Soundcloud — Psychological Factors (Part 5)
Sometimes the most usable interfaces are not enough to engage users. Psychology plays a huge role in motivating and influencing a users decision to use a system or interface. By understanding users on a psychological level it is possible to design more user focused products. In this post I will discuss different aspects of psychology to consider when designing systems and how people feel and think both subconsciously and consciously when using a system, interface, product and service.
Two key areas to consider when applying psychological factors to a UX design project are cognitive and social psychology.
Cognitive Psychology
Cognition refers to thinking. Cognitive psychology is the mental process of understanding, acquiring and storing information. Don Normans levels of processing within the brain, applicable to both cognitive and emotional processing describes three different levels of processing, all working in tandem: visceral, behavioural and reflective. For designers, the aim is to anticipate what happens at all three levels so you can design systems that allow users to complete goals and tasks with less mental effort and more satisfaction.
Visceral Level: with design, visceral response relates to immediate perception. With interfaces this relates to appearances with colour, layout and imagery all playing a big part. This is unrelated to usability or how to use the product. It is a subconscious precursor to emotion when you see something (Norman 2013) that draws out an initial gut feeling and reaction toward something. E.g. When you hear a loud noise, you jump and get a fright.
Behavioral Level: when considering a design the most critical aspect of the behavioral level is that every action is associated with an expectation. E.g. If a user clicks a button to play a song it should play the song. Users create mental modal in their heads about how systems, products and interfaces work. As designers the aim is to create products that match these mental modals. Feedback from the system confirms the action. Positive feedback confirm expectations, negative feedback evokes negative emotions. E.g clicking play and nothing happens, or clicking play and it changes song. This may conjure frustration and confusion. This level occurs subconsciously.
Gestalt Principles occur at the behavioral level. Our brains assume unification or relatedness to visuals based on proximity, white space and perceived similarity. Examples of this can include buttons in the header of a homepage or groupings of objects on a webpage based on type, colour, shape etc. When designing the new interface this will be considered.
Reflective Level: the reflective level is highly cognitive, often occurring after visceral and behavioral. The highest level of emotions derive at this level as the user reflects or looks back on actions or outcomes. E.g. I’ve just pressed the play button but nothing happened, how do I feel? Why didn’t it work? Did I do something wrong or is it broken? In the previous post the primary persona (Jess) has a negitive experience using Soundcloud and switches to Youtube. Consciously and subconsciously Jess is making decisions about Soundcloud and Youtube. The negative experience with Soundcloud forces her to leave and the positive experience on Youtube entices her to stay. Memories last longer than immediate experiences so it is vital that the reflective level for users is positive for them to want to return and use a product again. It is reflection that drives the user back to the product, feel the need to share with friends — or avoid it.
Social Psychology
Social psychology looks at how people behave in real social contexts. It is concerned with how the people and things around us influence our thoughts, feelings and behavior.
There are six universal principles of social influence that have been proven to trigger emotional responses when engaging with a product. UX Designer and author Elisa Del Galdo describes them in her article Persuasion in Design as:
1. Reciprocation: We are compelled to return favours, often in greater value than the original.
Users are willing to sign up and give away their personal information for access to tools like playlists, liking and commenting. Soundcloud also decrease cognitive load by allowing users to “one click” sign up or login via Facebook and Google.
2. Authority: We trust experts and those of high status or power.
As an established platform users should trust Soundcloud to make meaningful recommendations based on the users music preferences. Users also trust other users music knowledge and expertise which can influence their decision to share or repost their tracks and playlists. Jess trusted Youtubes recommendations so much so she used it for the remainder of her commute.
3. Commitment/Consistency: We want to act consistently with our commitments and values.
When our behavior is consistent with who we are and what we value, it makes us feel good (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). This could be creating and updating playlists or routinely listening to Soundcloud whilst jogging or commuting to work to speed up the journey and make it more pleasant. Jess religiously uses her phone commuting to work to listen to music, socialise and share.
4. Scarcity: The less available a resource, the more we want it.
Is the content exclusively available on Soundcloud? With new tracks, am I the first to hear it or find next big act? Unable to find the DJ she was looking Jess switched platform to find out who they were.
5. Liking: The more we like people, the more we want to say yes to them.
What artists do I like and how much do I want to engage with them? In the previous post Jess liked the DJs Youtube channel and shared a link on Facebook.
6. Social Proof: We look to others to guide our behaviour.
Are my friends listening to this? Is it popular? Jess listened to song based on her friend reposting it on Soundcloud. This recommendation influenced Jess’s behavior to find the the DJ, like and share.
Behaviour Change — How do you encourage users to play more and share more?
BJ Foggs Behavioural Modal describes that with enough motivation, ability and timing of triggers it is possible to encourage a behaviour. In Soundclouds case, listen to more tracks. Example: User listens to Soundcloud commuting to and from work, say between 8am-9am in the morning and 5pm-6pm in the evening. Soundcloud could send the user a push notification (trigger) between these times for new music(motivation) that matches their preferences. The user simply clicks the push notification(ability) to open Soundcloud and play the track. The trigger is the push notification, the motivation is wanting to hear the new track and the ability is the one click to get to the track. This simple act encourages behaviour change.
Emotions shape all activity in adaptive ways. In the absence of emotional markers, decision making is virtually impossible.
— Saver and Damasio (1991)
Conclusion
Psychology plays a huge part in aiding and influencing people to use a system, product or interface. Meticulously crafted information architecture decreases human cognition and allows users to read buttons and labels more clearly, and quickly get to where they want with less clicks which leads to increased enjoyment. Carefully executed content strategy shows users not only content they want to see but also content they “need” to see, using social psychology to influence their decision which regularly happens subconsciously. By satisfying a users perception of a product there is a much higher chance the user will happily return to use a product again and again.
Play the next Track
In the next post I will examine the principles of universal design, evaluate the existing Soundcloud design and look at how I can integrate some of these principles into the redesign.
References
Norman, D.A. (2013).The Design of Everyday Things (revised and expanded ed.). New York, NY, USA: Basic Book.
