Try and think of twelve items of any description, write them down so you can check them out later, and then stop thinking about them. Do whatever you want: hang the laundry, do the dishes, do anything, but let time fly over you (but not by much) and then come back, sit down, take a deep breath and try to recall the twelve items that you wrote.

If you remembered more than half (give or take two), then you have a way above average short-term memory (The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, George A. Miller, 1956). Truth be told, the limits of our consciousness are there for all to see, hidden in plain sight. We just need to pay attention to actually notice them.

How can we, then, function in a society that demands so much from us? A society that demands attention spans longer than 12 seconds, multi-tasking skills on par with an octopus on Ritalin, and the amazing ability to sit on a chair (for those lucky few) doing God knows what four hours at a time? The answer is simple: we don’t need to.

Our brain, in its infinite wisdom, decided to carry that load for us. It decided to let us handle only what we could instead of what we should, running on autopilot most of the time, leaving the low-level tasks to automated scripts and the rest, a hyper-condensed blurb version of reality, to us.

How can we design for such a brain? How can we attempt to see that which is never shown? How can we crack the black box without crashing the plane? The answer is simple as well: we don’t need to.

We design, instead, for the painfully limited, but infinitely more understandable, conscious self so that we can reach behind it.

We turn those human limitations into design limitations, giving birth to minimal design, which instinctively strives to appeal to our conscious (and unconscious) instincts and perceptive models by removing anything that needs some form of high-level cognitive functions, leaving only immediate, straight, instinctive, and direct comprehension because, truth be told, our eyes want it simple and clean.

The Conscious Automaton

A famous 2007 experiment, conducted by John Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, and he wanted to register the exact moment in which a person takes a decision, and the amount of time it takes for that decision to be executed.

What they found, however, was way more confusing and even more challenging.

It seems that even though the conscious decision to push the button which the patients were asked to push at will was registered a second before the actual activity took place, patterns of brain activity registered as much as seven seconds before the conscious decision-making process were able to predict the eventual end result of said decision.

“The first thought we had was ‘we have to check if this is real’,” says Haynes. “We came up with more sanity checks than I’ve ever seen in any other study before.” But the results were there.

Now, disregarding all the ethical and philosophical implications of the experiments, which are plenty, this showcases the real limitations of our conscious will and underlines the fact that our brain does more things behind our backs than previously thought.

Who knows what else is being automated, what arcane and long-forgotten algorithms lay dormant, locked deep inside our mammal brains?

What’s important, though, is that these processes happen without the bare minimum of conscious input and, therefore, without our control which means we can identify those subconscious processes, those deep structures, and guide them gently toward our own ends.

We can design for robots. Fleshy, squishy, pink, and soft, but, to a certain degree, robots still.

Memory, Attention and the Gestalt.

It’s not easy designing for robots. The process requires an intimate understanding of the way in which their perception work. It requires deep research into the way in which it recognizes and stores data and more.

Fortunately, such research has been done, though much more is still undiscovered.

Prägnanz Law – What do you see, several unconnected circular shapes and straight lines or… [Image Source]

Among the many studies and theories on the subject, there are a few key players. One of them was the Gestalt school of psychology, which was a group of theories and experimental studies conducted in Germany by several influential scientists at the beginning of the 20th century.

They came to the conclusion that shapes and perception are two correlated phenomena, that human perception found shapes where there were none and that we were conditioned to find them because the shapes, themselves, appeared everywhere.

Sounds confusing, right? It will become clearer once you understand the concept of “Prägnanz,” or “pithiness,” which is what determines which shapes prevail.

Imagine, for example, a series of dots arranged randomly. They can be interpreted in many ways: as irregular shapes, as a geometrical set, or as isolated blobs, among many others, but the one that prevails, statistically speaking, is the geometric interpretation.

That means that we are predisposed to find geometrical shapes everywhere.

What the gestalt experiments concluded was that, among the many possibilities, we tend to perceive reality in terms of the simplest, most stable, symmetrical shapes and that it’s precisely because those shapes exhibit the aforementioned characteristics that we find them everywhere.

They are pregnant shapes, we can’t escape their ubiquity, and they impregnate our cognition.

It takes virtually no effort to recognize and recall them, and they are the first thing we notice. Now, remember which design principle stresses the importance of basic, geometrical shapes? Those are “pithy” shapes. They possess simplicity and stability.

I wonder, which design style could that be? [Image Source]

Another important piece of scientific evidence, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information by George A. Miller, which has been mentioned before, ponders the limits of our ability to make a judgment faced with multiple variables and our short-term memory’s capacity to remember things with 100% accuracy.

Miller came to the conclusion, by cross-referencing many studies, that the sweet spot to be able to recall a list of different items accurately was that of 7 items, or chunks as he called them, which he defined as the smallest unit of memory a person can remember.

That number has been fiercely debated, but still, it never rises higher than 12, for the most part, which is relatively small as well.

Now, remember which design principle stresses the importance of having as few design elements as possible? It’s because we have a small short-term memory.

In 1999 two scientists, Simon Chabris of Harvard University and Daniel Simmons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted an experiment on inattentional blindness, which is the name of the cognitive phenomenon in which unexpected or excessive stimuli is gone completely unnoticed by the conscious mind.

The experiment asked a series of participants to watch carefully a movie in which a series of basketball players passed a ball between them and counted the number of passes.

While they were doing that, a man dressed as a gorilla walked into the middle of the scene, banged his chest, and then went away.

The subjects often failed to notice said man. Remember which design principle stated to use the fewer hierarchies and the least amount of stimuli possible? It’s because we are naturally predisposed to ignore stimulus among a certain threshold.

Tailored To Our Limitations

It’s time to face the possibility that minimal design is just suited to our cognition in such a way that, if we desire immediate, absolute, and unambiguous communication, it may as well be our best choice.

That’s why it proved so successful when it was born in the 20th century. That’s why it’s still successful. But, as with the very same cognitive model it’s made to appeal to, it may also be really limited.

Because it works immediately, because it’s direct, straight, and instantaneous, it may also be dry. Because, in reality, simplicity and minimalism are only in the eye of the beholder.

Truth be told, we see simple shapes because our brain arranges reality in that way, but the truth is that a solid shape drawn on a piece of paper, a screen, or a wall is, in fact, a texture with many micro-shapes interlocked in unusual ways.

The fine mineral grain of the brick, the thin fibers of the paper’s surface, and the myriad bright lights that compose the micro-structure of a screen’s image are all shapes in and of themselves, and often reality itself escapes the restrictive cage of the gestalt shape, and a great deal of communication is done on the rational, conscious level.

Scientific languages cannot be intuitively understood. Complex philosophical theories cannot be communicated using minimal design. Minimal design communicates minimal ideas as well, and often, that’s not enough.

The Novice Brain and the Expert Brain

When someone knows a lot about something, enough to be considered an expert, there brain functions regarding that subject are fundamentally different than the brain functions of a layperson.

They have many more automated processes regarding the low-level stuff of their area of expertise, their ability to recall information and process it on a conscious level is significantly higher than that of the layperson, and any information regarding there area of expertise is bound to enter through conscious channels.

They tend to put a lot of attention into their area of knowledge, so they are willing to take the time to fully comprehend something as long as it interests them. Therefore immediate, simple and instinctual communication is not enough.

Minimal ideas are not enough for them. They understand on an instinctive level that it’s not just shapes out there, that there are textures, and they can move between the micro-shapes feeling at home.

That’s why, for example, complex software UIs designed for experts (like most 3d modeling software) are impenetrable for the novice and the uninterested. It may be as simple as possible, but that certainly is not enough and not even near minimal standards.

In contrast, the novice expert is not going to dissect each and every proposition regarding a subject. They will suffer a bad case of intentional blindness induced by an excess of stimuli and only get a general idea.

And that general idea will go through channels unsuited for that kind of information. Somewhat unfamiliar with advanced physics usually needs analogies to be able to understand.

That’s why minimalism is perfectly suited for the novice brain because it doesn’t assume anything because it doesn’t challenge. An excerpt from The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson goes something like this:

“Jobs aimed for the simplicity that comes from conquering, rather than merely ignoring, complexity. Achieving this depth of simplicity, he realized, would produce a machine that felt as if it deferred to users in a friendly way, rather than challenging them.”

And in that way, minimal design aims for a design that looks friendly, because it hides nothing. Because all you see is all you get, because this transparency in form and function is refreshing for the person who desires nothing more than use that damn device to make a call or listen to music, instead of hacking the Pentagon.

That’s why flat UI design, or almost flat design, is so appealing.

That’s why it’s so effective; it appeals to the natural way in which we interact with things, with discreet elements, shapes, and a few of them, with few colors.

Learning in such an environment decreases inattentive blindness and increases the user’s ability to recall buttons, options, and functions by decreasing the net amount of options presented.

It took us several hundred years to be able to come up with a set of general principles for making tools, appliances, and communication accessible to everyone (though not suited for everyone) by identifying the core principles that guide our most basic cognitive processes and understanding their limitations.

Limitations that we often forget because designers are experts in communication and, well, we think images, interfaces, and appliances like experts do.

But we do not design for ourselves. While we might enjoy getting lost inside an ambiguous image, the average person does not and so must address their limitations.

We must strive to bypass them and reach a deeper, subconscious level in which communication becomes instantaneous, automated, and direct.

So reduce, decrease, flatten and subtract until it’s able to go through the small hole of the conscious mind, and you’ll have won.

The post A Scientific Perspective on Minimal Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

So what makes one design more appealing than another? How can we tap into a visitor’s brain and make them feel a certain way just by affecting what they see? We will take a look at some common psychology tricks used in web design, as well as how you can use them to your advantage.

Using the Brain as a Roadmap

To fully understand the effect web design can have on the brain, it is essential to have a basic understanding of how the brain works. It does not take a brain surgeon to create a winning web page, but a working knowledge of how the brain perceives experiences is useful. If this sounds like a bizarre mixture of philosophy and psychology, then you are right on target: neurodesign, coined in 2012, allows us to determine what makes a customer experience good or bad based on aesthetic.

Image Source: Interni Magazine

One of the most basic concepts of the human brain we can apply to web design is that it craves order. Our brains form what are called “schemata” to organize information into our worldview. We use what are known as “heuristics,” or rules of thumb, to solve problems in everyday life.

A good example of this is pattern recognition. When confronted with a stimulus, like a garbled line of text, we can generally fill in the blanks and figure out what the text is supposed to say, since our brains are trained to recognize patterns and adapt them to what we already know. So how can we use these basic building blocks in web design? Here are a couple of examples:

• Users feel more comfortable when browsing sites that feature hierarchy. For example, if you are an online retailer, you may show categories like this: Home>Holidays>Christmas>Trees and Décor
• People are also at home assigning people to categories. Sites that offer real-time chatting designate users as available, idle, invisible, or offline.

Offering comfortable patterns is not the only way you can apply the brain’s organizational skills to web design. The Nielson Norman Group developed a list of 10 heuristics to use in web design. One of the most important of these is the idea of using recognition instead of recall.

For example, have you ever been in a position where you meet someone at a social gathering, and you recognize their face but do not remember their name? You have just experienced what psychologists call “retrieval cue failure.” This can be frustrating, and it is an experience you want to avoid on your website at all costs.

Using recognition on your website makes for a more enjoyable experience for the consumer because your interface is essentially doing more of the work for them. Here is how some popular websites use recognition in their interface:

• Google helps guide searches by using an auto-fill function based on past searches and browsing history.
• E-Commerce websites (like Amazon, Target, and Walmart) show shoppers what they have recently browsed, and even make recommendations based on previous views.

Tapping into the brain’s basic organizational skills can make for a friendlier user experience. There are other ways, however, that we can make consumers more amenable to using websites.

Building a Web Design Aesthetic

The proper use of aesthetics has been debated since the time of Plato, who wrote his own tome on the subject. He also understood its power

Image Source: Wikipedia

Thanks to strides in modern psychology, there is no longer a need to contemplate what passes as beauty outside of a philosophy classroom, as research tells us there are certain things the human brain finds pleasing. Let us take a look at how certain web design elements tap into emotions and contribute to a positive user experience.

Color

Color is one of the most important elements you can use to evoke a certain emotion from a user. This notion is nothing new; the ancient Greeks believed that humor influenced the body and personality.

People whose dominant color was red (for blood) were said to be energetic and courageous, which is where we get the term “sanguine.” By contrast, those whose color essence was dominantly black (for bile) were said to be despondent, which is where the term “melancholy” is derived. While we may have graduated from humor and leeches, psychology still does prove an association between colors and emotions.

Here are the more common colors and how major website developers use them to their advantage:

• Red is indicative of energy, vibrancy, and youth. CNN uses a bold red interface to make their users alert and ready to read the news.
• Pink makes you feel a sense of femininity and softness, which lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret uses to great effect.
• Green gives viewers an air of optimism. Since it also shares a hue with plants, it is often a go-to color for websites with an environmental lean, like green living website Treehugger.
• Blue recalls a sense of trustworthiness and openness, so it is no surprise that it is the color choice of social media giant Facebook.

We’ve previously publlished an article about the psychology of color in web design, and here is an infographic from Kissmetrics that summarizes color psychology nicely:

Typeface

Even something as simple as the font you use can affect the user experience on your website. Serif fonts for example (the ones with feet on them, like Times New Roman), are indicative of tradition and professionalism. Newspaper outlets like the Detroit Free Press and the New York Times use serif fonts to convey importance. Sans serif fonts, by contrast, are used to give you a sense of modernity. Silicon Valley giants like Google and Apple use sans serif fonts to appear on the cutting edge.

Image Source: SquidSpot

Spacing is also a concern in web design; if your letters have too little space between them, it conveys a sense of density and weight. On the opposite end of the spectrum, words with too much space between them give off an air of flightiness. It is important to strike a balance between good spacing and font size to give off the persona you are trying to achieve.

Imagery

Most clichés are simply true statements that have become overused sayings, and “a picture is worth a thousand words” is no exception. Think of a time you were overcome with emotion when viewing a photo: V-J Day in Times Square is a classic example:

Image Source: Wikipedia

Photographer Ming Thein breaks down the relationship between images and emotion pretty well, so it is important to keep in mind your end goals when selecting your website imagery. A group of professionals shaking hands over clipboards, for example, may evoke professionalism and competence while cartoon images may convey youth and humor.

Applying These Principles to Your Site

So now you know about the basics of web design psychology. How do you incorporate these design strategies into your website? Here are a few ideas:

• Know your priority population. Who makes up the bulk of your visitors? Is it young millennials? Or well-off baby boomers?
• Create a survey to help identify customer needs and wants. With the information you receive, you can apply design principles.

Using psychology to drive your website design is one of the easiest ways you can increase traffic on your site and boost sales. If you follow these basic principles, you may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

The post How to Make Use of Psychology in Web Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Today, we’re going to look at some of the subjects of debate that have taken on a life of their own. Some are completely organic to the industry, while others have been adapted from society at large. Regardless, they have resulted in some epic arguments.

So, let’s poke the bear and bring up those topics you may not want to discuss during an after-work get together!

Page Builders vs Old School Design

If you use a page builder – does that make you something less than professional? Does it mean that you’re taking unnecessary shortcuts?

These are among the questions raised by the use of the popular class of drag-and-drop tools. They’re most often associated with DIY providers like Squarespace and Wix, in addition to WordPress – thanks to a plethora of available plugins.

Part of the appeal of a page builder is that, in theory, it should allow a non-designer to put together a complex layout full of high-tech goodies. In practice, this isn’t always the case. Even an advanced tool can’t fully make up for a novice user who makes questionable decisions.

For web designers, some see the use of this type of tool as akin to making a frozen pizza. Sure, it’s easier. But the final product may miss some of that authenticity that would make it truly stand out. In some ways, it’s a similar argument to the one we had way back when WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver first hit the market. It’s the classic battle of tradition vs progress.

Eric’s Take: This one still elicits a lot of debate – including from yours truly. I’m proud to say that I’ve stood firmly in both camps at various times. I used to have plenty of reservations regarding page builders. It seemed like their aim was to replace professional designers (although, they were kind of lousy at it). Lately, however, I’ve warmed up to them a little. Like most relationships, this one is a bit complicated.

React vs Vue

The future of the web is said to be based on JavaScript. At least, it certainly seems that way, what with all the hype surrounding Gutenberg and other JS-based interfaces. And it’s easy to see why. The thought of a website as a lightning-fast, completely interactive application certainly sounds exciting.

But we’re not necessarily going to build those UIs of tomorrow with vanilla JavaScript. Instead, we’re going to leverage a top front-end framework like Vue.js or React to help us get there. That’s where this argument gets real.

Both of these packages are quite capable. However, there are core differences that tend to split the development world into two camps.

Vue is widely thought to be easier to learn and is much more of a traditional community-based open source project. In some ways, it seems to be the feisty underdog that is always nipping at React’s heels. Never underestimate this kind of appeal.

React, on the other hand, uses a more hardcore JavaScript syntax and is a great fit for highly-complex applications (such as the aforementioned Gutenberg). It’s also built and maintained by Facebook – which is either wonderful or terrifying.

Eric’s Take: Frameworks, regardless of language, are always hotly debated. It doesn’t seem like either project (or competitors like Angular) are going away any time soon.

Personally, I always advocate for peace. Therefore, I think everyone should use what they’re comfortable with. If you can build what you need with your favorite framework, go for it! Otherwise, we’re arguing about apples and oranges.

Mac vs PC / iOS vs Android

Okay, this argument goes well beyond just designers. It’s been going on for decades – even before the web was a mainstream medium. But it’s still quite relevant in our industry.

Back in the day, many creative professionals chose Mac as it offered a lot of tools that simply weren’t available on a Windows PC. Photoshop, for instance, was Macintosh-only until version 2.5. Not to mention that, from the very beginning, it seemed that Apple courted a cult-like following of devotees. Bill Gates and Microsoft weren’t in the same league when it came to the cool factor.

These days, the Apple-faithful also battle another juggernaut – Google. When it comes to the mobile device wars of this decade, Microsoft is nowhere to be found (at least, not in the OS market). Therefore, Google and its Android OS have taken over as the boogeymen.

In both segments, Apple has a much smaller (yet, not insignificant) market share. When it comes to traditional computers, Windows has a commanding 87% of the market, compared to just under 10% for Mac OS. Mobile is a little closer, but Android still dominates with a 70% to 28% edge.

Eric’s Take: The differences in hardware on these various platforms seems negligible. On the computing side, Apple charges a premium for slick industrial design, while a Windows PC can be built on the cheap and still look decent enough (for my tastes, at least).

Still, whenever I attend events such as WordCamps, I see those ultra-expensive MacBook Pros everywhere. Yes, they are quite beautiful. But my vote still goes with the PC for providing much more bang for the buck.

The mobile competition seems a little closer. On one hand, there are a number of cheap Android devices available for the budget-conscious among us. Yet, you can still waste a few paychecks on a Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy – just the same as you can with an iPhone. The difference is that Android provides a wider array of options (along with varying degrees of hardware quality).

Whichever you choose, you’re still getting a high-quality operating system. That said, it’s mainly a matter of how much you’re willing to pay in order to look cool.

This Way vs That Way

Finally, we have arrived at the one category of argument that will never go out of style. One of the truisms of design and development is that there is more than one way to achieve a desired goal. Whether you want to make your site responsive or add a shopping cart – there are no shortage of options and approaches.

Not only are these debates ubiquitous (just post a question in a support forum and see how many different answers you receive), they are perhaps the most entertaining and useful. People will often try to one-up each other and might even boast of their solution over others.

What’s really fascinating is that we can take wildly different approaches and still reach the same conclusion. Some are more efficient than others, but still worth discussing nonetheless.

Eric’s Take: Usually, this is all in good fun. It shows the true nature of the community and its passion for solving problems. And these solutions also serve as an archive that is there for us whenever we need a helping hand.

A Sign of Caring

The classic arguments above can sometimes become tired and even a little less than friendly. Yet, they are a representation of just how passionate the designer community is. Sure, some people just like to butt heads (see what I did there?) – but in most cases, these debates come from a place of genuine caring. It’s also a healthy part of any open society.

So, feel free to join in a debate. Sometimes it takes you around in circles, but there’s a chance that it may also help push things forward.

The post The Biggest Designer Debates appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

That being the case let’s take a look at the design and the importance of color in its creation. When you begin building a site it is tempting to use colors that are pleasing to ourselves. We want it to look good based on our own perceptions. Unfortunately, that does not always translate into customer attraction. That, in the end, is what we want, right?

Marketing is all about psychology and how colors affect our emotional state. It is described in many psychological studies. Any design we decide on for our websites should focus on your target customer and the goods you offer. Color decisions can help with that.

It can be a challenging thing, to come up with the perfect color scheme for your website. You want people to like it because they won’t mind staying for a while to see what you have to offer. To do it you need to use strategy with your color uses and look at all sides of it.

For instance, red is considered by some as a passionate color and by others an angry color. To make your color decisions you must understand what you are offering.

Coloring What You Offer

It is an innovative idea to match what you offer with an appropriate color. Landscapers will often use green, or brown coloring in their sites. This is because many see those colors as earthy and very nature like.

Have you ever noticed a pizza box? They use a lot of red in the coloring because it is believed red also can promote appetite. It is a promising idea if you are selling food, right? This is a good example of color and marketing.

Coloring Your Marketing

It is considered essential in marketing to understand coloring. It is a powerful piece of equipment in your tool belt. With the proper use of coloring, you can grab customer attention. You can also improve the site user experience.

If the colors are off-putting, visitors to your site won’t want to hang out and see what you have to offer. Many purchasing decisions are completely emotionally based. That is why your preferences for what you want to buy can be tweaked by coloring.

Influencing with Color

Distinct types of consumers are influenced by different things. Impulsive buyers are more apt to respond to black or orange-red coloring. Royal blue is also a lure to those types of buyers. Take a look at clearance sales, or fast food advertising. You will find those types of venues will use the aforementioned colors.

Consumers who keep a strict budget are conscious of navy blue or teal. If you look around you will see many banks and large department stores use those.

The average shopper will find themselves drawn to pink, sky blue and rose colors. Clothing stores use these to their advantage.

Different Genders, Different Colors

As with many things, color preference differs between the sexes. Women like softer colors with tints. Green, purple and green will attract women more quickly. Orange brown and grays tend to turn them away. Men, however, prefer bolder colors. Black, blue and green work for them better. Brown, purple, and orange don’t work as well with them.

It would be a good idea at this point to look at individual colors and what they are attached to.

White

Scientifically white reflects light and can strain a person’s eyes. For business, white indicates equality and also fairness. Organization and equality are another connection with the color white.

Red

This color can cause an uptick in breathing and heartbeats. Red is intense and, in some degree, powerful. It is attached to aggression and demands. Oddly, as mentioned above, it is a help to appetite.

Pink

Pink is nurturing and non-threatening. It is compassionate and calming. Some associate it with romance.

Blue

Lighter shades of blue can also have a calming, tranquil effect. The darker shades have a stimulating effect on the mind. It can promote thinking more clearly. For some people though, it creates depression.

Green

Green is the easiest on the eyes. It is one of the few that both men and woman are attracted to. It can be relaxing and that is the reason the waiting room at talk show studios are painted green.

Yellow

This one cries out for attention. That makes it risky to use if you are not careful with the shade. The right tint of yellow can lift the spirits, the wrong one can be irritating to the emotions.

Orange

Orange is tied to happiness. It can be uplifting and an effective way to promote conversation. It also can stimulate appetite and business uses it to encourage confidence.

Purple

Wealth, as well as royalty, is tied to this color. It can stimulate contemplation and the mind. The wrong shade can come off as cheap and tacky though. It is something to be aware of.

Brown

As a reflective color, brown can be used as a supportive color as well. It is associated with organic, earthly things. Natural things.

Gray

There are no obvious reactions to gray. The one thing to watch out for is the wrong shade can dampen the colors around it.

Black

Power and authority come with the color black. Depending on the presentation it can appear sophisticated or intimidating.

To Conclude

If you want to capture the attention of visitors, leading them to, perhaps, purchase what you have. It would be a promising idea to investigate colors. The associated effects they have on consumers might be significant.

When designing your website, colors should not be an arbitrary decision. Choosing your colors should be a careful consideration that could lead to success.

Ben Pines is CMO at Elementor, a WordPress website builder with over 700.000 users and counting. Ben has been in the online marketing industry for over 10 years, specializing in content marketing. WordPress has been Ben’s platform of choice since the time it was used solely for blogging.

The post Using Color Psychology for Better Website Results appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

They usually seem to come out of nowhere, but research suggests there are ways to cause these sudden flashes of insight to happen more readily.

1. Avoid Uncertainty

A study by Jennifer Mueller found that when people were made to feel uncertain about the future, in this case by paying them with a random lottery, it caused them to reject creative ideas.

They actually associated creativity with words like “vomit,” and “hell,” but this bias was completely invisible to them. While you might not necessarily be able to avoid feelings of uncertainty, you may be able to recognize when you are rejecting all of your ideas.

If you think you’re having trouble coming up with good ideas, it’s worth considering the possibility that you are just rejecting them because you have a subconscious fear of new ideas. It’s far better to pick an idea that may be less than perfect than to pick no ideas at all.

2. Recognize Multiple Solutions

The same study also found that if you tell people to write an essay about how all problems only have one solution, we are also more likely to reject genuinely creative ideas.

If you find yourself saying, “this isn’t the right idea,” it’s best to stop yourself, and instead ask yourself if it’s a good idea.

3. Think About Contradictions

Ella Miron-Spektor conducted an experiment where the participants were asked to write down some thoughts. One group was asked to write interesting thoughts, while the other was asked to write paradoxical thoughts.

The group that was asked to write paradoxical thoughts did almost twice as well on a problem that required creative insight.

If you’re having trouble solving a design problem, it can be helpful to think about contradictory thoughts, like how walking is sometimes less tiring than standing. These kinds of thoughts seem to make it easier to arrive at solutions you otherwise wouldn’t come up with. The thoughts don’t even have to be closely related to the task at hand, although this may help.

4. Look for Relationships

Paul Thagard has advanced a theory for how new ideas are formed in the brain. It involves a complex mathematical process called convolution, which combines two ideas together in a way that makes them distinguishable from the originals.

He points to examples like Darwin’s “natural selection,” which is a combination of the idea of artificial selection with ideas from nature, or the creation of “wireless email,” which is a combination of the ideas “wireless” and “email.”

If you can’t solve a problem by analyzing it, or you’re having trouble coming up with new ideas, it can be useful to expose yourself to ideas that might be “outside your comfort zone.” Look for analogies, similarities, and differences with the task at hand. This is often where new ideas come from.

5. Have a Good Laugh

Alice Isen has conducted a few experiments on how mood effects creativity, and one of the strongest results comes from humor. She discovered that people who watched a funny video were over three times better at solving a creative problem than people who watched a math video. Other experiments suggested that a good mood in general has a similar effect.

If you are having trouble solving a problem or coming up with a new idea, try exercising some positive thinking exercises or just looking for something to laugh about. Provided you don’t spend the rest of the day looking at cats on the internet, the boost in mood will actually make it easier for you to solve the task at hand.

6. How to Brainstorm

It would be a waste of time to tell you to brainstorm, since you’ve undoubtedly heard this before. Instead, it’s worth pointing out some of the ways brainstorming might not work how you expect.

For starters, most experiments suggest that brainstorming groups actually do worse than the same number of people brainstorming alone, so there’s no need to seek out a special team of people to help you brainstorm.

At the same time, Karen Dugosh has conducted several experiments that suggest exposure to other people’s ideas is helpful. People who listened to ideas from a tape recording came up with more ideas that people who didn’t have the recording. Still, they only did better during a brainstorming session by themselves afterward.

She also discovered that people who shared ideas through a computer had the best results of all. Presumably, this was because they could take inspiration from each other without distracting each other.

In short, look for inspiration from as many different sources as you can, but don’t bother doing the actual brainstorming until you are alone and have time to concentrate.

7. Let Your Mind Wander

There appear to be two kinds of problems you might encounter, those that require analysis and those that require a sudden burst of insight.

If what you need is the latter, it turns out focus is actually bad. An experiment conducted by Mareike Wieth found that people who came in during their least focused time of day actually did better on insightful problems. Oddly enough, patients with damage to their frontal lobe and people under the influence of alcohol appear to achieve the same results.

The lesson here is that if focus isn’t helping you solve a problem, it’s better to start daydreaming than to force yourself to think your way to a solution. Focus is for getting the work done, not for getting the ideas in the first place.

The post 7 Ways to Come up with Creative Ideas, Backed by Psychology appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.