Neuroheuristics for Designers

Let’s rewind

In order to understand how neurodesign can enrich creative work, it is important to build a foundation of understanding. It should be mentioned here again that such a young discipline is constantly evolving and that any knowledge can constantly expand.

Our minds seem limitless; to this day they remain a mystery of research. The way people think involves a variety of closely linked processes, including attention, memory and emotions. This chapter introduces a number of heuristics that, when used deliberately, improve the usability of products, convey emotions such as pleasure and inspire action. Based on the groundwork of pioneers such as Jacon Neilsen, Ben Shneiderman, Alex F. Osborn. Like many designers, my go-to heuristic evaluation approach is Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, first published in 1994 and updated in 2020. The essence is basically that design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time. Their work can be summarized in the following guidelines for neurodesigners:

• Users should not be forced to memorize information
• Users should be given shortcuts
• The interface used for communication should be clearly understandable
• It should be possible for users to undo decisions
• There should be consistency in the use of systems on which the interface is used
• Simplicity
• Assistance should be offered and focus on solving users’ problems efficiently
• It should always be written for the user, not the system or the individual
• Visual design should enhance, not obfuscate
• The context of the user should always be considered
• User unpredictability must be taken into account

Neurodesign Heuristics

Essentially, six neurodesign heuristics can be derived that promote creative work. Contrary to the conventional scientific approach, there is no consistent answer in creativity research as to how these heuristics should be applied due to the need for flexibility and openness when it comes to designing and creative work in general. Understanding one’s own user goes beyond generalized design rules. The limited capacity of the human brain to process information requires designers to avoid interfaces that require users to memorize information. Designs should be tailored to the user in order to have a positive user experience. Using these heuristics, designers can test, optimize and observe within the design process. The application is dynamic and can therefore only serve as a catalog of questions and answers for the designer.

Whitespace

Only necessary information that is relevant to the user should be presented. The guiding principle “Design is art with meaning” is one of the guiding principles in the creativity industry:

“Design is art in the second power. You have to multiply aesthetics with fulfillment of purpose. This removes it from the dimension of art. Art pursues aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics. It is one-dimensional.”

Otl Aicher, from “Die Welt als Entwurf”, Ernst & Sohn, 1991

The limbic system (emotional brain) should therefore be relieved of the decision as far as possible. As already mentioned, humans are exposed to a constant flood of stimuli. This limits perception due to our limbic system. Designers could therefore ask themselves the following questions:

Are there competing colors, luminosity, textures?
Is good readability and harmony of typography guaranteed?
Can the text be shortened to improve the reading flow?
Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
Is the formal language supportive and clear?
Should elements be separated by color?
Would a repetitive layout support or hinder perception?

Faces

Images are the main content of human thoughts. Images are processed when we read. Words are broken down into letters and letters into patterns and shapes. Methods that are taught in every first semester of a competent design school. These shapes are processed in the brain, then transformed into the meaning of the words and finally the words are transformed into images. Basic knowledge that can be of great importance when using visual materials in the design process. Neurodesigners can direct human attention with images of human faces and evoke the desired emotions.

• Are images of people used?
• Do the emotions of the people match the customer and the concept?
• Where does it direct the user’s gaze?
• Is the focus on call-to-actions (CTA) or important information?

One way to check these questions is to overlay designs with heatmaps during the design process. Heatmaps are used to graphically represent complex data for visualization with the help of colors. Typically, heat maps are used to analyze user behavior after it has already taken place – a website heat map can provide information about which area is clicked on most often, where users stop scrolling, how users behave when visiting a website, where they look and how they navigate.

One of the earliest heat maps was used to depict the population of Parisian districts, as you can see here. Heatmaps originated in the 19th century when they were drawn manually in a grid system in grayscale.

Heatmaps use a colour spectrum from red to blue to visualize data points. The warmer tones indicate higher data values and the cooler tones represent lower data values.By analyzing with the help of a heat map, designers can understand which elements get the most attention and which are overlooked. What do users look at most often? But the confusion of elements should also be examined. Multiple designs and layouts should be tested to create a smoother experience. Design changes should then be applied that are supported by the data collected.

Colors

The moment the eye perceives color, it connects to the brain, which sends signals to the endocrine system and releases hormones responsible for mood and emotion. The correctly selected colors help to put recipients in a mood that compels them to act. Research by Colorcom has shown that it only takes 90 seconds for people to make a subconscious judgment about a product, and that between 62% and 90% of this judgment is based on color alone.

Basic knowledge of color psychology can therefore be useful for designers on the road to improved conversion. Each person’s visual perception is very individual. Designers should bear in mind that the effect of color can vary due to factors such as age, culture and gender, e.g. children like the color yellow very much. Adults, on the other hand, usually find it less attractive. Faber Birren explains this in his work Color Psychology and Color Therapy: “With increasing maturity, the preference for hues with shorter wavelengths (blue, green, violet) increases compared to hues with longer wavelengths (red, orange and yellow). Another difference between the perception of children and adults is that children can change their favorite colors quickly, while the color preferences of adults are usually not changeable. However, color psychology can become an effective tool in the hands of designers to help them understand users and their needs. Within the design process, designers could ask themselves the following questions:

• Are the colors appropriate and thoughtfully chosen for the target audience?
• Are colors consistent with the cultural environment?
• Are there competing bright elements?
• Do the colors convey the right message and mood?
• Are there color preferences and meanings? L
• Should different colors be tested with target group representatives if they are undecided?
• How can color combinations best ensure user perception?
• Are CTAs brighter than other elements in the design?

Gestalt

The brain uses Gestalt principles, psychological patterns, to group and recognize visual stimuli. These principles include. They are the framework for how our brain perceives and organizes visual information. Complex images and content are organized into concrete, meaningful patterns. In the early 1920s, the German psychologist May Wertheimer and two other colleagues founded this theory. The application of these principles is an essential tool that designers can use to emphasize and communicate visual contexts if the recipient’s interpretation is understood.

Emergence: The entire form of the object is understood before its individual parts.
Reification: The eye tends to fill in gaps and create shapes even without explicit details. Negative space, for example, is about creating shapes from gaps, like the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo.
Invariance: People recognize similar shapes even if they vary in color, size, orientation or weight.
Multistable perception: If there is more than one possible interpretation of an ambiguous shape, the eye will perceive each interpretation simultaneously. Thus, the eye always tries to resolve unstable shapes, and in the case where there are multiple options for stability, the eye will jump back and forth between multiple interpretations. This often occurs with optical illusions such as Rubin’s vase. Basic figure perception: The eye organizes shapes in three-dimensional space and separates elements into background and foreground. This also applies if the foreground element is completely flat: the eye sees everything surrounding the motif as background.
Past experience: Subjective or cultural experiences influence how a form is interpreted.

In conjunction with empirical values, this principle can be used effectively with the simplest methods. Through the tendency of the mind to perceive a complete form, even if only a few overlapping coils are visible, as in the example of uncoil.io, the missing connections are supplemented by the closedness.Although designers are taught the basic psychological insights in their training, they usually lack a deeper understanding of how the viewer’s perception can be consciously guided instead of relying on gut feelings, as mentioned at the beginning of this work. The Gestalt principles presented describe the psychology and application methods of how visual information is interpreted. Applying these principles can enable designers to produce targeted content without leaving questions unanswered. Questions that could be asked during the application would be:

• Are related content and functions grouped together in clusters?
• Is a consistent tone of voice used?
• Is there a clear foreground and background?
• Are related design objects visually and uniformly connected?
• Can the logo be broken down?
• Can an invisible grid/lines be recognized?
• Can associations or experiences be translated into the design language?
• Are common areas used to summarize information?
• Can content be simplified?
• Is symmetry used to unify elements?
• Is dissymmetry used to create emphasis?
• Can a strong hierarchy be perceived by the eye?
• Can color groupings be used?

Movement

The human mind and eye perceive movement first. (QUELE). This fundamental insight can be used as an advantage by designers in particular. Especially in UX design, movements can be used to bring content to the forefront of the eye. Excessive use should be avoided as it can dampen the effect. As already stated, the human mind is in a constant state of sensory overload and should therefore also be taken into account:

• Does the design have a few minimal micro-interactions to attract attention?
• Can content be emphasized by slight movements?
• Do the microinteractions compete with each other or with the design?
• Do the microinteractions convey feedback or the intention of a function?

Feedback
Users should be motivated because the human mind loves “rewards” far more than solving problems. Therefore, users should receive positive, incremental and timely feedback to motivate their perseverance:

• Is validation provided in real time?
• Is the feedback helpful?
• Is the feedback negative or concise?
• Should improvements be made to the feedback?
• Is there a need for feedback on unknown interfaces?
• How easy is it for users to complete basic tasks when they first see the design?
• How quickly can users complete tasks once they have learned the design?
• How many errors do users make, how serious are these errors, and how easily can they fix the errors?
• If users return to the design after a period of non-use, how easily can they recover their knowledge?

Based on findings from psychology, color theory and biology, designers can use these neurodesign heuristics to check their work with well-founded methods and apply them using the previous list of questions. Both the creative industry and research are mainly concerned with creative intuition, which has undoubtedly led to a large proportion of successful innovations, but can also distort designs. As has been established, one’s own perception is subjective and therefore not always the most reliable guide. With the heuristics presented, the design process can be tailored much more closely to the target group.

Resources:

• Greene, Bell, and Boyer’s (1983) Greene, Bell, and Boyer’s (1983). Coloring the environment: Hue, arousal, and boredom. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 21 (4), 253-‐‑254.  
• Birren, 2013 – https://www.morawa.at/detail/ISBN-9781639231331/Faber-Birren/Color-Psychology-And-Color-Therapy?CSPCHD=026000000000IRAss3Gnfodt$q9nVhOMJLK$nZKQP0O98_2fiQ
• https://www.helpscout.com/blog/psychology-of-color/
• Baddeley, A. Working memory: looking back and looking forward. Nat Rev Neurosci 4, 829–839 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1201
• Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. (2009). Memory. Psychology Press.