Talk about the 8 user instincts behind user experience in design
 "I never spend a lot of money to prove market demand. Just like people drink water every day, there must be a market for selling water. This is human instinct." This sentence from an ordinary businessman gave me the following thoughts: “Are there any user instincts behind user experience that are being ignored?” First, let’s take a look at the background of the people who first coined the term user experience. The term "user experience" appeared in the 1990s and was proposed and popularized by a designer named Donald Norman, who was once the vice president of advanced technology at Apple Computer. Apple has promoted Norman's "user experience" thinking to the world through its own products. No one seems to have ever carefully studied: How did Donald and Apple discover the concept of user experience? In fact, we can get some clues from Donald's educational experience and his two most famous books: He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1957 and a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1959. His interest was in computers, but he found them more useful in studying humans than in studying machines, which led him to pursue a doctorate in psychology at Pennsylvania State University, where he received a Ph.D. in mathematical psychology in 1962. The two most famous books he wrote are: "Design Psychology" and "Emotional Design".  The user experience design we use today is based on some kind of user instinct. Readers should be reminded that the user experience mentioned here is a complete set of experiences surrounding the product, including all aspects related to it, such as design, manufacturing, production, marketing, after-sales and technical support. I have tried to list eight instincts that most people have. Whether you are working on products, designing, or marketing, you cannot do without these: 1. People are good at self-learning: “Infant curiosity” Almost all users have the ability to self-learn. Appflow, an App search application from Hungary, is full of immersive experiences. When people experience this product, in addition to the elegance and comfort of the experience itself, they also feel the joy of self-learning. When entering this app step by step, people can't help but exclaim: "This thing can be used like this." I remember there is a mobile game called joy-stacker. Its level design – “N worlds” is very tempting. What you have learned in the previous level can be used immediately in the next stage, and each level is advanced. It will not make people feel repetitive and boring, and it can instantly inspire a certain spirit of research in players. This spirit slowly makes people seem to have returned to the days when they were children and were curious about tinkering with new things. People's ability to be good at self-learning may come from the trait of "curiosity". A good product not only makes people feel that "the developers are great", but also gives them a sense of pride like "I am a smart user". 2. Humans’ ability to quickly capture information: “NOT EXIT = EXIT” There was once a design case of a "failed logo".  The survey shows that people always seem to misjudge the former sign as meaning "EXIT", so they still exit. Although the latter sign has many words and seems verbose, it serves as a warning. The reason why this happens is that there is a system in the human optic nerve that can quickly capture key information. When people are only allowed to spend a small amount of time reading text, they will browse the key information in the text in a photographic way. This ability is innate to humans and it is an instinct. So there is almost no difference between "NOT AN EXIT" and "EXIT". This ability of humans to quickly grasp information is widely used in marketing methods, but many of them are used as clickbait titles. So a reminder: when using a title to attract others, it is best to have some useful information in it, otherwise it will have the opposite effect.  Apple products always allow a novice to quickly learn how to use them; People always emphasize that in a website interaction design, users should be able to reach their destination in just two steps. People always like one-click automation products. The above phenomenon cannot be simply explained by the characteristic of "laziness". I personally think that this is because people rank things to different degrees of priority. What exactly does this mean? I always have more important things to deal with in my daily life, such as: My relationship problems with my girlfriend (this is just a joke of course); I have to spend a lot of time learning how to write a novel better than Giddens to earn a living; I need to fix the damn bug on the website quickly and in a hurry. So I would treat things like learning how to use a newly bought computer, how to use a new team task organization tool, and how to tinker with a washing machine as secondary matters. I hope they can all be automated as much as possible so that I don't have to spend too much energy and time learning them. It’s not because I don’t have time, but because I want to spend my time on important things. I want to focus on an event that I think is very important. I don’t want to waste time. So, when designing products, many people say that minimalism is good. It’s not because my friends in the industry all do it, so I do it too, but because I have to think about why users like simple processes.  4. Humans like robots that have a little human touch: "Siri, speak human language!" Human-computer interaction is a huge topic, which not only involves the computer field, but also is related to sciences such as psychology and sociology. At present, Siri (iPhone 4S voice intelligent application) is becoming more and more popular. On the one hand, people have begun to understand the "clumsiness" of robots. On the other hand, Siri is indeed becoming more humane. Especially compared with the early robots in the laboratory, Siri is more like Robonaut 2 in Star Wars. Its interactive dialogue is closer to the language used by humans, rather than just "Hello, I'm fine" and the like.  Speak with emotion; With some tone; Speak more slangy everyday language than written official language; More in line with the logical thinking of most users; The interface or image conforms to people’s visual habits (for example, Apple’s new smart glasses patent has one more lens than Google Glass, which is more in line with people’s visual habits and will not cause harm to human eyes). In addition to UI design, we should also bring more human touch to users throughout the entire product experience process, such as: Customer service should not simply answer questions like a robot; When doing social media marketing, you can appropriately let the employees in the company make some voices, instead of using the robot Pipi Time Machine to set up automatic Weibo sending every time; When users enter the product, there should be some navigation guide attached to the interface (rather than just a long instruction manual). Therefore, when designing a product, always remember that the product creator needs to communicate with the user, so UI is very important; when promoting the product, marketers need to discuss the real troubles in life and work with the user, so attentive communication is important; when educating users to use the product, you are a teacher, you need to guide them step by step, so the navigation guide design is critical. All of these combined together are what we often call "humanization." Did we really do it? 5. People don’t like being forced to do homework: “Freedom is what I want” When we were students, everyone had the experience of being forced by teachers to do homework that they were not interested in. It is indeed an unsatisfactory thing, and it is one of the common characteristics of human beings. Everyone has distinct personality traits. People don't like being forced to do things they don't like. Freedom is what everyone yearns for. Among the numerous Internet products, enterprise-level products have many similar problems. For example, some poor CRM systems (customer management systems) in many sales companies are often complained by employees as being "impractical and not helpful for actual business." Therefore, they will choose to use other better CRM systems (employees who are good at using information tools) or simple Excel (employees who have little contact with information tools) to manage their customers and businesses. As a result, the company's tool that required employees to fill out daily became a "homework" and a burden. In order to complete the "homework", employees did it in a perfunctory manner and filled in a lot of untrue information. For enterprises, it also causes a lot of invalid information to accumulate. Even when building enterprise-level products, the personal experience of ordinary employees should be considered first.  Many products nowadays are a result of mechanically copying technology and life styles, resulting in many products that have lost their aesthetic appeal. The most typical example is the iPad guitar. This may be an innovation, but it completely strips away the beauty of playing a real guitar. I don’t think it’s a wonderful thing to just touch a tablet with your fingers to make sounds. When playing a musical instrument, the most important experience is the contact between oneself and the instrument itself: pluck the strings made of horsehair and the guitar case made of wood; Use your fingertips to play the black and white keys of the piano; Use your strength to play beautiful saxophone melodies with your mouth. Losing these feelings means losing the sense of reality, and that experience will make people feel that it lacks aesthetic appeal. Another example is the Xbox cutting watermelon example. When children are faced with cutting watermelon on iPad and Xbox, more people will find the latter more fun. Because the latter relies on exercising the whole body, it allows you to completely immerse yourself in the game and feel as if you are in the game. In addition, exercise is human nature, so cutting the watermelon in large scale is more exciting than cutting it with your fingers. As I often say, weak relationships have long been the main line of relationships on SNS websites. In fact, this does not necessarily bring people too close. Whether on Facebook or Renren, we always feel more comfortable in a circle of familiar people, so the real-name system will give us a safer and more realistic feeling. Truth gives people a sense of beauty and security. Beautiful things are pleasing to the eye, and safe things are durable. 7. People don’t like embarrassment. “Don’t embarrass me in public!” Whether it is the open culture of the West that originated from nomadic peoples, or the implicit culture that developed in the East, hating embarrassment is always a common instinct. In most cases, When it comes to talking to friends versus strangers, people will choose the former; People don’t like to sit around doing nothing while waiting for the bus; People don’t like to raise their hands in a lecture hall of 500 people to voice suggestions for a speaker or even be called on stage. Because people are afraid of being embarrassed, afraid of making a fool of themselves in public, and afraid of being discovered by others. so, Allow people to safely "peek" at other people's Twitter or Weibo; 36kr demonstrated an interactive product at its Shanghai Open Day last month – Slideidea, which allows people to vote or give suggestions to speakers without raising their hands; Smartphones that give people something to watch while they wait for the bus; An IM tool that can send text. These products, technologies, hardware, etc. are all invented to address people's fear of embarrassment, and are naturally very popular among people.  However, only a very small number of companies or product developers have been able to solve this type of problem well, and it is worth further exploration. 8. Get rid of things that pollute your eyes: "nature, city, universe" People of all ages seem to like beautiful things. This is why we need to do UI design instead of directly giving users an ugly interface. Visual pollution is often associated with illogical complexity, confusion, monotony, strangeness, bloat, and affectation. So where is the thing that does not pollute the eyes? Where can it be found? Three places to learn common sense: nature, city, and universe. In nature, you can find minimalist and majestic images that return to nature; in the city, you can find layered and logical designs based on scientific rules; in the universe, you can find mysterious, interesting, magical and grand scenes. These are the things that make people look at them. Whether it is design in the field of architecture, UI design of Internet products, or home design, their ultimate goal is to make people comfortable and drive away things that pollute the eyes. So I think it is ridiculous that many programmers directly regard UI designers as artists. They are actually a group of elves who bring beautiful things to human eyes. They are doctors who help people get rid of visual pollutants. In addition to being artists, they understand psychology, human nature, art, logic and life better. Design is a great project.   What we make is for people to use. To some extent, the person who knows me best in the world is myself. When it comes to products, entrepreneurs can be unprofessional in many things and have a learning attitude, but when it comes to the entrepreneur’s own instincts, I think everyone has the most say. So back to the question at the beginning of the article: “Are there any user instincts behind user experience that are being ignored?” I think there must be a lot of user instincts behind user experience that are worth studying. I am just scratching the surface here. There are many more instinctive human qualities waiting for us to discover. After writing this article, I realized that humans are actually very interesting creatures. If we successfully attach this "interestingness" to the products we create, they will have life, and users will resonate with them and fall in love with them. |
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