Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UX Crash Course: User Psychology

thehipperelement.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#31

Post by silverbax88 »

nakovet wrote: post #14
tommi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes. As a user, I hate you for that.

Indeed. I cancelled Netflix 3 times, and look who's back paying for their content!? Me! Not the main reason, but because it's easy to cancel it, I don't worry about signing back (counter-example: gym subscription).

I stated this above, but because I have a policy of pain-free cancellations, I get about 50% of my cancelled users back WITHOUT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING.

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#32

Post by JoelMarsh »

brianjoseff wrote: post #16

Hey Joel- great stuff. Can you post your sources? For example, in the Cognitive Bias Lesson in the Decoy section, where did you get this factoid: "even though nobody chooses [the decoy], if you remove it, about 60% of people will choose the cheapest option instead.". Thanks for assembling these lessons!

That particular example is from Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational".

All of the cognitive biases are described on Wikipedia. The links are in the articles.

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#34

Post by theblackswan »

The best sub-cancellation form I ever come across was designed in a way which will provoke you to either fill the feedback form or drop the plan to cancel. It said " {{{We must have done something bad. We feel sad you are leaving. Tell us where it went wrong, we will improve to get you back. . You can also give us a feedback and choose to stay till we get back better."}}} It was appealing, communicative and gives and option to stay. I was tempted to give feedback and stay..

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#35

Post by harrybr »

Joel, this work appears to be heavily plagiarised in places. I've only had a quick browse, but it looks like you've cribbed content from UX textbooks and online sources. Some people would consider this unethical, particularly since you have something to sell on your site (your book on 'Persuasion, manipulation & brainwashing.').

The solution is simple, you need to clearly cite and link to your sources.

As well as making the source authors happy, this will be very helpful for readers who want to do further research.

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#36

Post by theblackswan »

Yetanfou wrote: post #25
fat0wl wrote: post #18

I did end up skimming a few more sections to see if it picked up & it was still all hollow, common sense stuff eventually descending into predatory gamification/addiction tactics. I know there are a lot of burgeoning startup types on here but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that responsible developers should strive to make a product that serves a real need for users. I want to make software that retains customers thr…

We seem to be in a phase where there are many solutions being developed in search for problems which either are so trivial as not to be worth solving or which don't exist in the first place. The PC and the 'net were the incubators for this phenomenon which really took flight when the 'net became small enough to fit in the average pocket. Now there are 'apps' for everyone and everything, all vying for your limited att…

add whatsapp to the list.. today world is spending 90% of time in 99% of useless stuff. It such a great time to work in fields of physics, quantum, nano, medicine,space etc which will uplift humanity to a great level.. But seems all the resource($+manpower) is behind the fif*.. Entertainment and more entertainment is what we are into.

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#37

Post by wtracy »

dovel wrote: post #11
tommi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes. As a user, I hate you for that.

I agree with this sentiment. Here's some UX for you - the user owes you nothing. Sure have an optional form or field for cancellations but 5 minutes? How is this beneficial for anyone? So, it's a free product - they will just never cancel their account and you will have inactive users sitting there. Who is this good for? So it's a paid product - they will cancel their account and tell everyone about the ridiculously…

... or they'll just dispute the recurring credit card charges for your paid product, and you'll get your merchant account frozen after a few "cancellations".

We can argue over whether or not the original suggestion constitutes fraud, but the credit card companies will definitely treat it as fraud.

Re: UX Crash Course: User Psychology

#38

Post by collyw »

toddkaufmann wrote: post #22

tl;dr (but I may revisit in the future). I used to think UX meant a wider "systems" approach to the man-machine interface, incorporating findings from CHI, cognitive science, user studies, etc. Now it seems like it is becoming a name for the design of marketing your product in the experience economy, not helping perform a task more efficiently (unless the "task" is selling to the user). I'd like to see some discrimin…

You only need to look at the Android UX principles page to see that what you are saying is true.

https://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles....

Back when I was at university (not so long ago), usability was like you described - it helping the user get their task done efficiently. Not the more modern version of "delighting the user in surprising ways".

Post reply on HN