Canine Psychology and UI UX Design.... What a crazy correlation is this?

UX & UI: Visually pleasing graphics improve User Experience.

An eye-catching, eye-catching graphic on a cell phone or website helps people get things done faster and easier as work becomes more demanding. Investing a little more to design aesthetically pleasing visuals for electronic devices, websites, or anything people need to interact with will be beneficial in the long run. This is the advice of British researchers Irene Reppa, from Swansea University, and Siné McDougall, from Bournemouth University. The results of the study on how the aesthetic appeal of visuals improves performance were published in Springer's Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Reppa and McDougall used computer icons in the study because these visuals are already well-defined stimuli and a part of modern life. In a search and find task, participants first memorized a destination icon and then looked for it in a series of nine icons. This test was designed to reflect the kind of task people's brains perform when interacting with modern electronics. This includes finding and selecting icons that represent tasks to be done among various distracting symbols.

Simple, familiar icons were the easiest to find, but when the task got tougher, aesthetically appealing icons provided a performance boost not found in less appealing visuals.

The importance of Interface Design.

Speech therapist Dr Christina Hunger validated that the positioning of icons also plays a key role!

A study with patients who use Audio Interfaces as the main means of communication proved that the method allows users to find the words they want more fluidly and naturally, when grouped by semantic sets and systematically kept in the same position.

Alternative and Augmentative Communication Device (AAC) is any device that allows a non-verbal person to use sound language to communicate beyond speech. Some people may use Sign Language, which is not limited to be used exclusively by the deaf community.

The ability to use AAC devices that speak when a button is pressed is a tool that has been widely used for years by speech therapists, in the follow-up of non-verbal autistic children, selective mutism, permanent or temporary injuries to the vocal cords, among others. others.

His reports can be read in his publications, as well as in his book developed in an even more accessible language: How Stella Learned to Talk: The Groundbreaking Story of the World's First Talking Dog.

Product Design

Following this same principle, study participants with dogs that communicate by talking through the AAC buttons also receive instructions to keep the buttons always in the same position.

I did my Design on an EVA mat board. The material was chosen because it is cheap, easy to find, easy to cut, without industrial tools and, above all, to be a Modular solution for Misha's Audio Interface.

With this design, transporting the interface is made easier, as it can be easily disassembled and reassembled elsewhere, keeping the buttons in place.

It would be the equivalent of taking your cell phone out of your pocket and placing it on a table... The app icons remain in the same position on your phone, it was just your phone that switched positions, taking all the icons with it.

In the interface I created for Misha, words are grouped into semantic sets, such as family names, calmer activities (sleeping, sitting...) more energetic activities, physiological needs, outdoor activities... The semantic grouping is great ally that has already had its benefits proven in previous research.

It may seem strange to think of Dog Training when talking about UX (User Experience), but when you stop to analyze more deeply what Positive Reinforcement training is, you understand that users are constantly being trained by interfaces, they are receiving rewards. for correctly using apps, social networks, digital products and more!

Misha familiarizing himself with and interacting with his DIY Audio Interface and ACC buttons. Note the use of discrete stickers with different patterns, as dogs recognize patterns more easily than colors.

While I view the study of canine cognition as a hobby, I was also amazingly able to draw some parallels with my profession and that was a bonus worth sharing.

Canine Psychology and UI UX Design.... What a crazy correlation is this?

The course I took on Canine Psychology, Dog Emotion and Cognition, from Duke University, located in the city of Durham, North Carolina (USA), was very interesting and useful to understand how the reasoning of dogs works. The various types of intelligence they have, just as we humans are intelligent in different ways, dogs are also individuals with their particularities.

Humans have spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical intelligence, among others.

Based on a similar principle, dog intelligence was also classified into many types that can be seen in greater depth in the article Dismantling standard cognitive science: it’s time the dog has its day, published by researcher Michele Merritt, in August 2015.

Another big name in this field is Dr. Brian Hare, a scientist and New York Times bestselling author.

Hare is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Duke University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, founded the Hominoid Psychology Research Group while at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and later founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center upon arriving at Duke University.

His publications on canine cognition are among the most cited articles on canine behavior and intelligence. and he was the one who taught the course I took on canine psychology and cognition.

​São as particularidades de cada tipo diferente de inteligência que eu busco levar em consideração quando estou criando uma Interface de Usuário. Sinto que preciso considerar as diferentes formas que o Design de UI pode comunicar para o maior número possível de pessoas para gerar uma Experiência agradável e memorável.

If you want to know more about this specific experiment, go to the article: How I Taught My Dogs to Talk where I explain the basics of the study that the Comparative Condition Laboratory (CCL) at the University of California, San Diego (USA), is doing in collaboration with FluentPet to determine how and to what extent nonhumans are able to express themselves in language-like ways.

Application in UX UI Design

The researchers conclude that eye-catching icons are not only pleasant to use, but also accelerate people's ability to solve multi-step problems with visuals when using websites or cell phones. Pleasant aesthetics prove to be most important in demanding conditions, such as when users are dealing with complex, abstract, or unfamiliar material.

"The savings of a few milliseconds at a time add up when you're performing multi-step interactions on a website or cell phone," says Reppa.

"This can cause people to avoid some interfaces, such as certain websites or phones, in favor of those that maximize efficient performance."

Designers can take some cues from Reppa and McDougall's results by developing icons that are visually simple, concrete, and familiar, especially when needed for tasks that require quick responses.

And what should designers do when they need to design icons that convey more complex information, are abstract, or might not be familiar to the user? Invest in creating visuals with the widest possible appeal, is the researchers' advice. Doing so will not only improve the user experience, UX, but allow people who use apps and websites to be more efficient, generating benefits for the industries that create the apps, games and UI.

"The use of aesthetic visuals produces a win-win situation for all parties involved," concludes Reppa.

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Story Source: Materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Irene Reppa, Siné McDougall. When the going gets tough the beautiful get going: aesthetic appeal facilitates task performance. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2015; DOI: 10.3758/s13423-014-0794-z