Pyschology and UX are very closely related.  How do people act?  What do they think?  How do they decide?  To be a great UX Designer, you must understand human psychology as a core aspect of your craft.  One interesting psychological phenomenon is called Fundamental Attribution Error.  Take the following two examples:

If you are late for an appointment, you might drive quicker or a little less conservative.  You wouldn’t say you are a bad driver, but rather the situation demanded a modification of your behavior.  However, if you see a driver in front of you driving too fast or change lanes too quickly, you will think, “What a terrible driver!”  When faced with our own behavior, we take context into account.  In others, we hardly ever do.

A politician takes a stance on a particular issue.  After hearing from several experts, he changes his stance to one that is more consistent with the new learned facts.  His opponents call him a flip-flopper whose opinions will sway in the wind.  They will say the politician has no principles.  What seems to be perfectly normal behavior (learning and evolving your opinion) is ridiculed and considered a political weakness.  This is the same error as the driver, but with much more severe consequences.  Politicians are loathe to change their minds about anything.

An interesting experiment would be in the use of social media as a vehicle for customer complaints.  If a user has an error in the system, do they blame themselves or the system?   Let’s imagine they tweet that the error occurred.  Would the reader of the tweet attribute the error to the system or the operator of the system?  Does it make a difference if the reader considers themselves advanced or novice in the system?  I’d love to see an experiment on this.

This psychological effect is also different in different cultures.  In the United States, we are a highly individualistic society.  In eastern cultures, the “collective” is often more important. In those eastern societies, they commit this error far less frequently.

For further reading try Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

I bought two iPod Shuffle mp3 players for my kids.  While in the store, I looked at the program GarageBand.  It was pretty slick.  In addition to learning tutorials on piano and guitar, it had real artist lessons on their songs.  Sting taught you guitar for Roxanne, Alex Lifeson taught guitar on Spirit of the Radio.  It was cool.

Coincidentally, we have been wanting to get an additional computer for the house.  Too much homework and not enough places to work.  I went out on a limb…I bought my first Mac.  It was a tough decision, because Macs are more expensive compared to a Dell.  However, GarageBand did it for me.  I wanted the kids to have access to a slick music editor like this.

I decided on a Mac Mini plugged into the HDTV in our music room.  We have three amps, microphone, guitar, bass and drums down there, so it seemed the right place to record.  It didn’t make sense for me to get a iMac since the HDTV would do a perfectly serviceable job.  Plus, it saved some money.  I also bought the wireless keyboard, trackpad, Logitech webcam and an iMic to plug in the guitar.

I spent about two days downloading updates, apps and configuring.  I downloaded some lessons on GarageBand for the kids.  They kept asking if they could play games on it.  Since the xBox is on the same television, I said, “No games on the Mac.  Just music and homework!”  They think I am horrible.

Using the Mac has been a strange experience.  Generally, nothing gave me “Unexpected Wow!”  It was a polished graphic design.  Some interactions seemed slick.  I really missed WIndows “Snap”, where I could maximize the screen by dragging the window to the top, or just by double-clicking the header.  The maximize/minimize buttons were tiny and I kept having trouble finding them.  One thing I hate is that Maximize only scales vertically.  I want it to be bigger.  They have an icon on the top right, but that goes “full screen”, when what I really want is just maximize available vertical/horizontal space without losing the dock.

Finding documents seemed a tiny bit hard, but I imagine I will get used to it.  Gestures on the trackpad were useful, but I had to invert the direction of the swipes.  I am too used to the Windows style, not the iPad style.  Overall, it just felt “fine”.  Nothing special.  I am really surprised.  I thought the Mac would be delightful in a hundred ways.

Maybe when I spend more time with it.  I still haven’t used GarageBand or helped the kids with homework on it.  Let’s see how that goes.

There is nothing worse than struggling with poorly designed software.  Well, OK, lot’s of things are worse, but still it sucks.  It makes you feel helpless, angry, frustrated, stupid and unproductive.  I feel this way when I use JIRA.  It’s so complicated.  Configuration is byzantine.  Links don’t look like links.  Plugins don’t work.  It’s not SaaS so things become outdated.  In general, I hate it.

If only there was a better tool, but I have tried a ton of them and they all stink.  Nothing works right and elegant.  It’s a world full of garbage and you get to choose which garbage you want.  It’s like voting for president.  They are all clowns.

It is the designer’s responsibility to make sure the software doesn’t suck.  It’s hard work and no one succeeds all the time.  However, one must try, and try hard, every day to make a difference.  Software needs to be ripped apart and rebuilt periodically.  Executives don’t want to hear this, but it is true.  Fight the power!