The Design Psychologist | Psychology for UX, Product, Service, Instructional, Interior, and Game Designers

Season 2 Premiere: Should This Exist? UX Strategy in Uncertain Times (w/ Jaime Levy)

Send us Fan Mail How do you know whether a product idea is worth building before you spend months designing and developing it? In this episode of The Design Psychologis

Season 2 Trailer: The Design Psychologist

Send us Fan Mail Season 2 of The Design Psychologist is here. After exploring the foundations of psychology across human factors, UX, instructional design, service desi

Season 1 Finale: Design for a Better World (w/ Don Norman)

Send us Fan Mail  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  Wh

The Power of Social Proof (Part 2): 18 Methods Across 5 Psychological Drivers

Send us Fan Mail  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  Wh

The Power of Social Proof (Part 1)

Send us Fan Mail Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  Hav

Align Before Design: The Psychology of Strategic Alignment (with Tamara Adlin)

Send us Fan Mail Get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn:  thedesignpsychologist.substack.com Why do so ma

Why Games Work: Emotional Arcs, Flow States, and Meaningful Play (with Jesse Schell)

Send us Fan Mail Why are games so deeply engaging? What psychological principles make game design such a powerful tool for shaping attention, emotion, and learning? Gam

Advance Without Alienating: How MAYA Drives Adoption

Send us Fan Mail What is the sweet spot between new and familiar, and how do you design for it? Create products that feel groundbreaking and instantly intuitive by appl

Frontstage, Backstage: How Service Design Really Works (with Marc Stickdorn)

Send us Fan Mail What’s the real impact of service design on customer experiences? In this episode of The Design Psychologist, host Thomas talks with service design exp

The Peak-End Rule in Design: What We Take Away

Send us Fan Mail What shapes the memory of an experience, and how can designers use that insight to create better, more human-centered products? Design more memorable a

Less Load, More Learning: First Principles of Cognitive Load Theory (with John Sweller)

Send us Fan Mail What’s the best way to choose how you’ll teach something so it actually sticks? Design your next lesson so learners don’t just follow along—they unders

Designing with Tension: What the Zeigarnik Effect Reveals About Memory and Momentum

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever noticed how an unfinished task — or a cliffhanger at the end of a show — keeps tugging at your attention? How can the Zeigarnik effect’s

Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap: Designing for Real Behavior Change (with Julie Dirksen)

Send us Fan Mail Why is it so hard to change behavior—even when people already know exactly what to do? Design your next learning experience so people don’t just unders

Order Matters—But Not the Way You Think: How Serial Position Gets Misused

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we uncover how the order in which information is presented affects what users remember—and what they forget. From the “primacy effect”

From Vibes to Variables: How We’re Measuring the Unmeasurable in UX (with Bill Albert)

Send us Fan Mail Why is it so hard to know whether people want to use what we design—not just whether they can? Design research can (and should) go far beyond basic tas

The Shape of Choice: What Hick’s Law Really Reveals About Decision Time

Send us Fan Mail What happens when your design asks users to make too many choices? In this solo episode, we explore a deceptively simple principle with massive implicat

How to Visualize the Invisible: Metaphors, Models, and Meaning (with Stephen P. Anderson)

Send us Fan Mail Explaining an abstract idea can feel easy—until you put pen to paper. In this episode, our host sits down with Stephen P. Anderson to unpack the craft o

How Well Do Our Words Reflect Our Inside World? A psychological perspective on the limits of self-report, introspection, and understanding the human mind

Send us Fan Mail How much can you trust what users tell you? In this solo episode, we dive into one of the most slippery yet essential tools in UX research: self-report

Disruptive by Design: Uncovering Game-Changing Insights (with Larry Marine)

Send us Fan Mail Ever wonder how certain products feel inevitable the moment they appear—rearranging entire markets overnight? In this episode of The Design Psychologist

The Why Behind Sample Size: How Many People Do You Really Need to Test With?

Send us Fan Mail How many participants do you need to test in order to make valid research claims? In this episode, we dive deep into the science and psychology behind s