If struggling with mental health disorders, poorly designed products can worsen symptoms. Designers can help by improving a few pain points endemic to knowledge work. Many of these proposed UX solutions build on existing technology or expand the availability of underused features.
The human brain consumes a whopping 25% of the body’s oxygen despite making up only about 2% of its mass. By identifying things, labelling them, and ignoring them until they become relevant again, the brain is lazy as a survival mechanism. Pattern recognition and shortcuts mean less energy is wasted consciously processing the situation.
When designing a website or an app, designers can benefit from subconscious decision making by staying close to what people expect. The brain’s preference for patterns and lazy decision making might make survival easier, but it makes UX design more difficult.
The brain scans for information in an F-pattern (or E-pattern), looking at the top information, reading to the right, then scanning the page for relevant information or icons.
Create a calming and supportive atmosphere. Use calming colours, visuals, and sounds to create an welcoming atmosphere and use the state of urgency only when it is an absolute must. Be mindful of what the user needs to know and how to alert them appropriately. Do they really need to be interrupted for this?
Part of the styling is the colour theory, that together with weights, and contrast can be used to direct user attention.Using the dominant colour 60% of the time, secondary 30%, and accent 10% is consistent with the neuroscience behind what draws the eye. Since the accent colour is used the least, it is the most appealing.
I believe that if you make something that’s easy for your users to understand, they’ll get excited about it. Make sure you are guiding them on first use. Use animations, and images as much as possible — people won’t read if they don’t have to, instead, movement will catch their attention.
Add mini tutorials to help users with feature updates. Explainer videos and walkthroughs are hard to fit into a busy day, especially for veteran users. Instead, try adding mini tutorials that trigger when a user attempts an action related to the update. For example, when a user opens a project, highlight new tool locations.
All tutorials should be easily accessible in a help centre. It’s frustrating to dismiss a pop-up and realise that was the only way to learn about an update.
Use clear and positive language.
Avoid using negative or stigmatising language. Use positive and supportive language instead to help users feel more comfortable and confident using the platform.
It’s also important to remember that people want things now. You can’t just write a bunch of copy on a page and expect people to read it all at once; they need little bits at a time so they can digest it one step at a time.
According to a Nielsen Norman study of 45,237 page views, people read only about 20% of the text on a page. Worse, on sites with more content, people dedicated only about 4 extra seconds for each additional 100 words of text.
Provide helpful and personalised content. Provide users with relevant content that is tailored to their individual needs. Use data-driven insights to help users understand the product, track their progress, and identify the actions they would need to perform in order to achieve their goals.
That’s why I try to break up my content into chunks so people can learn what they need when they need it — and feel comfortable with enough time in between each chunk so they don’t get overwhelmed by too much info all at once.
You need to adapt to the user’s behaviour. Learn their preferences so you don’t have to change settings more than you need to.
Adapt to the context. Make sure your product can be used by a variety of users who may behave differently in different environments. Enable your users to customise their experience and communications.
