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

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Why do so many user personas fail in practice, and what can we do about it?

Have you ever worked on a team where everyone had a different idea of who the user was? Or watched a beautifully crafted persona become ignored or misused? You're not alone. In this episode, we explore why traditional personas often fall short—and how alignment personas can change everything.

You'll learn how to cut through organizational chaos, align stakeholders, and get your team moving in the same direction. You'll also discover a fast, psychology-informed method to surface assumptions, prioritize goals, and build products that stay focused on what really matters.

Meet Our Guest: Tamara Adlin Tamara Adlin is a UX legend. She's the co-author of The Persona Lifecycle and The Essential Persona Lifecycle, played a key role in shaping Amazon's UX strategy, and now leads the charge with her new concept: alignment personas. Her work helps teams avoid derailment, align faster, and make smarter design decisions. She also hosts the podcast Corporate Underpants, tackling the organizational dynamics that show up in bad products.

What We Cover:

• Why personas started off strong—and where they went wrong
• What makes alignment personas radically different and more effective
• How executives act like "tornadoes" and what that means for your designs
• Why assumptions are more powerful than data—and what to do about it
• A five-step alignment process you can run in a single workshop
• Practical tools like the strategy wedge and purpose slide
• How to use design psychology on your own team to influence strategy

Key Takeaways:

• Most personas fail because they gather dust, get misused, or don’t align with actual business priorities.
• Executives often bring strong, unspoken assumptions. Unless you surface them, those assumptions will quietly shape everything your team builds.
• Data alone doesn’t change minds. But alignment personas help teams reveal what they believe—and align around it.
• You don’t need months of research. Just five conversations can expose misalignment, clarify direction, and build shared understanding.
• Design psychology isn’t just for users. It’s a powerful tool for navigating organizations, aligning teams, and protecting your product from chaos.

This episode is packed with real talk, powerful analogies (Greek gods and all), and methods you can use immediately. If you're ready to turn misalignment into momentum, this conversation with Tamara Adlin is your guide.

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.  

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

Game design is not a niche skill. It's one of the most refined disciplines we have for designing attention, emotion, and motivation. If you're designing anything for people, game design can sharpen your craft.

 This episode reveals how the craft of game design can teach us to build more immersive, emotionally resonant experiences. Whether you're designing products, learning experiences, or interactive systems, the lessons from games can help you design for joy, focus, and transformation.

About Our Guest:
Jesse Schell is a legendary figure in game design. He’s designed games for Disney, pioneered virtual reality, built theme park attractions, created award-winning educational games, and teaches at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. His book, The Art of Game Design, is one of the most widely recommended texts in the field.

What You'll Hear:

• Why game designers focus on creating experiences, not just products
• The surprising power of introspection in understanding users
• How "toy-first" thinking leads to more meaningful play
• The science behind flow and how it keeps players engaged
• How to use emotional arcs and tension-release patterns in your designs
• Why gamification often fails—and what to do instead
• The psychology of challenge, curiosity, and fun
• What designers in other fields can borrow from games

Questions Explored:

• What is the difference between a toy and a game?
• How do we design for emotional resonance?
• Can introspection really be a reliable design method?
• What does it mean to balance choices and desires?
• Why is iteration crucial to creating fun?

Key Takeaways:

• Games are machines for generating experiences. That means the psychology of the player is central to every design decision.
• Designers must understand not just what people do—but why they feel, focus, and engage.
• Play is not trivial. It's one of the most powerful modes of learning and transformation.
• Flow, balance, and emotional arcs aren't just game design tools—they're experience design tools.

To make things more engaging, don’t just "gamify"—design for meaningful engagement.

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.  

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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 applying the psychology of the MAYA Principle.

By unpacking how humans respond to familiarity and novelty, you’ll gain practical guidance for designing experiences that spark excitement without overwhelming users.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• What is the MAYA Principle, and why does it matter for product and experience design?
• How do familiarity and novelty interact to shape user adoption?
• Why did products like the iPad feel revolutionary and intuitive to use?
• When should you release a big innovation versus gradually introducing features?
• How psychological barriers like loss aversion affect how people receive new ideas.
• How designers can pace innovation to keep users comfortable and engaged.
  
  
  

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The MAYA Principle stands for "Most Advanced Yet Acceptable"—a formula for balancing innovation with usability.
• People adopt new ideas more readily when they resemble something they already understand.
• Successful products often anchor new concepts in familiar mental models (e.g., Uber reimagined the taxi).
• Understand your audience: tech-savvy users tolerate faster change than general users.
• Manage the speed of innovation—disruptive or incremental—based on what your users can handle.
• Incorporate user feedback early and often to gauge readiness and reduce risk.
• Frame change as a gain, not a loss, to overcome psychological resistance like loss aversion.
• Design psychology empowers us to bridge users into the future—delighting without alienating them.

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

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What’s the real impact of service design on customer experiences?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, host Thomas talks with service design expert Marc Stickdorn, PhD, author of "This is Service Design Doing," about the evolution and holistic nature of service design. 

They discuss the importance of community involvement and collaboration in shaping effective strategies and enhancing user interactions across various touchpoints.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE: 

- The role of community contributions in redefining service design.

- Examples of service design addressing real-world challenges, like improving grocery store experiences.

- Integrating digital transformation for cohesive customer interactions.

- Strategies to bridge organizational silos for better engagement.

- The importance of prototyping and feedback in the iterative design process.

- Adapting service design methodologies to navigate a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) landscape.

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.  

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What shapes the memory of an experience, and how can designers use that insight to create better, more human-centered products?

Design more memorable and emotionally resonant experiences by understanding how people actually remember what they go through. It turns out we do not remember experiences by their length, but by their intensity and how they end.

By uncovering the psychological principle known as the peak-end rule, you will learn how to shape experiences that stand out in people’s minds, leading to better outcomes and more impactful design. 

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• Why do we forget most of what we live through?
• What is the peak-end rule, and how does it influence memory?
• Why do people sometimes prefer longer discomfort over shorter pain?
• Should designers focus on the peaks and endings of an experience instead of the whole journey?
• Which types of experiences are a poor fit for the peak-end rule?
• How do memory and actual experience compare when it comes to decision-making?
• What are the two different selves described in happiness research, and how do they shape our reactions? 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The peak-end rule suggests we remember the most intense moment and the ending of an experience. Most of the rest fades from memory.
• Designers cannot control every moment, but they can influence how an experience is remembered.
• This principle is especially helpful when designing uncomfortable or tedious processes. A well-placed positive moment or thoughtful ending can shift how the whole experience is recalled.
• Duration neglect means people do not remember how long something lasted, only how it felt at key moments.
• The remembering self often outweighs the experiencing self when people decide whether to repeat an experience.
• Linear experiences like onboarding flows or customer service calls are ideal candidates for applying the peak-end rule. More complex or non-linear experiences, such as websites or productivity apps, may require different strategies.

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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 understand, remember, and apply their new skills.

By grounding your instruction in Cognitive Load Theory, you’ll gain a practical compass for sequencing content, trimming unnecessary load, and accelerating real mastery.

Our guest, Dr. John Sweller, pioneered Cognitive Load Theory during more than four decades as Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of New South Wales. His research has reshaped classrooms, training programs, and learning technologies worldwide.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• Why learners often absorb less when they start by solving problems—and what to do instead
• The expertise‑reversal effect: why novices and experts need opposite instructional treatments
• How to recognize when learners look active but aren’t actually learning
• The modality, split‑attention, and redundancy effects—and how they guide interface and content design

Practical ways to balance intrinsic, extraneous, and germane load so learners stay challenged without being overwhelmed

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.  

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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 lingering cognitive tension help us design products, services, and experiences that people actually come back to and complete?

When you learn to harness the motivational pull of “unfinished business,” you can turn mundane flows into engaging journeys and guide users toward the outcomes that matter.
 We explore why interruptions strengthen memory, and how designers can translate that insight into progress indicators, cliffhangers, and gentle nudges that drive completion. 

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• What exactly is the Zeigarnik effect, and how did a Soviet psychologist discover it?
• Why do incomplete or interrupted tasks stay fresher in memory than those we’ve finished?
• How can we use progress bars, checklists, and multi‑step flows to leverage this effect?
• Where do cliffhangers shine in learning experiences and content design?
• When does the tension of “unfinished” backfire — and how can we avoid creating frustration?
• Practical tips for highlighting next steps, surfacing partially completed work, and prompting return visits. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Incomplete tasks create cognitive tension that keeps the goal top‑of‑mind until it’s resolved.
 • Surface that tension: show users where they left off, how close they are to done, or what’s still missing.
 • Use visual progress cues (percentages, steps, checkmarks) to make completion feel imminent and achievable.
 • Strategic interruptions — like well‑placed cliffhangers or mid‑flow saves — can boost later recall and re‑engagement.
 • Balance is key: too much friction or ambiguity can turn motivating tension into annoyance.

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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 understand what to do— they actually do it.

By uncovering the psychology behind the knowing–doing gap, you’ll gain practical tools to move your audience from passive understanding to sustained action.

Our guest, Julie Dirksen, has spent two decades helping organizations design training and products that lead to measurable behavior change. 

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

Why does information alone rarely shift behavior?

What alternative ingredients turn knowledge into action?

How do motivation, context, and habit interact?

What is the elephant–rider model, and how does it reframe design?

Which practical tactics help learners “walk new paths” instead of retreading old ones? 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Behavior change is not the same as knowledge transfer—information is necessary but never sufficient.

Design for the elephant (emotions and habits) as well as the rider (rational mind).

Reduce friction and increase repetition so the desired action is easier than the default.

Shape context—alter environments so the right choice is the obvious choice.

Layer motivation and support with rewards, social proof, and timely prompts.

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.  

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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” that gives early items a cognitive boost, to the “recency effect” that gives the last ones staying power, you'll learn how sequence can make or break a design.

We explore:

• Why we remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle ones
• Why many designers mistakenly apply memory principles to visual design when they should be focusing on attention
• The difference between designing for memory and designing for attention

Whether you're designing a pitch, a product tour, or just organizing content, understanding the serial position effect helps you make your message stick where it matters most.

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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 task success. Our guest Bill Albert joins us to show how to expand our measurement toolbox.

By learning to measure desirability, emotion, and true engagement, we unlock clearer insights, align teams faster, and invest only in ideas that will actually resonate.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• Usability vs. desirability — why the distinction matters
  
  
  
• Quantifying emotion in UX: from frustration to delight
  
  
  
• Defining “engagement” (and the right ways to track it)
  
  
  
• Physiological tools in practice: galvanic skin response & eye-tracking
  
  
  
• Experience economy metrics — what today’s products must capture

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.