Psychology Principles Every Designer Should Master (with Susan Weinschenk)

Today on The Design Psychologist, we're diving deep into the intersection of psychology and design with none other than Susan Weinschenk, PhD—the person you’ll literally find next to the term “design psychologist” in the dictionary.  Susan is a pioneer in applying behavioral science to UX and product design, and the author of essential books like How to Get People to Do Stuff and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. 

In this conversation, we explore Susan's journey from psychology to design, how human factors evolved into today’s UX, and why understanding the three parts of the brain is crucial for anyone building products. 

You’ll also hear us unpack:

• Why emotional and unconscious processing drives most user behavior
•  Why dopamine isn't about pleasure—but about anticipation
• What most designers get wrong about memory and readability
• The neuroscience of storytelling and why it matters for websites, apps, and products
• The psychology behind gamification—and what truly motivates users
• Why stories are essential in product and communication design
•  Why every UX decision should start with a “micro-moment” 

Resources Mentioned:

• 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People and 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People  by Susan Weinschenk
• Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?  (2nd Edition) by Susan Weinschenk
• Redirect by Timothy D. Wilson
• Robert Sapolsky’s research on dopamine

Connect with Susan Weinschenk:

• Website
• LinkedIn

Find The Design Psychologist on your favorite podcasting platforms (or share this link with a friend): https://designpsychologist.buzzsprout.com/2395044/follow

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Design Psychologist, the show that helps you use psychology to design better experiences. I'm Thomas Watkins, your guide to becoming a more powerful psychology-informed designer. What do we actually need to know about psychology to design good interfaces? Is there a baseline set of knowledge that we can fast forward ourselves to? Are there design psychologists out there who are in touch enough with industry to give us relevant guidance, yet academic enough to properly vet that guidance? Today I am very happy to share a conversation I had with Susan Weinschink, who I will introduce momentarily. Together we explore questions like: what are the unconscious forces that shape how people navigate interfaces? What does evolutionary psychology tell us about how we should approach design? What does that have to do with the three brains and what do those three brains want? What does neuroscience reveal to us about making products that people love giving their time to? By the end of this episode, you'll understand the psychology behind the clicks, and you'll be equipped to design not just for efficiency, but in harmony with how people actually think, feel, and behave. So let's have a listen as I introduce and speak with today's guest. Welcome to the design psychologist. I'm very excited to have our guest today. She is the person who, if you looked up Design Psychologist in the dictionary, you would see her face next to the definition. She's Susan Weinschenk, PhD. Her doctorate is in psychology. She is the chief behavioral scientist and CEO of the W Team Incorporated. She consults a huge variety of companies ranging from startups, Fortune 1000, government nonprofits. She's an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin. And most importantly, for our guests here today, um, uh, for our guests here today for our audience, is we have uh two books we're going to be talking about. She's written a bunch of them. We're going to focus on two in particular: NeuroWeb Design, what makes them click, and 100 things every designer needs to know about people. Uh, Susan Weinschink, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Okay, I just I'll I'll just tell the audience straight up we started talking when I wasn't recording, just in case I sounded off there. We were having a conversation. I realized I wasn't recording. So when now we are recording, Susan. Um I wanted to talk a little bit about um your path. You kind of have a good story there. I want you to share most of it of design and psychology have, you know, they're not always thought of as being together, you know, in different points in time that's changed. You know, 20 years ago you couldn't get a job without a CV. Today you can't get a job without a portfolio. What's expected of people applying psychology to design has changed. Um, could you talk a little bit about your profession, what you the path you came through going through coming from psychology and going through design?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, I think that um, you know, way back when uh in the field, um there was a there there was a field of called human factors that was pretty small and not a lot of people did it and not a lot of people knew what it was, and it had to do with applying psychology to the design, not necessarily of software, but but of of machines, right? That's really where it came from. Cockp airplane cockpits and and industrial machines. So that existed, but not very many people knew about it. And in fact, when I was in graduate school uh and had my kind of epiphany moment about psychology and design and computers, I didn't know that human factors existed as a career. I thought, oh, I we should apply what we know about people to the design of software. And I thought it was like this big thing that no one else had thought of. It not true, I found out later, uh, which was good because it meant that I could do work in it. But it was a really small group of specialized people who had, you know, PhDs. I mean, back when I first started in the field, uh there weren't even master's programs in the field, right? HCI, human-computer interaction, now there are. Um, but there certainly weren't undergraduate degrees. You know, you had to have a PhD. If you look at all the old people in the field, they all have PhDs in psychology or industrial design. That's, you know, what those of us who've been around for a long time. And then of course it really grew, right? It really started to take off. Um, and and then there a lot of people started doing uh what we now call UX work um or apply and and also started really with applying design psychology to design um that didn't have specialized degrees uh because it was so hard. There were weren't programs. So you just learned on the job. And that, you know, for many years, that's how people got into the field. Now I think it's kind of more balanced, and um, there's still a lot of people that do this work that do not have a special degree in it, but there's also now a whole lot of people that do have a master's, for instance, in human factors or HCI doing the work. So it has changed. I mean, when I first, you know, I've been doing this work, design and psychology, for a very long time. And um when when I first started doing it, when I first started speaking at conferences about the psychology of design, I would be the only speaker on that topic. You know, everyone else would be talking about all kinds of things, and then there'd be the weird person talking about psychology and design. Uh, and now, of course, that's not true, right? Uh, there's a lot of speakers and a lot of people and um talking about it. So it it has changed over time, which I think is wonderful because I love the field and I think it's so important uh that I'm glad there's now like a whole army of people out there doing it.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Now, I do want you to tell a little bit of the story though, of how the connection happened for you because you kind of, you know, the the connection of languages and everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, yeah. So I was um I had gotten an undergraduate degree in psychology, and then I went to grad school. I was studying basically in grad school, I was studying cognitive psychology, how we think, how we learn. And I was at Penn State working on my I got a master's and a PhD at Penn State, and I had just started the program there, and they had a language requirement. As a graduate student, you had to take a language. And they had a weird thing where you could take a, you know, a language, or you could take a programming language. I I don't know who thought that up. Um, and I thought, oh, well, you know, I've taken a lot of French. I I don't need to do that anymore. I'm gonna do this thing called programming. I had um, I'll be honest, uh, and this'll s some of this story will start to date me in terms of how long ago this was. Uh, I had never touched a computer because back then people didn't have computers. Computers were in the computer science building, like you only dealt with computers if you were studying computer science. Uh, but I thought, I don't know, it sounds interesting. I'll try it. So I went to the computer science building to run my first program. And yeah, I handed my cards, because that's how you wrote the program on a deck of cards. I handed it to the guy behind the desk and waited for the answer. And a sheet of paper came out, my name on it, and I opened it up, hoping to see that my program had run correctly and added the numbers upright. And the in the only thing on the piece of paper were two words that said job aborted. And I still remember this exact moment so clearly, because I looked at that and I went, job aborted? What the heck does that mean? And then I thought, wait a minute, you know, this is how com computers communicate with people? Like this isn't gonna work. You you're gonna have people, not just specialists, you're gonna have people like me using computers moving forward, and they're not gonna know what that means. Why aren't they designing this to for to fit humans? And that was my you know, aha moment about applying psychology to the design of technology. And like I, you know, I didn't know that that everyone was doing this. I thought I was the only one that had, you know, I had first thought of it. But that's when I really started in the field. So from there on out, the rest of my graduate work, I started, you know, started thinking and focusing on how do we design, you know, how can we apply what we know about humans to the design of technology. And I never stopped, right? It's been a long career that I've really, really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

You were kind of generally part of that early cohort who was kind of paving the path. You were discovering things that later became common knowledge. Um, you know, so by the time, you know, somebody like me was in graduate school in the early 2000s learning human factors, the internet wasn't totally established yet. Mobile, but there was already established kind of computers. What are what are some of the things we know about computers? And then there's probably later cohorts that are maybe um post-internet being figured out, but pre-mobile and then so on. Um, so it's it's it's just sort of order over time a lot.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

It was a big it was a big there was this big transition point when because I and I was in it, so I remember when uh you know human factors work, that's what it was called um back then, had up to then be up been applied to the designs of machinery or cockpits or that kind of thing. Uh the software didn't exist, so it hadn't been applied. So as the sa whole software industry really started um getting big, and as you said, it was pre actually pre-internet, as that whole all the software development started growing and and you know the recognition was, wait a minute, we can have, in fact, uh the specialty was called uh human factors in software design. Right? The idea that, oh, maybe you wanna take what we know about the design of equipment and cockpits and start to apply it to software and and that's what we did. And it was um you know, I I mean it's always fun, but I gotta say back when it was really fun because it was really new, right? Nobody'd ever thought about it. The people we would teach in our workshops were programmers. I I uh ninety-nine percent of the people I was teaching back then in the classes, they were programmers and developers because there were no UX people.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So that's who you and the name, as you mentioned, has changed that you know, what was it?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Because I human factors is my earliest one, but but before human factors, there was man-machine interaction. Uh apparently women didn't interact with machines, so it was man-machine interaction. Then it was human factors, then with the software specialty, then came the term usability. So we were all usability experts for a while. And then eventually it turned into user experience UX.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

A couple other sprinkled in like HCI. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Right. Like different ways of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah. So, you know, in your books, you know, they both of the books that I'm talking about today, neuroweb design and 100 things, they cover lots of the same content, but written in different kind of focused ways. 100 Things is very much like a reference, guys, and it's super organized in the sections about the aspects of human psychology. Neuroweb design is really grounded in psychology and neuroscience and kind of teaches. Um, and in that book, I think that um you ground it for the reader in the, you know, the three different parts of the brain. And, you know, when you're talking about the brain, there's many ways you can kind of divide it. There's left versus right, left brain, right brain, there's unconscious, conscious, you know, thinking, fast, thing, and solidity, all of that stuff. And then you went with the three parts. Could you uh talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah. So um I didn't I didn't want to go with left and right. I had done research on left brain, right brain as a graduate student. That was my dissertation was on like cross-modal measurements of cerebral laterality. You know, you gotta have fancy titles. So I had studied quite a bit about left and right, and I was always very much into neuroscience. You know, when I studied psychology, I was very interested in in the neuropsychology, neuroscience part of it. Um I don't remember where I got the three I didn't make up the three-brain framework. I, you know, that was a framework that was out there, and I decided I really liked that one for the way I wanted to talk about it, the way I wanted to talk about humans interacting with technology because I think it is really fundamental. You know, so we taught I and I say in the book, you know, we have three brains, and it I did not make this up. This is one of the frameworks. You know, we have we have the the uh new brain point to my forehead. That's the conscious part of our thinking that we're most familiar with because it's conscious. Um and then we have uh what's called the mid-brain, which is deeper, deeper in your skull, and that's a whole collection of parts of your brain um that is largely unconscious and processes emotional and social information. So uh sometimes that's called the social emotional brain, sometimes it's called the mid-brain. So we have the new, the mid, and then we have the old brain, which I'm gonna point back to the back of my head, the brainstem, and that's old because of evolution. It's the part of the brain that evolved longest ago. We share um an old brain, you know, amphibians and reptiles have an old brain, and that's the part of the brain that that uh definitely unconscious, and that is uh really thinking about your survival is kind of always monitoring the environment and making sure you're safe. And I I I thought think and I thought back then that that was really a useful way to think about the work that we do because you know, hey, someone's using a piece of software, guess what? They're still a human. So they're gonna react to all the usual things that humans react to. Um and and you know, we we have a huge amount of our mental processing that's unconscious. So I definitely liked the conscious unconscious um division as well or framework as well. But I feel like the three-brain framework is even better because when we're talking about people using technology, I think it's really useful to think about the parts of the technology use or the software use that are conscious and logical and thinking, right? But it's also useful to talk about the parts that we're reacting to that have to do with us as social animals and our emotions. And I think it's also useful to think about the things that we're just gonna automatically react to because of our old brain, the and danger and and and so on. And I I have just found that that really tracks well with the um the the issues and the considerations we need to make as designers when we're thinking about applying psychology to design.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Yeah, I really loved it because I usually think of um the uh uh you know in terms of the unconscious, conscious, and but the three parts of brain encapsulates that too.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

It does.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

And right, because you know, so the hind brain is like all in the unconscious, mid-brain, unconscious still, but you know, but then even the forebra the uh neocortex will have automated subroutines on certain things, but it can decision make. But what I really loved is there's sometimes where you put scenarios and you talk about how the different parts are all contributing certain things to the situation. Could you walk us through like maybe one example of the other thing?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah, and I think I think that's so important to remember. You know, I think sometimes if you start working with these frameworks, then you think, oh, well, uh then right now people will be using their con their their uh uh their new brain and they'll be having conscious thought. Oh, but right now they'll be using their midbrain and it'll be so it's like no, you know, it's not you're doing all of it all the time. And I think in one of the books I probably give the example of, you know, driving a car. You're driving a car, you're using uh probably all three brains. So on the you know, you're driving a car and you got someone sitting next to you and you're talking to them, social, emotional, right? So you're having a conversation. Uh you're also um scanning, you know, the the road. And some of that is conscious. Oh, there's a guy coming up on the left. I'd better, you know, think about uh whether I should switch lanes now or not, right? That's conscious, conscious new brain. But a lot of, you know, then we're doing all the automatic processing. I mean, you're not thinking every second about how you're turning the wheel a tiny bit. That's happening automatically. That's your old brain, that's your whole motor cortex. And then of course, if you know, someone breaks really quickly, your old brain is definitely there, right? You've you've stepped on the brake and your adrenaline is running and that wasn't conscious. So um all of those things are going on all the time. And that's true of you know uh almost everything we do. I'm sure there are tiny, tiny micro moments of a millisecond where the new brain or the old brain or the midbrain is predominant, but those would be these tiny, tiny moments, you know. Otherwise, our experience is all about all three brains all the time. Uh now there's certainly some things, some tasks we're doing where the new brain, you know, when you are doing your taxes online and your computer software, probably the new brain is really, really working hard and you're probably sitting really still and you know, not interacting much with the rest of the environment. However, if there's a loud noise, your old brain's gonna hear it and jump because it's still there, it's still active, you know. And if if uh if your you know spouse walks in the room and starts arguing with you, your mid and social brain is gonna be active. So there are times when some tasks you know are really concentrated in one brain or the other, but we really have to understand all three are active all the time.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

One of the ways I unless you're asleep, one of the ways I think about it is all of the three brains m still makes sense because otherwise you wouldn't have lizards still existing. And so creatures at all of these different levels, they adapt and they live in their little slice of reality. Yeah, right. But with humans, you know, we said, well, you know what, we want to, you know, do these kind of higher order cognitive tasks, and you know, we're in that direction and we occupy that space, but we still need to be reminded because the higher brain is actually dumb when it's come you know to the basic stuff like survival. If we depended on our neocortex for all of that stuff, we'd we would die.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

We wouldn't make it through what a single day. You would not make it through a day, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

And even going through a website, you know. So the fact that the hind just to clarify for the or to simplify it even more for the listeners, the hind brain, or the the old brain, I also appreciate that. So instead of just lizard brain, because you hear that breakdown, but you said old, mid, and new, and I think that's a really simple way to grasp it. And then it's not, you know, it's your old brain, um, it thinks about itself. It's me, me, me, my survival, and just crude basic survival. Then mid-brain, you've got the amygdala and the processing of emotion connecting things together and the hippocampus with memory, but then you have the planning and the conscious, which is the tiny portion, but it's important to us as humans. And that all ties together, even if we're using a website or a product, it's still all relevant.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

All there. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah. And so the another one I like is the so the self persona as the as kind of one of the Driving things, how we think of ourselves. Who am I? And you know, when I'm deciding what to do, is that consistent with who I am and that kind of stuff? Talk a little bit about that, the whole relevance of how people think of themselves and how that affects behavior.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

And the the framework that I like the best of this um is one from Timothy Wilson, who wrote the book Um Redirect. Um and he he says that uh we all have self-stories about who we are, how we do things, what's important to us. And some of these self-stories are conscious, we're aware of them. Some of them are unconscious, we're not aware of them. But these self-stories really drive our behavior. So whether we do A or B, um in large part depends on the self-story you're telling yourself about who you are and what's important to you. And what's interesting is that we really like those self-stories to be consistent and coherent. We don't like taking an action that goes against a self-story. And again, a lot of this was happening unconsciously, you're not even aware of it. So uh, you know, he says in in his book, these self-stories absolutely drive your behavior. And in fact, if you want to get people to change their behavior, you really gotta get them to change their self-story, or the behavior is unlikely to change in a big way or to stick.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah, and there's um for the listeners' stories talked about in the book where, you know, you can give people, you know, um, you can prime them to think of like, I'm a person who cares about my community, they fill out something, or you know, I want the, you know, and then do they agree to having the big sign put in their front yard of like, you know, you know, keep this area clean kind of thing. And so that maneuvers people's behavior. People commit to some idea, and then they kind of want to stay consistent with it. And then if we're aware of that, we can help steer things.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah. And also it's it's it's so you can you can help people change their behavior and actions based on this. Also, um, in addition to that, you can uh you can do messaging that matches their self-story, which will then grab their attention and make them more in it, you know, make them want to engage with you because the story you're putting out, it matches the story of who they think they are.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Right. And so when we look at 100 things, um, it's really revolving around psychological effects. And I've kind of noticed there's a little bit of a, you know, nowadays there's a little bit of a somewhat where folks are trying to find laws and and and things that are always true in design. And they'll tend to pick the things that sound like their laws from the names of it, like right, like like Hicks Law.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Hicks Law, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

It's law. Oh, this, oh, that must be a law.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

The universe works.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Right. And but there's other things that are really reliable, like the picture superiority effect that doesn't really get always included in those lists and things like that, but they're reliable effects that you can you can expect to appear again and again. Um, and then so um you divide it up into the the sections, and it starts off with sort of the vision, kind of dealing with the sensory, and then and you go through the different aspects of um psychology. So I'm gonna pick a few from uh a couple of these. Um so one of them is dealing with uh an area of interest for a lot of people, topography, and the idea of like all caps, is all caps, you know, and you you know, you you kind of break down what's true and what's not, and you separate out the myths, and we we hear the myths all the time, but there's actual studies and we should be aware of them.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Oh, it's so interesting to me, you know, that particular one that you picked, out of everything I talk about, I think that one gets the most heated response from people. It's like, really, I talk about so much stuff about human behavior, and the one that really gets people riled up is all capital letters. And people are so resistant to uh believing the research on this one. I I f I find it kind of funny, but um yeah, you know, there's so many of these, you know, urban legends about UX and these psychology principles. Um and in in the book A hundred things, you know, one of the things that was interesting for me was as I was writing about all of these things, you know, all couple of letters or how many things can you remember, right? And uh of course I I had, you know, the rule of thumb about this and the rule of thumb about that. But when I was writing the book, I was like, well, wait a minute, rather than just talking about what I think is true, I'm actually going to go back and make sure that all these things really are true. So, and that was so fascinating because a lot of them aren't true. A lot of them were these urban legends, a lot of them had been just repeated, and they still are repeated over and over. I still find them in blog posts and articles, and I'm like, and I and I I tell you, um my business partner, who's also my son, he'll say to me now and then, okay, just let it go. Just let it go. Like you don't have to respond to that blog post. Just let and it's like, I can't, I must be. So I'm still like commenting on LinkedIn posts when people say, Yes, you know, uh, the reason that all capital letters are harder to read is like, no, no, no, go read this. There's lots of research that says no. And then people argue with me, no, no, no. So uh all capital letters, yeah. We there's a story about the fact that, you know, if you if you write the word bread, B-R-E-A-D, in all capital letters versus you write it with upper and lowercase letters. If you write it with upper and lowercase letters, there are what's called asenders. Um, bread doesn't have any descenders, it just has asenders. Um but like you know, maybe the word Google, right? There's some thit part, the G's go below the line, the L goes above the line, right? Asenders and descenders. And every word has its own little shape because of the asenders and descenders. That part is true. Every word does have its own little shape. And if you write it in all capital letters, there are no asenders and descenders. So all the words are the same shape, just different widths. That part is true as well. The part that isn't true is people then say, and believe me, I thought this was true. I used to teach it in workshops. I will, before I wrote the book, I used to teach this. So I apologize to everyone who came to my workshop. We all do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Anyone teaching science and practice, this it's hard to keep up with everything, and every now and then you slip, and then you realize later, like, oh no, I've been teaching.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I know I said that. So the theory was, the theory supposedly, was that um we read by recognizing the shapes that words make. So when the words have shapes, like uh in not using all caps, it helps us read faster. And so it's better for reading if you use upper and lower case instead of all caps. And it makes so much sense and it sounds so logical, and it is just not true. Okay, we don't read by recognizing the shapes that words make. It is not how we read. And so um, you know, the research is that uh if you put things in all caps, people don't like it because it's like you're shouting at them and they m uh aren't used to it, but then they get used to it and it doesn't slow down their reading. But you know, it's not that all caps are inherently harder to read. And I n and I bet you you get people writing in about because we had this conversation. I bet they do, because they don't like it. Like you're not supposed to use all caps. I'm like, fine, don't use all caps. Don't do it. But don't say about the reading and the shapes of words. Just don't say that. It was a theory from the 1800s, by the way. But was never proven true.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

And there's pieces of the truth, like the shapes and the there are ascenders, there are descenders.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

It does yeah, and that, you know, those are probably the worst urban legends to get rid of, uh, where there are pieces of the truth in it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah, and you you correct a bunch of urban legends. And now this one's up the uh Miller's uh plus or minus uh seven plus or minus two. That's been corrected out there. I think you did a great job of breaking down why, you know, short-term memory or depending how you want to apply it, uh working memory, because you're using it. Four, the limits about four things. Um, and if you think that you're remembering lots more, you're actually chunking or using other heuristics. Right. Yeah, so all of these things, they just kind of have to be, they kind of have to be updated. Um, so one of the ones that I really like too is so motivation section. We talk about um the uh dopamine system. So I've read this before, but I think a lot of people have not come across what the dopamine system really is. And a lot of smart people out there say, like, oh, well, there's the you know, oxytocin, that's the, you know, that's you know, love, and then, you know, um, dopamine is pleasure. And you clarify that and you even add some more context in that. Could you tell the audience a little bit about the dopamine system?

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yeah. So for a long time it was thought that dopamine was the reward system, that when you when you had something pleasurable, like uh, you know, uh for rats, it would be uh something sweet to drink, or humans, something sweet to drink. You know, when you ate something that tasted good, or uh when you had sex, you know, these are all pleasurable things. Dopamine is released when you experience pleasure. Um, but then there was uh uh a bunch of research done, I think probably in the fairly recently, maybe in the 90s and early 2000s, that that show and and uh Robert Sapolski has done some research even more recent than that, um, that shows that dopamine actually is um not triggered as a result of something pleasurable happening, um, but is triggered in anticipation of something pleasurable happening. And so what the role of dopamine does is it actually drives us to act. When dopamine is released, then we're motivated and then we go and then we act. And it's because we're anticipating that by acting we'll get a reward or something pleasurable will happen. And I I think that's really interesting. And that I think for me, from a technology design point of view, it really ties into, you know, the things we know, for instance, about uh swiping and you know TikTok videos and keep oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna do it again. That that is dopamine, but it's anticipation of seeing something interesting or finding out something new. So dopamine motivates us to not just uh you know sit there and stare into space, but to actually do something, even if that something is just move our finger and look at the next video.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Would you say it's accurate to say, to encapsulate this for the audience, is that dopamine is released as part of pleasurable experiences, but its role is different. It's trying to tell us where to drive our behavior. And you've got the actual pleasure reward, the opioid uh system, correct? Uh, and so but the dopamine's part of this, but it's telling us you want to get that thing because it's it feels wonderful, but but it's it's doing the motivation and the connection point, as you pointed out, is like those little habit loops that we get when we're using certain software. I've got to check my Twitter to see if people liked my comment and you're driven to do it. And then you get the pleasure reward from it.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yeah. Um, and here's a question I have for you. Since you're a scientist, I can get the theoretical. So infotropism is a concept that I find really interesting. And so for the audience, just like you have uh plants have phototropism, where you put your plant in the window and it follows the sun. If you looked at a speed-up camera, the leaves want to point toward the sun because that's where it's getting its energy. And so that's called phototropism. But neurologists have found that you have infotropism where we're attracted to things that give us new information or it allows us to habituate. So if we're looking at the waterfall, and then maybe a bird is flying past the waterfall and we're looking at the waterfall for a while, then you look away from the waterfall at some rocks, and the rocks look like they're climbing upward, is because your your neural system is adapted to one to cancel it out. So, um, so with uh that's a long way of asking. Do you know if this this infotropism should I think about that as being involved with the dopamine system and what we seek? And if I um if I'm looking at like a data visualization, for example, and there's two visuals that give information, but one is designed way better and more to the point. And I direct my attention toward that one instead of the bad visualization that says the same information. Um is that have anything to do with the dopamine system? That was a long-winded winded way to get around to it. But is that does it have anything to do with infotropism? Do you happen to know?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

It I would say, and this is just, you know, my opinion from from no understanding the pieces of it, it has a little bit to do with that. Um from the, I mean, the humans love information. We love information. Uh we like, we want it, we want feedback, we want stuff, and that is definitely part of the dopamine, right? And you give me some information and then I want more. And give me some information and I want even more, you know. And it just keeps us going. So it keeps feeding those information loops. Um, but there's also other things that get maybe complicated a little bit. So for instance, remember the old brain, you know, always scanning the environment and making sure you're safe. So one of the things that we also are sensitive to is when things are new or unusual, right? And so that's not as much of the dopamine, that's more the old brain. Whoa, what was that? You know, that looks new, that looks different. And so new and different will will grab our attention. And that's because the old brain is like, something's different, pay attention, right? So I think it's pretty complicated, you know. And then you have the the peripheral vision piece of it, which is fascinating, which is that um peripheral vision, the vision is the off to our side, uh is is um which is also tied to the old brain. So when something when we when something happens in our peripheral vision, we'll we'll look at it, right? So that's but that's also feeding in with the new, right? It's new and it's different and it's over here, right? Um I think, you know, these all work together, right? And it can it can get complicated. And I think it's so it's important, it's tricky. I think some of the most interesting work that we do as design psychologists is to make sure that we understand the individual pieces, but then we have to really think about how they work together. And at any given moment in time and any particular thing that the human is doing with the thing that we're designing, which of these is gonna be the dominant one?

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Right. And I love that as a takeaway to this is that uh kind of avoiding the reductionist tendency to say, like, okay, it's all this there's there's an interplay.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Always put the information here, you know, because of this rule. It's like, well, no, no. Uh, you know, and that's why our right, it's always been a joke that the the thing yeah, you ask a a UX person for advice, and they're always gonna say, it depends, right? But we are, we're always gonna say that.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

In the um deciding in the emotion section, there's a lot of good uh uh discussion around the fact that we think of ourselves as super logical, and we think and that theme just covers so many points. Like there's probably like, I don't know, maybe 60 points that touch somehow on a little bit of that, right? Um, but then one of them is you can't decide without feeling. Like you actually need a feelings component. Um, can you tell the audience a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Yeah, the research uh on this really goes back to just some basic research on on brains. So um one of the things that that has been noticed is that people who have damage to um parts of their brain that have to do with emotions and feelings, like they had a, you know, disease or an injury that damaged that that part in the midbrain, uh they actually have a very hard time making any decision. Not just a decision that involves feelings, but just like, you know, do uh do you want mustard on your sandwich, right? I mean, just a just kind of any d basic decision, um, they have a very hard time with it. And that was because of that, it i we began to understand that all decisions have some component of unconscious emotion to them. Even the most logical decision, like uh, you know, should I uh you know, think about some complicated accounting tax, you know, a tax accountant who's making some little decision and you think, well, that's not emotional. But even those decisions, there's some emotional component to it. You can't really pull those apart. Now, there are definitely things you want to do if people are basically trying to make a logical decision. I'm even giving a talk in a couple of weeks about what do you do when you need people to make logical decisions? What do you do about design in that case? So there, you know, you can be, oh, this decision is more based on logic than this decision over here. You can do that, that might be true, but you really can't ever totally separate the separate it out.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

One question I have that I think about um personally, you know, jumping over to behaviorism. Your original background was in behaviorism, I know. And when I first started learning, you know, maybe uh 12 or whatever years ago about gamification, there was a big craze for a while about gamification. And I started looking into it, I'm like, isn't this just behaviorism? And then when I learned a little bit more, there's there's a little bit beyond that. Um can you talk about like gamification? How do you see that? Um is it behavior? Is is is not totally behaviorism, but largely uh Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

So behaviorism, by the way, for people who may not know this, is a certain part of psychology that came out of uh BF Skinner's work on rewards, reinforcements, and that kind of thing. And that that was called behaviorism. Um uh so gamification um and and some of this is reality and some of this is my opinion. So gamification uh can use some behavioristic skinerian rewards uh as part of what they do. But I actually think that's uh that's an artifact. So um if you look at games that are really fascinating and fun to y to to play and uh challenging to you know, just the right amount of challenge and all of that, it's not based on behaviorism, it's not based on rewards, it's based on uh the desire for mastery, which is a A you know a driver of motivation. It's one of the seven drivers I talk about. And um in another book, How to Get People to Do Stuff. So I talk about seven drivers of motivation. One of them is this desire to uh desire for mastery. We are born with a desire to learn new skills and grow. We this is just programmed into us as humans. If you ever look at a baby or a toddler, they spend an enormous amount of their life trying to learn new things. And they want to do it. And they want to do it whether you reward them for it or not. They want to do it whether you say, oh, what a good job. Yeah, okay, that might affect them, but basically, they're gonna try and crawl, whether you say, good job or not. They're gonna try and walk, whether you get excited about it or not, right? So we have this innate desire and gamification, a game that is really designed well is working on that. And there's three pieces to it autonomy. Um, people have to have some um feel that they have some amount of control over the situation and what they do and how they do it. Uh, the right level of challenge, if it's too boring, they're gonna stop. If it's too hard, they're gonna stop. That right level of challenge for them. And then feedback, you know, I mentioned before, people need feedback, not rewards, not praise. They just need feedback. Did I when I when I moved, you know, uh uh when I shot that guy on the screen, when I when I took that uh superpower, did I do it right? Was that was that useful? Feedback. Um, those three things are what really drives the desire for mastery. So if you really want to gamify, right, an app, that's what you want to do. You know, whether you give people badges or, you know, all of that, that those things, the rewards in that instance are really just a form of feedback. Because if I get a badge, it means I'm on the right way. If I get a badge, it means I can tell where I am and my levels. I can tell my my challenge level. You don't have to use rewards at all. I don't think you have to use rewards at all. So I think gamification is more about the desire for mastery.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

I'd I'd love to uh see some stuff written about that because I think that's fascinating. And I think perhaps there's one takeaway that the way gamification is talking talked about often brings in a lot of behaviorism elements of rewards and and schedules and stuff like that. But a lot of the stuff that actually works is dealing with intrinsic motivation and providing opportunities to for people to kind of do what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Excellent. Um, okay, so uh, you know, one of the other things is um uh, you know, so attention. Um brain anatomy, you know, it goes back to the brain anatomy, what we're talking to when we show a page, and different things are speaking to different parts of our minds, and you're providing content for different things. Um, you know, and we touched on that a little bit, but you know, what should we be thinking about when we're putting together products and pages and when we're choosing what aspects of a person we're going to be talking to?

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah, I think um one of the things that's important is to think about uh a micro moment. So when I'm talking with people about designing a particular page or a particular screen or, you know, a particular element on the screen screen, I think we what you the question I always ask is, you know, what what is it that the user's trying to do when they're at this particular page or on the screen? What is it that you want them to do, which might not be the same thing? Okay, how are you gonna how are you gonna navigate that if they're not the same thing? And then what can you do based on everything we know about all this psychology stuff? What can you do, what should you do to get people to take the action you want them to take? Like, you know, it's that micro moment. It's that uh, you know, there's uh uh as a UX person, I'm really interested in macro moments and macro design, and I spend a lot of time on that. But if you're talking about which, you know, should we use this strategy, should we use that strategy, you it's it's really micro, right? It's really small. It's like, okay, they're here, they're trying to do this, you want them to do this thing over here. What do you do? You know, I was working with a client uh one and and it's kind of interesting because you get into, I don't know, I consider it almost ethical dilemmas when you do this, you know? It's like, well, the user's trying to do this, but actually you want them to do this. So it's like, oh, hmm. I had one client once and we were designing a form, right? And a page with a form. And I said to them, What is it that you really want people to do? And he was like, I I just want them to put in their phone number and press submit, because what we want to do is call them. It's like, okay, but that's not what they want. Yeah, because it was really clear at that point what the user wanted was to have some information, you know, come up about the program, about the it was an educational program. They did not want a phone call. You know, we had talked to users. Last thing they wanted was their phone to ring and for this school to give them a pitch. But that's what the that's what the you know, the per the product owner wanted. And I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. Now what do we do? Right. So they were asking, you know, the forum had questions about, oh, what degree program are you interested in? They they didn't care about any of that. And it was like, okay, I guess we should just have, you know, a big field for your telephone number and a button that says, Bother me now, you know. I mean, is that what do we do? But that you have these micro moment decisions you have to make.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

And it is interesting because we learn all this stuff about psychology, and there's that fine line between manipulation and actually helping people. Um, one of the uh last concepts I want to get over here before as we're uh getting toward the end here, but I have to touch on stories. Um I really loved the breakdown about why stories work, what we're actually doing when information is given to us in the form of a story and that there's so much going on there.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Yeah, you know, it's it's stories are so uh, you know, the term I use is ubiquitous, right? There's there it's so common for us to communicate with in stories that we don't even notice that we're doing it, right? I mean you start talking to people about, yeah, are you realizing that you're communicating in story format? And they go, what? But we everyone is. Everything we do is in a story format. You know, so if at if if uh if I, you know, you come into a meeting and I'm there and I go, Hey Thomas, how are you doing? And you go, and I said, Yeah, what happened at that meeting? Oh, yeah, you wouldn't believe it. When I got to the meeting, right? You're telling a story. That's all we do is tell stories, and yet we forget that that is our primary way we process information. So when you when you give information in a story format, a number of things happen. One is that people will pay attention more, another is this a feeling of fluency, meaning a feeling that this is easy to understand. If something is easy to understand, it gives us a feeling of fluency, and we're more likely to engage because it's not going to be hard. So we just go with it, right? Uh, and also we will empathize, we'll empathize with the character in the story, and so we'll process the information not just you know with our new brains, but in a more in a more deep emotional way. So uh uh stories are are very important. And um, you know, i I mean, just ask uh any of the great storytellers, right? Uh just ask the people, you know, George Lucas and who did the Star Wars trilogy, right? He knows about stories. He studied story formats. Uh, he read Campbell's book on, you know, hero stories. Um yeah, so telling a story, you know, having a having a uh a care a strong character, uh setting the situation, building some tension, having a resolution, even when you're giving what seems to be factual statistical data, you still want to do it in a story format. It's gonna be much more effective.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

Love it. And so with the two books already very well known, especially 100 things. Um, for the folks who haven't read it, just you know, if you really want to understand like just the detail and the example studies and walking through why this stuff works and helps it all stick better and to understand it better, even if you have a psychology background. So, folks who even went to school from this, you'll still be uh learning from it and you'll pull it together better. Um, so how should uh listeners connect with you? So, first of all, what mentioned you're a consultancy again and what kind of folks you work with.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

Yep. So uh I have a consulting company, it's called the Team W. Uh, the best way to reach me is probably I mean, email info at the teamw.com. Uh I'm on LinkedIn and and and and so on, so you can reach me there. Um and I do want to mention, you did mention this at the beginning, Thomas, and I appreciate it. If people are interested in purchasing a book, either of those books, look for the second edition because there is the first edition is out there, and it's not that it's bad, but it's just the second edition is updated and has you know the newest information. So look for look for it to say second edition.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

That's right. That's the 2022 one. So you wrote Neuro Web Design further a longer time ago. Longer time ago. That was the older book. Yes. You wrote 100 things, and that that was the the huge blockbuster that I've you know always seen, right? And then but then a couple of years ago, 2022, we did you republished Neuro and kind of probably tightened it up and um put some more stuff in there.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

And the same with 100 Things. That's a second edition as well.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Awesome. Susan, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Thanks for having me, Thomas. It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

So, to wrap things up, this conversation with Susan Weinschenk reminded us that good design isn't just about function or flow, it's about brains. We talked about how people make decisions based on emotion and on habits and on mental shortcuts, and they're not even aware of these programs they're running inside their heads. We explored the neuroscience behind attention and memory and motivation, and we looked at how those forces shape how people experience the products and services that have been designed for them by you. So the next time you make a design decision, ask yourself are you designing for how people should act, or are you designing for how people's minds actually work? In the end, we find that the cold, hard science of psychology enables the warm, nuanced empathy required for human centered design.