These are the laws of UX we learned about this week and my thoughts on them.
Peak end rule
“People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience”.
Based on this law, you should take your time and identify and focus on the most critical and final moments within your user journey. For example, in a shopping website, the final moment for a user would be buying the product. Therefore, it’s essential to make this easy for them as this is the moment they will remember. If something goes wrong at this point, they are unlikely to return.
For my current project, a critical moment for users would be when they get an alert that an animal needs medical attention or is in distress. Therefore, I need to put a lot of time and thought into how this works and the content I need to include. The reason this law is so important is that people remember negative encounters more than positive ones.
Cognitive bias (Von Restorff effect)
“The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.”
This emphasises the value of making important information stand out visually. This could be through:
- Colour
- Movement
- Typography
- Type size
- Bold/italics
However, it’s important to do this correctly, otherwise, content that stands out in the wrong way could be mistaken for an advertisement. Colour may be the obvious choice to make things stand out but this can cause accessibility issues for those with colour blindness. Movement is another thing that must be used correctly as there are people with motion sensitivity. I think with things like this, there should be an option to stop the motion as it gives users choice and enables everyone to view the interface enjoyably.