
The Role of Psychology in Design

- What role does psychology play in design? A big one. You don't have to be a student of Freud to understand how basic psychological principles, when applied to design, can have a measurable impact.
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This morning I woke up angry. Like, really angry. Why? I had dreamt that I’d just bought a small plate of breakfast food for an exorbitant price ($19 to be exact), only to have a strange man run by and snatch the food off my plate, leaving me with a single slice of bacon. In my dream I went on a full-on rampage, yelling at some guy who I thought took it (who denied it and called me crazy). Then, blinded with rage, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I paid 19 dollars for a lousy piece of bacon?!” (then I took a bite) “AND COLD BACON AT THAT!!” And that is the precise moment in time when I woke up, heart pounding and adrenaline rushing.
So…. weird, right? Reflecting on where on earth THAT came from, I realized…
Somehow, in my deepest of sleep, all of these non-related experiences co-mingled into a dream that made me wake up angry enough to fight someone. (Good thing my husband was already out of bed!)
Why do I share this with you? Not so that you’ll be concerned about my mental well-being. 🙂 But because it’s a testament to the complexity of the computers inside our heads. I’m amazed at how our brains work. I’m intrigued by it. And that’s a great quality for a graphic / web designer to have. Psychology should actually inform most of what we (designers) do. Once you get past the skills and creativity, you have to put that to work in a way that will be effective. How do we know what will be effective? Well, we don’t — not always and not exactly. But there are psychological principles that can help generally predict how people will react due to what we know — and what we can measure — about how our brains process information. Whether it’s conversion optimization of a website, deciding a color scheme for a poster, determining how many options to display on your e-commerce homepage, selecting the best stock photo for your rack card, or designing with enough white space, psychology always comes into play.
I will flesh this out a bit more in future posts. In the meantime, my crazy dream should remind you of two things:
There is so much more that I can touch on — psychology is an integral part of the design process and deserves to be explored further. So… more to come! For now, I’m going to go make myself breakfast.
(Yes, with bacon.)
🙂
What does it take to be a graphic designer? Is it a natural talent? A degree? Technical ability? An artistic eye? Creative vision? The ability to solve problems?
I can’t say that about many things in life. Those who know me personally see me as a laid back, calm, pretty level-headed person. Very few acquaintances have ever seen me giddy about anything.
Here’s something to consider…if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to see it, did it have a color? There’s no denying that color is all around us, but how we perceive it is all in the eye of the beholder.