For the second installment on the psychology of design, I would like to write more about the research behind my theory before concluding the series next week with how these principles can be directly applied to web design.
It begins with Eleanor Rosch, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. From field experiments she conducted in the 1970s with the Dani people of Papua New Guinea, Rosch concluded that when categorizing and understanding an everyday object or experience, people lump items together in terms of those most representative of the group. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently cited than stool.
This theory was developed into Prototype theory which basically shows that some members of a category are more central than others. Research has shown that generally people will center their experience of the world around central members of a category, so in our example, for furniture it is chair. This is where the theory begins to take shape as if this central point exists then in most cases it can be used as a means of making an interface more understandable to more users.
If there is one common level of thought that people use to interpret the world around them then the most simple and widely understood functionality should be used in order to keep in touch with the experiences of the people for whom we are designing, any break from these norms will most likely cause confusion.
For a designer I think this means ’stick to what you know’ and also what others are familiar with. There is in some cases an argument for highly graphic interfaces but in most cases that will only confuse the user. I would rather turn my design skills towards adding clever additional functionality without the user being pushed too far beyond their comfort zone and remain with the prototypes with which they are familiar.