Let’s talk about (neuro)science

and its importance in usability/UX of an application

Who am I?Andreea Popescu

speaker and volunteer

andreeazpopescu

@andreea_popescu

usability/UX specialist @Evozon

passionate about (neuro)science, HCI, photography & hiking

What do you think usability is?

Joel Spolsky, User Interface Design for Programmers

“Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world of computer-

human interaction. It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, no matter how

mundane the software is.”

How about neuroscience?

Johannes Robbies, UX Redefined Winning and Keeping Customers with Enhanced Usability and User

Experience

“The human brain weighs about 1.4 kilograms - that's only 2 percent of our body weight - but it use more than 20 percent of our body energy.”

Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel

“We found that on average the human brain has 86bn neurones [nerve cell that is the basic

building block of the nervous system]. And not one [of the brains] that we looked at so far has

the 100bn."

frontal lobe

The frontal lobe is the center of our emotional network (“How did I

experience it?”) and our cognitive network (“That’s how I

experienced it.”).

frontal lobeparietal lobe

The parietal lobes mediate tactile and kinaesthetic perception (left lobe: information processing; right lobe: combining of diverse visual,

auditory, tactile information into non-language).

frontal lobeparietal lobe

temporal lobe

The temporal lobe serves to organise hearing and memory.

frontal lobeparietal lobe

temporal lobe occipital lobe

The occipital lobe register the characteristics of what we see

and then send the information on to the parental lobes for

interpretations.

These are some examples about how our brain works!

Prefrontal cortex: not paying attention to unnecessary

information —> cortical flaw has been exacerbated by modernity —>

too much information.

Rewards and motivation. Stimulates dopamine, one of the main neurotransmitters, which is heavily active in the frontal lobe.

Patterns activate predictions and stimulate neurons, and this way the user finds it easier to improve their

experiences. Schultz, a physician who explored the human brain in the 70s, “if everything goes according to plan, its dopamine neurons secrete a little

burst of enjoyment”.

Cognitive control and value-based decision-making tasks appear to depend on different brain regions

within the prefrontal cortex. Too many options for choosing an activity create

‘noise’ in the brain, that is mentally exhausting.

Left alignment: users can read each line by simply moving their eyes to the left edge each time. This makes your paragraphs faster and easier to read because the user’s eyes don’t have to

work as hard to find where the line starts each time.

Visual cortex: do not use decorative fonts, because it’s harder for the brain

to find shapes in them.

Reducing the cognitive load (as remembering, thinking, making

decisions) takes less brain effort. E.g. scrolling takes less brain power thank

clicking.

the auditory part of the new brain that deciphers sound (told)

vision and text processing (read)

all the vision parts of the brain (to imagine the characters)

the emotional part of the mid brain

- Dr. David Eagleman

“Every single neuron in the brain is complicated as New York city.”

Resources• “Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides”: http://healthland.time.com/

2012/09/04/making-choices-how-your-brain-decides/

• “SpinalCord”: http://www.spinalcord.com/frontal-lobe

• “UX Redefined Winning and Keeping Customers with Enhanced Usability and User Experience, Johannes Robbies, 2015

• “How does the brain work when confronted with an interface?”, Marc Van Rymenant: http://www.simplifyinginterfaces.com/2008/07/09/how-does-the-brain-work-when-confronted-with-an-interface-episod-2/

• “Why You Should Never Center Align Paragraph Text”: http://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-center-align-paragraph-text/

• “10 ways to design for the human brain”: http://blog.invisionapp.com/design-for-the-human-brain/

Resources

Thank you.