Cognitive Science in User Interface Design (Part 1)
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What is the connection with the human brain process and user interface design?
How does it help programmers and designers gain insight into the demystification of highly advanced computer and design systems for human usage?
In order to achieve the above objective, you must understand how the human mind works to analyze and process visual information. This information comes in handy for reducing the learning curve for a application or processing how to interpret the design and layout of a website. The term cognitive load comes to mind as this is an important factor in the effort to promote higher retention rate and absorption within working memory. Promotion of a system that has less of a cognitive load on the user helps to keep the user engaged without confusing or burning them out.
The following deals with the factors that determine how the human mind processes the design language of sites and applications:
Familiarity:
Familiarity comes to mind when designing interface systems. People respond to icons, avatars, and the like that ignite significance and value to them and will easily identify them as elements of your application when placed correctly. Colors, shapes, fonts all function together to establish an object which the user can interact with and the arrangement, design, and ease of use of these variables determine how long will the user remain engaged with your site or application.
Use of Motion:
Motion and animation are big factors in UI design, as they can help improve the site appearance to making sure you get your most important notifications front and center. There are cases where motion shouldn't be applied but the focus here is on the benefits of motion.
Curiousity:
This is a big deal in itself. When a person is curious about anything, less cognitive load will be produced as their engagement level is increased organically as opposed to someone generating more cognitvie load in order to foucs on a subject thats not intersting. If you can keep your users engaged as long as possible, you will end up with lifetime users who will help you generate revenue. Many gaming apps use a technique called gamification in order to achieve this, for example.