100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan M. Weinschenk is an excellent book about how people think and act. It contains a lot of useful information that learning experience designers can use to create user-centered learning experiences. Here are some of the100 things that I found particularly useful for my work. The entire list is quite useful, so I encourage you to read the book.
Peripheral vision is used more than central vision to get the gist of what you see: We can't help but use our peripheral vision when looking at screens. The information we place on the screen in the learner's peripheral vision should help communicate what the lesson needs to communicate to the learner. Images meant to provoke emotions in the learner can be placed in the periphery to affect the learner subconciously. If you want the learner to focus on something on a certain part of the screen, don't put distracting animations or colors in their peripheral vision.
There's a special part of the brain for processing simple visual features: If you want to call attention to one item on the screen, make it stand out by making it a different color, shape, or orientation than the other items on the page.
People scan screens based on past experiences and expectations: People have gotten used to where certain items usually show up on a screen (like navigation and search bars at the top, or logos and blank spaces in certain areas). People use their central vision to find the most important information based on where they generally see that information on their screens. It's best to put the most important information both 30 percent from the top and 30 percent from the left margin, as the margins are usually reserved for less important information and due to people's experiences and expectations their central vision will focus accordingly. Always avoid putting important information at the edges. Save the edges for logos, branding, and navigation menus.
People can miss changes in their visual fields: Never assume that people will see something in their visual field just because it is there. If you want to call attention to something, especially a change or a new element, use visual cues to call it out.
Check out these two videos that demonstrate the principle:
People believe that things that are close together belong together: Put items (pictures, headings, text) that belong together in close proximity. Lines or boxes aren't always needed to seperate items that don't belong together; sometimes simply more white space will do the trick.
Nine percent of men and one-half percent of women are color-blind: Don't use only a color to point out something/imply a certain meaning. Use a redundant coding scheme with another non-color cue to signify the meaning (for example, a stop sign is red but also has a particular shape). You can check out how something will look for color-blind folks at https://vischeck.com/.
Pattern recognition helps people identify letters in different fonts: If people have difficulty reading a font, they will unconsciously decide that the information in the text is too difficulty to understand and may give up reading it.
People process information best in story form: Stories can turn dry information into something understandable, interesting, and memorable. They also illustrate causation in a situation, making it easy for learners to understand why something is the way is it.
Time is relative: Our perception of time is influenced by many factors including predictability and expectations. If people expect something to take too long, or have no idea how long it will take, they may be less motivated to complete it. It's best to set clear expectations with progress indicators or making a consistent amount of time between each task. A process can seem shorter if you chunk out the information into digestible pieces. This helps learners feel that a shorter amount of time is ahead to complete the task instead of perceiving the enormity of time needed to finish several tasks.
People are more motivated as they get closer to a goal: This builds off the last one. The shorter the distance to a goal, the more people are motivated to reach it. As learning experience designes, we can boost motivation by giving a sense of progress, even if it is illustionary.
Stories and anecdotes persuade more than data alone: Information is processed more easily and more easily remembered when presented in story form. Try to present data in a way that provokes emotions and empathy.
Reference:
Weinschenk, S. (2020). 100 things every designer needs to know about people. Pearson Education.