Using behavioral economics to optimize user experience
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Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what someone was thinking? As designers, we could create experiences that exactly matched users’ needs and decision making. Although nobody is going to develop telepathy any time soon, there is a way that we can predict the cognitive decisions that users make to better align our work with what they really need.
Behavioral economics is a discipline that explores the many factors that go into decision making. Making day-to-day choices can be affected by a variety of outside circumstances including psychological, social, and cognitive reasons.
Traditional theories would argue that people make decisions based on rational thinking and in their own self-interest. Behavioral economics tells us that this is not true. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
People often act irrationally and there are several reasons for this. Understanding this fact and what causes people to make decisions allows us as designers to create intuitive user experiences that more accurately align with natural human behavior.
“Seemingly minor design decisions—like preselecting a radio button or changing the color of a candy wrapper—can influence choices at an unconscious level.”
People are influenced by biases, heuristics, and emotions when it comes to making decisions. Most people don’t get all the information first, leading to choices that may be uninformed and sub-optimal. They also act based of off cognitive biases, which cause deviations from rationality (i.e. overconfidence, loss aversion).
These are important factors for designers to take note of because it means we can’t assume that users will simply user our work as we anticipated them to. In fact, it is best that we design in such a way that takes the decision making out of the users’ hands. We want to guide them through the process, allowing them to not divert and create a poor user experience.
Using the principles of behavioral economics, we can apply certain techniques to our designs to more effectively guide users through their experience.
Choice Architecture: When presented with too many choices, users will often not make one. This concept is known as decision paralysis and it shows that we have to limit the amount of decisions that the user has to make. This is not to say that user don’t want any choice; there is just a fine line between allowing the users freedom and overwhelming. Setting up choice architecture allows us to ride that line, giving users choices while guiding them in one direction.
One area we see this concept in UX design is through applying default settings. By picking the option that applies to the most general audience, most users will be happy and not even have to think about making a decision. Those who aren’t still can change the setting to what is most optimal for them.
Reduce Friction: If taking an action has too many steps, users will become frustrated and may often abandon your design. This is a huge problem, especially when it comes to driving a particular metric. Removing the barriers and simplifying the process of taking these actions as much as possible will allow users to more easily make decisions.
An example of this is Amazon’s one-click purchasing system. By removing the process of putting in information and confirming purchases before buying something, users are going make a purchase more often. This is obviously a great thing for Amazon because it drives more sales and brings in more revenue to their business.
Social Proof: Users tend to follow what is most popular. They go for what has been proven to work for other people because they assume that it will work just as well for them.
Many services use this concept to their advantage by simply adding ratings to their product or service. People are more likely to interact with something that has been rate well by other people.
Loss Aversion: People tend to recognize and remember losses more than wins of equivalent value. By emphasizing a potential upcoming loss, you can guide users to act. This is seen in “limited time” offers or discounts on e-commerce sites. People are more likely to make that purchase then and there because they are worried that they will lose the opportunity to get those savings.
Gamification and Rewards: Presenting users with incentives and awards for completing actions taps into their competitive side. This concept allows you to guide users by providing positive feedback to actions that you want them to take.
An example of this is how apps like Duolingo implement streak systems. People want to make sure they keep up with their language practicing streaks just for the sake of getting that number as high as possible.
Taking advantage of these principles will allow designers to better tailor their work to a more efficient and effective experience. This creates an overall better association with your product and the time that the user spent using it.
Hi! My name is Peyton McKenzie.
I am a professional graphic designer, photographer and content creator.
I encourage you to explore my portfolio to get a better idea of the work I create. If you are interested in working with me or have inquiries of any kind, don’t hesitate to reach out over email.
