Day one of my first user experience conference at UXPA 2019, spent with folks from UX, computer science and psychology backgrounds learning from Susan Weinschenk and Guthrie Weinschenk about Behavioral Design. It was a little like drinking from a fire hose and there were more than five takeaways, but in the interests of the first principle will attempt to limit it to that number. Of course, these should always be considered in the context of your specific target audience; their goals and behaviors, along with business goals, That said, I’ll be adding these to my UX tool kit.

Put your main message first

In order to read, people draw on brain resources designed for other tasks. There is NO dedicated brain structure to facilitate reading. Your users will make it through 25% of your content before deciding to share it or take another action. At best, people will only read up to 60% of online content. Get to the point.

Don’t ignore peripheral vision

While the user interface is a more constrained space than our three-dimensional world, remember that peripheral vision is important in sense-making and in directing the user where to focus next. What are you doing with the periphery of your user interface to take advantage of this?

Decisions are emotional

If you can’t feel emotions, you can’t make decisions. What?! What happened to the cool, calm and collected rational decision-making process based on logic and reason alone? Apparently, that is not how the brain is wired. Not only that, but different emotions invoke different decision-making behaviors. Sadness may lead to increased risk-taking, anxiety to caution and disgust to switching or choosing a different path. What kinds of emotions does the user experience of your product or service inspire?

Don’t provide too many choices

Too much choice can lead to ‘analysis paralysis’. People may say they want a lot of options, but according to the ‘jam study’ research of Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?”, they will be less satisfied with their selection as a result.

Use nouns instead of verbs

One of the strongest motivators of behavior is the need to belong. When thinking about language for ‘calls to action’ this seems antithetical to guidelines for writing in the active voice for example ‘Donate now’. A seemingly simple change to ‘Be a Donor’ enables the user to identify with a group. Assuming this is an ideal to which they aspire, it exponentially increases the likelihood of a response.

Fusiform Facial Area

I snuck in a sixth one if you make it this far. I would highly recommend reading about the significance of representing the face in Susan’s article Grabbing Visual Attention with the Visual Cortex in Smashing Magazine.