WIHL: UX Foundation

Yesterday I was at Geeky Base, a place to share tech-related skills, and attended a learning session about UX Foundation by @kamonlojn. Here are some bullet points I caught from the session and are worth sharing.

VIMM model - reduce users' load on four areas:
Vision, Intellect, Memory and Motor

Vision

• Human brains rapidly scan all surface of media. To design a good UX, users are needed to be guided through essential contents
• Users don’t like to read something too long, they usually scan all document like an F shape
• These are prioritized predictions of human brains: Complex Areas, saturated color, dark areas, human faces
• Be caution to put any faces in a design. Doing that will attract users to focus on the face rather than a content you want them to know
• You need to understand what they expect and design around it. Because people tend to scan based on their expectations
• Eliminate all wiggly stuffs from some media that required users to read
• Stroop effect: linkage of words and colors - show an importance of content and its physical properties
• Red is the most sensitive color on light spectrum -> consider hardly to use red color, pure blue and pure red should never put together (except you want fatal attention: emergency responder vehicles)
• Monochrome first then add some color to enhance
• Canonic perspective - visual testing, be sure it is the canonic form

Intellect

• Humans respond and focus to only one matter
• DO NOT expect users to do two things at a time
• Hick-Hyman Law -> number of options affects time to respond until at one number, time to respond will not increase anymore
  • Complexity affects time to respond -> design simple stuffs so users can react fast
• 5 - 9 colors are maximum bound of acceptance
• If you need more attention and you are running out of colors, use movement, sound, smell or something else
• Yerkes-Dodson Law - best performance of humans is found when humans are not too comfortable but not too stress
  • Stressor can be easily distracted
  • They will redo an unsuccessful over and over again
• Things cause stress: noise, vibration, heat - cold, dim light, anxiety, anger, time pressure
• Better know your users’ level of arousal - high stress -> design for self-evidence, efficiency and simplicity -> childlike behaviors

Memory

• Sensory, Short-term, Long-term
• Sensory is like a buffer of the brain - too much of information at a time, buffer is flowed
• Maximum number that humans can remember is 7 +- 2, practically at 4 digits
• Reduce memory load in users, repeat or show them what they’re doing (ex. Checkout process with items in cart)
• Good designs do not make people to remember a thing
  • Source or encoding message
  • Recognition is easier than recall - using canonic shapes
• Help user to remember: recognition, repetition, association, spatial location, mnemonics, Zeifarnik effect
• Schema - a set of fixed information that users use to recognize something
  • Know your user’s schema and design around it
  • Hang new information to existing schema
• Whatever you design, control your bias - rethink from users' perspective
  • Users will interpret your designs based on their biases

Motor

• Fitt’s Law - bigger the object, quicker to respond (until at one size, there is no more improvement on speed)
  • Make targets big
  • Make movement short
  • Estimate how long the whole process is
• Better performance for users doesn’t mean better UX. Time of use may change performance for users to get better.
• Do research a design for target audience

Know Your Users

• Some symbols or signs are not internationally recognized as a same meaning
• Customize your design for target audience

_{^{Banner image by LoggaWiggler - CC0}}