required
  • amount of information required
  • amount of media required
  • amount of learning required (familiarity)
  • equipment required

Get to the CORE of the experience – what is absolutely necessary? Get rid of everything else. Like instagram.

Motivation

There are 2 levels to analyze motivation

  • product – Does the product solve a true pain point? Does it actually provide the user with value? If you’re not solving a true problem, you’ll be treated like a game (finished in 40 hours).
  • screen-to-screen – it’s all about giving users positive feedback as they go along. Give little rewards for doing things correctly in the process. Like posting to a social network, where you get likes and positive feedback.
Operant Conditioning

Trigger

Facebook – someone just tagged a photo of you (is it a god picure?)
  • On-site triggers (Calls to Action CTA) – Free Download. Big buttons with calls to action.
  • Off-site triggers – You’re not in the app or on the site and pulls you back in. These are extremely important. You have to remind users that they signed up for your service and why they need to come back. Triggers can be anything. They can be cues from the environment, but you don’t have control over those.
Great talk with great things to think about when you’re creating the overall design for a website, app or process. Find out what periods of high ability and motivation are and send the right triggers to get results!
Don’t use Variable Ratio Reinforcement (casino system) – gamification isn’t necessarily the answer, because your users deserve for you to ask the hard questions about what is helpful to the user.
Here’s what I think about , ,
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About Jonathan Jeter

Jonathan Jeter has been creating websites since 1997 and has been with SuperMedia since 2009. He is currently Front-End Web Development & UI manager for superpages.com, SuperMedia.com and other SuperMedia web properties and concentrates on various aspects of website development for small and medium businesses, including UI design & development, SEO, Social Media, Local Search, and Online Marketing. You can follow him @mywebthoughts, on LinkedIn or connect on Google+.

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