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

Send us Fan MailAccessibility is not a final checklist. It is a shared responsibility that should shape a product from the beginning.In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with David Sloan, Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi and co-author of What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility.David explains how designers can look beyond visual considerations like color contrast and account for the different ways people perceive, navigate, and operate technology. They discuss assistive technology, screen readers, semantic HTML, linearization, disability language, and the difference between accessibility needs and medical diagnoses.The conversation also explores why accessibility works best as a team effort. Designers, developers, product managers, writers, and testers all make decisions that can either create or remove barriers.If you want to build more inclusive products—and make accessibility part of your everyday workflow—this conversation offers a practical place to begin.If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  

Send us Fan MailWhat makes a product feel not just usable, but desirable?In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Marty Gage, co-author of User Experience Research: Discover What Customers Really Want, about how teams can move beyond guessing and uncover the experiences people actually desire.Marty shares a practical framework for connecting emotional needs to product strategy: desired emotional states, benefits, features, and sensory cues. They discuss why great design is not just about making something easy to use, but about understanding how people want to feel, what value they want from an experience, and what details communicate that value.The conversation explores useful, usable, and desirable design, the meaning behind cues like simplicity, familiarity, organization, and accessibility, and how methods like collaging and contextual inquiry can help teams translate customer insight into actionable design direction.If you want to build products and services that connect with people, align teams, and reduce the risk of guessing wrong, this episode offers a clear way to think about user experience research as the foundation for better innovation.If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  

Send us Fan MailHow many users do you actually need for a usability study?In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Laura Faulkner about one of the most repeated ideas in UX research: that five users are enough. Laura explains why that rule of thumb can be useful in some situations, but dangerous when teams treat it like a law.They discuss sample size, research risk, stakeholder alignment, and why the real question is not “How many users?” but “What decision are we trying to support, and what happens if we miss something important?”Laura also shares practical advice on making research more influential inside organizations: sharing early and often, treating research as community property, helping stakeholders take ownership of findings, and building a point of view from human data rather than personal opinion.The conversation also explores synthetic users and AI, including where AI can help researchers think through test plans and where teams still need fresh data from real people.If you want to design better studies, communicate findings with more impact, and help research actually change product decisions, this episode gives you a grounded, human-centered way to think about evidence, risk, and influence.If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  

Send us Fan MailWhat does it actually mean to say a product is usable?In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Phil Kortum about the System Usability Scale, or SUS: one of the most widely used tools for measuring usability. They discuss why this 10-item questionnaire has lasted for decades, what makes a usability metric trustworthy, and how researchers can use SUS scores to compare products, track improvement, and communicate usability in a shared language.The conversation covers why a number is not automatically objective, how SUS differs from measures like Net Promoter Score, when the positive version of SUS may be better to use, and why usability researchers still need effectiveness and efficiency measures alongside subjective ratings.They also explore Phil’s work on voting systems, where usability is not just about convenience but whether people can successfully cast a vote.If you want to understand how to measure human experience with more rigor, this episode gives you a clearer way to think about usability, evidence, and the difference between a score that sounds scientific and a metric you can actually trust.If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  

Send us Fan MailHow do you know whether a product idea is worth building before you spend months designing and developing it?In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Jaime Levy, author of UX Strategy, about how designers, researchers, founders, and product leaders can move beyond opinion and make a stronger evidence-based case for what to build.Jaime explains why strategy is not about magically predicting the future, but about systematically reducing risk. She discusses how storyboards can help teams test the business idea before getting lost in interface details, why most companies compete in “purple oceans,” and how UX can become a source of real differentiation.The conversation also gets into AI: where it can speed up strategy work, where it can mislead us, and why human judgment, critical thinking, and customer understanding matter even more as tools become more powerful.If you care about building products people actually want, this conversation will help you think more clearly about value propositions, mental models, product differentiation, and the role of UX strategy in a rapidly changing world.If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!  Go to thedesignpsychologist.substack.com to get episode summaries right in your inbox so you can easily reference, save, and apply what you learn.  

Send us Fan MailSeason 2 of The Design Psychologist is here.After exploring the foundations of psychology across human factors, UX, instructional design, service design, game design, and more in Season 1, this season takes the conversation even further.We’re asking some honest—and sometimes difficult—questions about where design psychology is today, the challenges professionals are facing in their careers, and how we can use design to create a better future.Throughout Season 2, we’ll explore topics including accessibility, data visualization, helper robots, Jobs to Be Done vs. classical human factors methods, tools for expanding the power of the mind, and the growing role of AI.You’ll also hear conversations with fascinating guests, including an author behind one of the most controversial and influential articles in UX research and a YouTube creator and memory expert.And there are a few surprises along the way.If you’re interested in psychology, design, UX, human factors, emerging technology, or simply understanding how people interact with the world around them, Season 2 has plenty to explore.Welcome back to The Design Psychologist.

Don Norman, design theorist and cognitive scientist behind The Design of Everyday Things, reflects on shifting from human-centered to humanity-centered design. He discusses system-level thinking, co-design with communities, lessons from surprising failures, scaling impact through education, and designing for environmental and societal futures. Short, provocative, and wide-ranging.

Discover the fascinating ways social proof influences our decisions! The discussion dives into five core psychological drivers, showcasing methods like relatable testimonials and expert endorsements that enhance credibility. Learn how community-generated content fosters trust and why peer validation plays a key role in choices. Explore strategies using customer quotes and influencer partnerships to boost authenticity. Finally, uncover ethical considerations in using social proof to ensure it benefits users without manipulation.

The discussion dives deep into social proof, illustrating how our behavior is often shaped by others around us. From the psychology of applause to bustling restaurant lines, everyday examples showcase this principle at play. Historical insights reveal how early observations, like cyclists’ performances in groups, laid the foundation for social psychology. Key psychological principles unravel why we relate to others, trust experts, and fear missing out. Each insight paves the way for leveraging social proof in design and marketing to influence decision-making.

Tamara Adlin, an esteemed UX practitioner and co-author of 'The Persona Lifecycle,' discusses the pitfalls of traditional user personas and introduces her innovative concept of alignment personas. She explains how misalignment among stakeholders can derail projects and emphasizes the importance of surfacing assumptions before design. Adlin also shares her five conversations framework to prioritize goals, highlighting how focusing on aligned objectives can lead to more effective outcomes. Her insights promise to transform how teams approach user-centered design.