How I Design — Eye vs Mind
Is what you see, what it really is?
Do you ever wonder how you consume information on a website or an app? The first point of contact with any screen is the eye. We see first and we process later. Now, this might sound like ‘what we see is what we process’, but do you want to know something interesting? Your mind tricks you, every single day, into believing something that doesn’t exist (more than you realise).
The human brain receives two separate images from each eye, and stitches them together, and fills in the blind spots. Hence, what you think you see, is not the whole truth. This is just one of the many ways that your brain ticks you. Or, should i say that it tricks itself? In any case, tricking your brain, in spite of what you see, is unbelievable easy and is used everywhere around us.
One way to trick the mind is called — Theory of relativity — and this is everywhere! The theory of relativity involves using relative sizes, shades, and positioning to draw the attention of the user towards a specific target and influence user behaviour.
The very first example that comes to mind is the shopping cart on e-commerce sites. The initial price, discount, delivery fee, and the final price are carefully planned and placed in order to make the user not notice the delivery fee, and focus on the amount of money saved on the purchase which makes the user happy and then buy the product. ‘Yayy’ to conversions! This is done by making the ‘additional fee(delivery fee)’ comparatively smaller, and making the ‘amount saved’, more prominent.
One another example is the world of advertisement. We’ve all seen an ‘80% OFF!’ banner on our beloved brands. What a fast-moving eye misses is the teeny tiny ‘Up to’ or ‘Terms and Conditions’. And even if we see the tiny font, our brain stays focused on the 80% OFF and creates an urge to buy. Tricked, yet again!
Similarly, most websites use the theory of relativity to guide eye movement, and in turn, the focus of the user to influence their behaviour. The theory of relativity helps the user focus on what’s important (or what the website makes you think is important) and ignore the rest. In doing so, the user acts as expected which leads to greater conversion rates or successful sales.
This theory of relativity can be used on Size, Colour, Contrast, Saturation, etc. to create a visual hierarchy or an order of importance. Both the above-listed examples efficiently use the theory of relativity by playing with the size and the colour of the text.
One other way to trick the mind is by generating — Empathy. By how do you generate empathy through a screen? Who do you empathise with? How do you make the user feel an emotion towards someone and make them act on their emotion? We, humans, are social creatures and this trait has helped us with survival throughout history. How, you ask? The answer, The Eyes. As rightly said, eyes are the window to the soul, and facial expressions provide a clue to the emotions that govern the interactions. Eyes help to create authenticity and help to create a connection with the other person. So what do I mean when I say that the answer is ‘Eyes’? The trick is using human faces in your design to establish user engagement.
Still confused? Let me explain. Imagine yourself walking on the street. There are a lot of other people like you on the street, walking to their work, to school, to run errands, or just for leisure. You see a woman staring to the side. You are a curious human and you wonder what the woman’s eyes are fixated at. You turn in the direction to satisfy your curiosity. That’s it. That’s all it takes. And this behaviour is wired into our survival instincts to quickly identify threat or opportunities. And this very instinct can be leveraged to drive and lead behaviour.
You see the face of a stranger on a website, your brain interprets the expression and generates the emotion in you. If the person on the screen is looking at an object, your brain guides your eyes to look at that object, connects the object to the emotion, and registers a relation. This emotion, drives behaviour and engagement.
Everything on a website is thoughtfully placed and designed in order to lead the user behaviour and generate an emotion. This blog only covers a tiny portion of it. There are a multitude of factors which come into play to accomplish just the same, but Theory of relativity and Driving User Empathy are two of the crucial aspects that must be mastered.
Now try and notice all the places in your daily life where human faces and facial expressions are used for selling products, features or services. Be it the toy stores selling playtime experiences, or banks selling insurance policies, the trick is to sell an experience more than the actual product. Convince the user to opt for the experience, and the product sales and conversions will follow. Mission accomplished!
Happy Learning!
Other blogs in the series —
