Psychology
How people perceive, decide, remember, and feel — and where the evidence is strong, shaky, or abused.
Cognitive Load & Memory
The central constraint of UX: working memory is tiny and attention is expensive. Most "confusing" interfaces are working-memory failures.
Attention, Scanning & Perception
- Users scan, they don't read (Nielsen's early web studies; Krug). They satisfice: click the first plausible thing. - F-pattern (NN/g eyetracking, 2006 and 2017 update): on…
Mental Models, Affordances & Learnability
"Intuitive" means: matches the model already in the user's head.
Decision-Making & Cognitive Biases
How people actually choose — for pricing pages, defaults, comparison UIs, and choice architecture. Pair with Persuasion, Ethics & Dark Patterns: every effect below can serve…
Motivation & Behavior
Why users start, continue, and return. Use for engagement, onboarding, habit-building features, and retention — with the ethics file as a mandatory companion (Persuasion,…
Emotional Design & Trust
Usability makes products usable; emotion makes them chosen, loved, and forgiven.
Persuasion, Ethics & Dark Patterns
Every psychological lever in this library can inform or exploit. This file is the line between the two. Read whenever designing for conversion, retention, notifications, or…