Psychoergonomics

In the war with unnecessary clicks and braking applications, we often forget about the perception through the eyes of the end user. Let me explain what this means with a simple example: MacOS hid the console with the boot protocol, but Windows did not. As a result, MacOS seemed easier to people far from IT.

Experience with the perception of the end user has been accumulated in various areas - from the production of robots to diapers. I picked up some illustrative examples.
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The headlights of the car are perceived as "eyes", the grille - "mouth", and the body is something like a fifth point. Therefore, the machines are, firstly, animated, and secondly, they come up with character. The girl, even if she didn’t hear that Micro is a female car, still doesn’t go to Almera in the salon, but chooses a mikra because she has “round eyes”, she’s all so pretty and pretty. Note that this is no offense to girls, this is in favor of Nissan - they created a car that meets women's design ideas.

Another example: robots. There is a great video about how Honda engineers thought over the design of ASIMO.



The bottom line is that not only technical parameters were assessed, but also psychology, which is important. Somewhere on the subcortex of a person sitting terminator, uprising machines, Frankenstein and other horrors. Therefore, when a person sees a walking humanoid robot, he does not immediately like it. In order to cope with this, the ASIMO designers tried to make the robot as safe as possible: they reduced it to 120 cm, instead of a face they made a helmet and created videos, where ASIMO, all so cute, weighed 4 bow and walks by the handle. And how would he look dvuhmetovym, with a silicone face and in a suit?

Now quite about the other. Talk about diapers. Have you seen these advertisements for all diapers with ducks and pink frills? Do you remember yourself in two years? Even if not, what do you think, was it up to you for these ruffles and ducks? No, you had to worry about how to write less, because in diapers it became disgustingly wet, even if they were white, even purple in a speck. Ducks make for happy parents who believe that this is all connected with childhood and tenderness. Pampers duck of mass production, if you think about it, is not connected with tenderness in any way, but it's easier for parents.

All this means that in everything - from diapers to cars, from programs and to robots - not only functionality and usability, but also psychological compatibility is important, I would call it psychoergonomics. These things are more difficult to calculate and express in millimeters and degrees, but their weight is very high.

Therefore, when developing an application for housewives, imagine them and think what is best for them - a stylish “launch gadget” button or “Recipe” sign and some duck with a colander on your head that will truly delight the heart of your target audience.