Emotion
Color & Conversions
Color decisions can influence both direct messages and secondary brand values and attributes in any communication. Color should be carefully selected to align with the key message and emotions being conveyed in a piece. However, saying that one color converts better than another is an oversimplification. There is no universal best color. What works on …
Confabulation
We often don’t know why we do the things we do, but we are quick to make up a reason we actually believe, even though its not true. Psychologists call this ‘Confabulation’. The falsification of memory in which people fill gaps in recall with fabrications that they believe to be facts. Confabulation is, for example, …
Dopamine & Delight
Understanding dopamine’s role in decision making is critical. Humans make decisions, which are far more complicated than other animals, and dopamine is thought to be a key contributor to the relative importance of “gut feeling” over rational thought. Dopamine signals the expected pleasure from future possible events and this signal then informs our choices. Building …
Emotion & Decision Making
When the outcomes of a decision are uncertain, emotions play a role in guiding it. Emotions are the tools we use to simplify the world into heuristics, or general rules of thumb, as they allow our brains to take shortcuts and approximate rational thinking. Fear and anxiety detect risky choices, this is why we need …
Interaction Cost
The interaction cost is the sum of efforts — mental and physical — that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals. Zero interaction cost and is the holy grail of usability as a field. Most of the time, users have to look around, read, possibly scroll, find …
Mental Accounting
Mental accounting refers to the tendency for people to separate their money into separate accounts based on a variety of subjective criteria, like the source of the money and intent for each account. According to the theory, individuals assign different functions to each asset group, which has an often irrational and detrimental effect on their …
Naïve Diversification
Naive diversification is best described as a rough and, more or less, instinctive common sense division of a portfolio, without bothering with sophisticated mathematical models.