Psychology & User Experience: 10 Key Concepts
Patrick W. Jordan at UX Brighton 2013
About this talk
In this presentation Patrick will look at 10 key psychological concepts which have implications from the point of view of user experience.
The concepts come from a wide variety of areas, spanning the history of psychology from its inception as a discipline to the present day. These include: psychoanalysis; behaviourism; humanistic psychology; Gestalt psychology; existentialism and cognitivism.
Each concept will be described and illustrated with examples from the studies through which the concept was established. In some cases inferences and examples will be given as to how it can be applied to UX. In other cases - those where the implications may not be clear (at least to the presenter) - the concepts will be described but their potential use and implications will be left for the audience to consider.
About Patrick
Patrick W. Jordan is a design, marketing and brand strategist. He consults for many of the world’s most successful companies and is one of the most influential practitioners in his field. He has clients across many market sectors and has helped to develop a wide range of hugely successful products, services, brands and marketing campaigns.
He has many years of corporate experience, formerly being CEO of the Contemporary Trends Institute and, prior to that, Vice-President of Symbian, the world’s largest mobile communications consortium. He spent his early career in various design management roles within Philips, Europe’s biggest electronics company.
Patrick also has a successful academic career. He has visiting lectureships at many of the world’s leading universities and is on the advisory board at Delft University in The Netherlands. He has held the Nierenberg Chair at Carnegie-Mellon University, considered to be the most prestigious design education appointment in the USA, and was Chair of Design and Marketing at the University of Leeds. He has a PhD in psychology and over 100 peer reviewed publications. He is also a successful author with six best-selling books, including the highly influential Designing Pleasurable Products and How to Make Brilliant Stuff that People Love.
Related reading
Books, research, ideas and people referenced in this talk.
Books
- Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People 04:29Banaji and Greenwald explain implicit social biases and the Implicit Association Test used in the talk.
- Emotional Design 18:08Don Norman's visceral, behavioural and reflective levels underpin the explanation of remembered emotional experience.
- The Black Swan 31:18Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores consequential events that fall outside what a system expects.
Papers and articles
- Red enhances human performance in contests 12:42Hill and Barton's study examines the competitive advantage associated with wearing red.
- When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End 17:53This study demonstrates the peak-end pattern applied in the talk to amusement parks and other experiences.
- Failure to escape traumatic shock 21:11Seligman and Maier's foundational research established the idea of learned helplessness.
- Risk homeostasis theory: an overview 23:33Gerald Wilde explains why people may consume a safety gain by adopting another risky behaviour.
- Famine, Affluence, and Morality 29:02Peter Singer's article contains the shallow-pond thought experiment reproduced in the talk.
Concepts
- Positive psychology 17:34An introduction to the study of flourishing, exceptional performance, health and happiness.
Projects and resources
- Dementia Dog 01:24Assistance dogs offer companionship and practical support to people living with dementia.
- Tesco Homeplus virtual subway store 02:19The Korean virtual supermarket illustrates designing around local working and commuting patterns.
- Project Implicit 04:36The Implicit Association Test uses response times to investigate automatic associations.
- UK Men's Sheds Association 08:12Men's Sheds creates activity-based social spaces that can help reduce isolation.
- GoodGym 14:43GoodGym combines exercise with practical community help to make activity more meaningful.
- Prayer Companion 15:51This connected device gave enclosed nuns news and social prompts for intercessional prayer.
- The Billion Pound-O-Gram 28:25David McCandless's visualisation gives government-scale sums a comparative visual context.
- Kiva 30:39Kiva's borrower profiles show how personal narratives can make distant needs concrete.
