The psychology of likes

Does knowing how many users interacted with a story, photo, or a blog post, influence your judgment on whether to like/dislike it? Are the likes and comments economy creating a bias in our responses?

I wanted to talk about the power of user experience design and how it has this dynamic, vivid ability to transform a product (for better or good) – simply by envisioning it’s interactions differently. For example; A social media domain adopting an unbiased subjectivity for users and how they may interact with individual items by concealing the likes/dislikes.

Users can engage with other’s posts without having to know the creator, no.of views, likes &/or comments – hence not being influenced to whether like, comment, or follow the user.

“Regardless of whether the inquiry is how to manage an unfilled popcorn enclose a cinema, how quick to drive on a specific stretch of thruway, or how to eat the chicken at an evening gathering, the activities of everyone around us will be significant in characterizing the appropriate response.” –  Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.

There is a heuristic the majority of us use to figure out what to do, think, say, and purchase: the standard of social evidence. To realize what is right, we are influenced by what other users are doing.

Asch’s conformity experiment also draws a similar conclusion in a different setting, where users may be influenced by social pressure from a majority group to conform to a rule.

Hence it is important to understand that tools such as likes/dislikes, comments, subscriptions, followers, etc may be a digital currency to resonate with the individual’s status, yet these are prone to bias and false interpretation.

A proper UX design research for say designing a door would include all aspects of design to the point of calculating even the granular details that might effect it’s interaction/experience with the user. Whereas UI designer's job would be interpret and implement the defined aspects of that door in to a tangible/interactive form.
Sherjeel Javed

Walkthrough vs Coach marks

An incremental evolve from skuemorphic to flat/hybrid design ideology is a proof that an average smartphone user of today, is familiar with the basic idea of gestures, controls and behaviour. Creating opportunities for more minimal and to the point experiences..

When designing an app, it is paramount to devise a UX strategy which coincides with user’s comfort and familiarity. The idea is to design something that is intuitive, and translates in to an experience which has a minimal learning curve. This dictates as a basic rule of avoiding verbiage that might elude the user’s comfort zone. It is also a big reason why it is recommended to stick with the OS’s specific design guidelines when designing a native app. Walkthrough vs Coach marks