
Cognitive biases and principles that affect UX - danbenoni
https://psychology.design/
======
cosmotic
Ironic the site has such a bad UX. Emoji make it hard to read; all the
information is pointlessly in collapsing boxes, it has screwy animations and
scrolling, crazy hover effects, bad zoom (it's blurry), silly checkmarks
instead of bullet points...

~~~
falafel
It is indeed ironic. I was initially interested in the content, but I closed
the site in less than a minute after getting frustrated by the emojis, blurry
text and annoying sidebar and header animations when scrolling.

I remember another site with similar content and also pretty annoying UX:
[https://lawsofux.com](https://lawsofux.com)

I'd take a long markdown document with a table of contents over this any day.

I'm still interested in reading about these UX principles though. Is there
another alternative, easier to read resource?

~~~
danbenoni
Hey falafel, a popular alternative is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)
. Hope that helps!

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mortenjorck
This is really nice, and the collection of practical examples is what makes
the content here shine.

Presentationally, the emoji are maybe a little overrepresented, but some of
the pairings are amusingly clever. Apparently some here don't appreciate the
use of progressive disclosure for the navigation, but for content of this
length, it's an appropriate alternative to navigating to a new page.

The one thing I'd suggest is limiting the expand/collapse interaction to one
open at a time. There isn't really any advantage to having multiple open at
once as there isn't a use case for comparing between open boxes, and keeping
everything else collapsed makes exploring the index simpler.

~~~
danbenoni
Thanks Morten! Great feedback.

You actually understood exactly what we tried to achieve with that progressive
disclosure and management of cognitive load ;). It's the #1 positive feedback
we get from the people who use this page.

We did quite a bit of user research with different cohorts of people before we
released this list. We originally considered auto-closing the other panels
when you open a new one (!), but beta testers mentioned that it was convenient
to compare two elements or to Ctrl-F through some stuff that saw a few tiles
back.

So I guess we had the same thought process, but our beta tester descoped that
need for us. So we launched that MVP without it.

I'll definitely keep an eye on the feedback (and comment section) if more
people raise that concern.

We intend to update that page regularly.

Cheers!

PS: One of the UX hacks that I added though is scrolling back to the top of
your active tile when you close it to avoid losing your anchor. With that
said, even that was a bit limit for my JS skills (I'm far from a dev, merely a
curious person).

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bogdanoff_2
I'm having a hard time filtering the information with all those pictures,
animations, pop ups, curvy lines and huge text.

~~~
GloriousKoji
Same here. I'm surprised how jarring the emjoi's are to my focus.

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petewailes
It's ironic that this is the same site which created
[https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user-
onboarding/](https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user-onboarding/)

Which is probably the least user-friendly thing I've come across in a while.

~~~
danbenoni
Hey Pete, sorry to hear you had trouble viewing our comic book case studies
:/. Was it the slide format that threw you off?

~~~
petewailes
Pretty much. I suspect I may be a minority, but I'd rather just have a really
good case study in text format, with images where appropriate, rather than
having to keep clicking through with cute visuals.

It feels to me a bit like it's cheapening the content by putting it into that
context. It's like watching an anime version of Pride and Prejudice; I'm sure
there's an audience for it, but I'm not it, and it feels cheap.

EDIT

Having thought about this a little more, it also feels like the analysis is
more shallow than I think it actually is, due to the presentation context.

~~~
danbenoni
Sure thing! Totally respect your opinion Pete. I really believe in radical
candor.

To give a bit of context, most people signup for our content specifically for
the case study format (including, surprisingly, Fortune 500 execs). Tech
scale-up product leaders tend to use it as a resource for internal education.
(They tend to use the keyboard navigation though, not their mouse, the
clicking is indeed tedious!)

With that said, we also know that many people prefer long form text—which is
totally fine. The good news is that there's no shortage of Medium posts for
that!

Thanks for your feedback again Pete. Cheers.

~~~
aabbcc1241
I'm not awared it supports keyboard navigation.

Edit: there is hint to use keyboard on the trello case study, but the hint
isn't visible (if any) on the tinder case study.

~~~
danbenoni
Oh that's odd. Are you referring to /case-studies/tinder-monetization/ ? It is
visible on my side (incognito mode)… I'll look into it. Thanks for the heads
up.

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abdullahkhalids
What do you think are the the ethical concerns around using these design
principles to almost manipulate visitors of a website into buying stuff?

~~~
danbenoni
100% Abdullah. Behavioral psychology should be used for good.

We've been in touch with Nir Eyal for a bit now. He wrote "Hooked", but
quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral psychology was
misunderstood completely and started to focus his efforts there.

We asked him for a quote because we believe this is extremely important (just
Ctrl-F "Eyal" on the page you should find it).

We also really like his "regret test" regarding the ethical side of behavioral
design. It comes down to answering: "If users knew everything the product
designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they
likely to regret doing this?"

Side note: As for us, we don't believe in "growth for the sake of growth". We
define "growth by design" as a process at the intersection of Growth (a
scientific method to improve) and Design (a human-centered process used to
solve problems). It involves crafting meaningful experiences at scale so that
an organization can exceed its business goals while delighting their
customers. We talk about this and our vision on our /about page if you're
interested!

On that note, you make me realize we should probably add something regarding
this in the conclusion. Great idea, cheers Abdullah!

~~~
gnicholas
> _He wrote "Hooked", but quickly realized that the ethical side of behavioral
> psychology was misunderstood_

That’s a charitable interpretation. He wrote a book about how to make products
addictive (subtitle: How To Make Habit-Forming Products), then when the
inevitable backlash came he got on that bandwagon and wrote a book to teach
people how to be Indistractable (in a world filled with products designed to
be habit-forming).

~~~
drozak
Thank you for your service.

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RivieraKid
One of the nicest and most unique designs I've seen recently, well done.

I'm just reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and several of those principles are
talked about in the book.

~~~
danbenoni
Thanks, that's really appreciated.

Yeah, Kahneman is a legend in that area indeed. Huge influence in the
behavioral sphere. Another nice read (althought much lighter) that is covering
many biases as well is "You are not so smart" and "Super Thinking" (already
linked in the article).

~~~
chrisweekly
See also "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind"

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yellowapple
If you're gonna ask a quiz question, it helps if the topic to which that
question pertains has more to it than "coming soon".

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jamesonicklaus
I was using wikipedia most of the time, but now this is next level.

~~~
31337
ScholarPedia has lots of materials regarding these topics. Suggest you pay a
visit

~~~
danbenoni
Thanks James! And thanks for sharing 31337. Never heard of ScholarPedia, just
took a look. I know what James was referring to (a list of biases), but I
couldn't find that on ScholarPedia. I also tried a dozen queries with
individual cognitive biases and couldn't find most. Is there a sub-category
that I missed?

~~~
31337
Scholarpedia works differently than Wikipedia for searches. You need to figure
the categories for each since they are mostly academic writings. For
individual cognitive biases, You can have a look at Behavioral Operations by
Stephanie Eckerd and Elliot Bendoly

" In particular, cognitive psychology addresses (among other things) an
individual's decision-making biases and use of heuristics as an attempt to
overcome bounded rationality. "

~~~
danbenoni
Oh, got it. Thanks!

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kristopolous
This feels like I'm being led to an eventual sales pitch. I don't think it is
on deeper investigation, but it sure rubs me as the entry to a funnel.

~~~
danbenoni
We don't have any product to sell :/. We've been creating case studies for 15
months for people in 120 countries. All for free. The community has been
asking us to build more even though we're strapped for time. The only way we
could make that happen is if we start a premium subscription for those
interested (but keep a foundation of free content of course).

*edit: typo and clarification

~~~
drozak
Premium subscriptions are your product. If that's not something you're
comfortable being honest about, I question the depth of your domain expertise
in the areas for which your seeking "donations" to support.

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hiidrew
Love your case studies, thanks for sharing this.

~~~
danbenoni
That's very kind, thanks Drew! :) Since we're only two indie hackers, honestly
it was an insane amount of work to map the product examples and design the
page.

It's a good thing we found the work of Buster Benson a few days before we
published. That allows us to split the biases in the four categories that he
found. (Buster deserves a MAJOR kudos for that. His research summary was
brilliant.)

