
UX Crash Course: User Psychology - JoelMarsh
http://thehipperelement.com/post/87574750438/ux-crash-course-user-psychology
======
JonoBB
I'm really not quite sure what to make of this advice:
[http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-
crash-...](http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-course-
user-psychology-27-of-31)

> If your marketing department wants to know anything about why the user is
> cancelling, put it in the form. Two pages of boring questions is a great way
> to reduce conversion.

> Break the form into many pages so it takes longer. Include links to FAQ
> pages. And avoid using defaults; it maximizes the number of conscious
> choices for the user.

> Ask them to explain their reasons for cancelling, and require at least 100
> letters of text. Explaining is hard when your reasons are emotional.

Really? Obviously I don't want to make it too easy for users to cancel, but to
make it too hard just seems petty to me. Asking them to fill out the reasons
for cancellation is a great idea (and worked really well for us), but forcing
them to write at least 100 letters is just horrible.

Also, there are some users that you really do want to cancel. You know, the
ones that suck up twice as much support as anyone else and complain
incessantly.

Surely its more important to be focusing on why users are cancelling, not
luring them through a maze of "two pages of boring questions"? Does anyone
reputable actually do this?

There is a sweet spot somewhere in between, but this seems to be irritating
and would just make me want to write complete junk responses.

~~~
JoelMarsh
Author here.

I agree. After a few minutes of after-thought I have updated the article to
reflect this feedback.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the input.

~~~
tommi
> Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be
> super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes.

As a user, I hate you for that.

~~~
nakovet
Indeed. I cancelled Netflix 3 times, and look who's back paying for their
content!? Me!

Not the main reason, but because it's easy to cancel it, I don't worry about
signing back (counter-example: gym subscription).

~~~
silverbax88
I stated this above, but because I have a policy of pain-free cancellations, I
get about 50% of my cancelled users back WITHOUT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING.

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harrybr
Joel, this work appears to be heavily plagiarised in places. I've only had a
quick browse, but it looks like you've cribbed content from UX textbooks and
online sources. Some people would consider this unethical, particularly since
you have something to sell on your site (your book on 'Persuasion,
manipulation & brainwashing.').

The solution is simple, you need to clearly cite and link to your sources.

As well as making the source authors happy, this will be very helpful for
readers who want to do further research.

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Aardwolf
My psychology is unfortunately different than most users, which means UI's
suck for me nowadays.

I want _more_ information on screen, more settings, more logic.

The UI trend however seems to be _less_ information on screen, less settings,
and more "The UI knows better what you want than you do" :(

~~~
tommi
Can you give an example of an case where you want more settings instead of
more suitable UI for your needs?

~~~
Aardwolf
Sure. Allowing to set ranges yourself rather than infinite scrolling that
makes it impossible to go back to number X. A setting to always show little
icons instead of only when the mouse hovers over it. Settings to organize lots
of data the way you want. Settings to let a single mouse click on a bookmark
star put it in the place you want rather than some place where you don't want
it. Settings to always expand all content in a thread rather than showing
things collapsed first so that you need to open each individually. Settings to
put the refresh button next to the forward and back button. A setting to have
multiple rows of taskbars in your favorite Linux desktop env. Settings to fix
anything that's annoying and designed for less knowledgeable users or users
with small screens basically.

------
fat0wl
I did end up skimming a few more sections to see if it picked up & it was
still all hollow, common sense stuff eventually descending into predatory
gamification/addiction tactics. I know there are a lot of burgeoning startup
types on here but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that responsible developers
should strive to make a product that serves a real need for users. I want to
make software that retains customers through convenience, features, value.

This guide reads more like those old guides for how to use SEO to drive
traffic to your dung-heap. I don't know how others feel but I want to create a
good experience for my users, not convince the masses that they are my users
so I can go to some freemium lowest-common-denominator model.

Is web dev the wrong place for me or are we just in a bubble phase for these
people who try to use their "clever interfaces" to regress humans to some
animal state? (If you look at the chapter headers in this guide I don't think
I'm out of line... its literally about addiction, sex, etc.)

~~~
Yetanfou
We seem to be in a phase where there are many solutions being developed in
search for problems which either are so trivial as not to be worth solving or
which don't exist in the first place. The PC and the 'net were the incubators
for this phenomenon which really took flight when the 'net became small enough
to fit in the average pocket. Now there are 'apps' for everyone and
everything, all vying for your limited attention.

Alls you need to do is go back in time a bit, say 150 years, to see some
parallels with the way that newfangled electricity thing was seen as the
solution for all life's problems. Doctors waving Geissler tubes over their
patients to cure, electrical beds to improve women's sex drive, electrical
hairbrushes because, well, it's electrical and thus cures rheumatism and
constipation, electrical baths - both dry and wet - to improve health and
stamina, electric underwear to 'cure any ailment'.

And now? Electricity has certainly revolutionised society, but not by using it
to cure constipation or zap innocent bathtubs. The web also revolutionised
society, and the mobile 'net is poised to extend that revolution even further
- but not by creating dating apps or yet another calendar-planner-todo-list-
organiser.

------
boyander
As a developer, the only thing that I have to say is: Why are you using a
million canvas on your page? Are you trying to do some kind of benchmark?
Please improve this.

------
brianjoseff
Hey Joel- great stuff. Can you post your sources? For example, in the
Cognitive Bias Lesson in the Decoy section, where did you get this factoid:
"even though nobody chooses [the decoy], if you remove it, about 60% of people
will choose the cheapest option instead.". Thanks for assembling these
lessons!

~~~
JoelMarsh
That particular example is from Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational".

All of the cognitive biases are described on Wikipedia. The links are in the
articles.

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toddkaufmann
tl;dr (but I may revisit in the future).

I used to think UX meant a wider "systems" approach to the man-machine
interface, incorporating findings from CHI, cognitive science, user studies,
etc.

Now it seems like it is becoming a name for the design of marketing your
product in the experience economy, not helping perform a task more efficiently
(unless the "task" is selling to the user).

I'd like to see some discriminating term separating this from the UI-to-the-
machine (UIttM ?) where streamlined presentation of the right info just-in-
time is important, versus the "create more clicks for A/B testing" sales
growth-hacking / I can make a web page with fonts.

I dunno, maybe this is a false dichotomy and reflects some kind of design
thinking that UX is a term to apply to everything. Did a UX person design the
pattern on my toilet paper?

~~~
collyw
You only need to look at the Android UX principles page to see that what you
are saying is true.

[https://developer.android.com/design/get-
started/principles....](https://developer.android.com/design/get-
started/principles.html)

Back when I was at university (not so long ago), usability was like you
described - it helping the user get their task done efficiently. Not the more
modern version of "delighting the user in surprising ways".

------
usablebytes
Thanks. It's a good quick run-through with the fundamentals and lives up to
the title. I wish there would be simple and short illustrative examples/case-
studies - or links to it - in the lessons to prove each point.

