Understanding people's behaviors and patterns as a designer

In today's society, people are driven more to use electronic devices such as phones and computers and navigate through apps and sites by quickly scanning content. Digital media has become an important part of our world and has shaped how we review and search for information daily, this also exposes patterns and behaviors that people tend to have when consuming this information. Based on the book "100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People" by Susan M. Weinschenk, in this blog we'll review some of the patterns and decisions people tend to make when looking at digital media and how design can improve the way they understand the content they're consuming.

Patterns are helpful in shaping objects

Our brains and eyes can scan different ideas or elements, whether looked at separately or together. Take for example a hexagon, when looking at it you could just associate it as a singular shape, but looking at multiple of them together and giving them a yellow or orange color, you can start seeing a honeycomb instead. In design, we can identify patterns like this too. For example, when looking at a picture and having images on both sides slightly extending off the screen, viewers recognize it as a carousel, indicating they can keep scrolling to view different pictures. These patterns help the user with familiarity and a way to understand how things work and what to do when identifying them in different situations.

Longer lines are faster to read, but shorter lines are preferable

When reading a document, a book, or a newspaper, we usually make abrupt eye movements called "saccades". Longer lines (over 100 characters) are read faster, but we generally prefer shorter lines (45-72 characters) to focus more on the current content. Taking this into consideration, in design, written information is preferable to be written in short lines so the user is more focused on the content and understands what they're reading.

On average we can only remember up to 4 things

In a world where information is easier to gain access to, we can get overwhelmed with the many options we have when we want to do some research or learn about something. Browsing through the web or social media nowadays can get you lost if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. People on average can only remember between 3 or 4 different things as long as they're not distracted or interrupted so presenting the correct information to users has never been more important. When designing a site or app, it's important to understand where we want to guide our users as well as give them specific and easy paths to get access to what they want and avoid presenting multiple options in a way that can confuse them.

We are driven to create categories

Since we're little, we tend to arrange everything in categories when trying to identify certain elements. From school subjects to sports, we start to group everything to give them a specific meaning or relation. In a website or app, this still applies when navigating through it. We can go to a site and review its menu to understand how it categorizes its sections for users to navigate through. From an "About Us" to a "Careers" page, we start to see patterns in how design is shaped to guide people to specific content that they want to review. It's also important for the content to be well organized because if it's not, people will start to create categories of their own to give them their meaning which could harm the original vision.

We filter information that stands out

When reading through long paragraphs of text, it becomes difficult to remember everything so we try to retain what stood out the most to us. Scanning through a website or an app is no different. If the site we're scanning contains a lot of information, it can become difficult to understand what's more important. Part of working in design is looking for ways to highlight the most relevant aspects of the site so we can try to guide the user to an expected outcome once they start scanning.

Shortcuts are helpful if they're simple to learn

Working through multiple activities repeatedly can become tedious if they take too long to perform. Fortunately, tasks like copying and pasting in digital environments using a keyboard can be as easy as pressing two keys (Ctrl or Command + C/V). These are simple shortcuts that help us perform tasks a bit quicker while working or navigating through content. Having shortcuts is beneficial, especially in editing software environments, but not all shortcuts can be remembered. It's always important to offer alternatives to these shortcuts if they start to become difficult to perform. Having a shortcut guide or clicking the right key to open a menu that performs these tasks as well gives the user a choice and avoids more cognitive load.

Social rules also exist in online interactions

There is a social construct that society has built on how to interact between them and this varies between regions. Some of these ideas can also be seen when interacting in an online environment as well. An idea of this would be when interacting with a new person and asking personal questions too early, in most contexts, this could feel intimidating and sudden. In design this could translate to sites where you enter and start to see that before interacting with the page, they ask you to fill in a lot of your personal information, this can also feel abrupt as well. It's important to design thinking on how the target people interact with them so that they feel comfortable interacting with your design too.

Emotions set the tone of what's presented

There are multiple emotions that humans can express. Some key emotions, such as Joy, Sadness, Contempt, Fear, Disgust, Surprise, and Anger, can be presented explicitly using facial expressions and emojis or more subtly using specific colors or fonts. Multimedia design has to convey an emotion or tone that they expect the user to have when viewing the content presented. If the design wants to convey Joy, it can use elements like pictures of people happy or having fun or if they want something more neutral or Contempt, they can use more muted colors. Having the right tone to present information can help the user feel comfortable interacting with the content.

Mistakes can be predictable

Humans tend to make mistakes, it's part of life. These mistakes can be made in the real world or the digital one. In the digital world, these can slotted mainly between performance and motor-control errors. Performance ones can happen when, for example, you're filling out a form and you forget your password or enter your address in the wrong format. Motor-control errors happen mainly with physical interactions, like pressing the wrong button. It's important to design around these ideas and try to be clear with the user with preventive measures so they can avoid making these mistakes.

Having a choice helps you think you're in control

Life is filled with choices, some leading to positive outcomes and others to negative ones. Sometimes, all options lead to the same objective, but the illusion of having a choice can make you feel in control of the situation, providing a sense of security. In design this also applies as well, for example, when users want to search for a specific product on an e-commerce site they can either usually use a search bar to look for that product, browse into the categories until they find what they need, or use filters to reduce the options shown. All of these choices should lead to the same outcome, but having control over how to do this helps the user select the one they feel the most comfortable with.

Conclusion

People are complex and not all of them think the same, but these patterns and behaviors can help us set a common ground for users when they're interacting in digital environments. It's important to have a clear and balanced design with options that adapt to the users' needs so they feel safe navigating through it.