UX And Decision Making

Angela Huang
5 min readAug 24, 2022

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UX designers need to design products to help users make decisions faster. If a design doesn’t help with a user action, it needs to be updated. User action helps improve interaction and engagement with the product, and every designer needs to make it easy to make decisions and take action.

We want to help you understand decision-making in UX (user experience) design and how you can make your designs better. If you haven’t thought about this before in your UX design process, then get ready to improve your designs and increase user engagement with your product.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

What Is Decision Architecture?

Decision Architecture is about creating designs that help users make significant decisions when interacting with a product. This is usually used for digital products like websites and software. To give users the best experience, making decisions needs to be easy and intuitive.

Designers need to understand how people process information to make decisions. Understanding this is not easy, but it is necessary to be successful when creating a decision architecture for your product.

The Types Of Decision Making Process

People can use two types of decision-making when interacting with products. One is called Gut processing, and the other is called Head processing. Gut processing is subconscious. Head processing is conscious.

Gut processing is fast and intuitive, and Head processing is slower and more rational. Head processing can take precedence over Gut processing if it needs to. Emotions are used in design to make people feel a certain way, which is part of Gut processing.

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash
Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

While Head processing can overrule gut processing, that doesn’t mean Gut processing isn’t important. The first impression is still made, and the user will remember this. That’s why first impressions in design are important, and designers need to think about the users and what they will feel when first interacting with the product.

Designers need to understand the difference between these types of decision-making and how they communicate with each other.

How To Design For Gut Processing

The User’s Emotions

Emotion is a part of Gut processing, and it’s important. It is one of the main ways people make decisions when interacting with a product. Emotion can be used in design by changing the color palette, the layout of the design, the content displayed, and the tone used in the range.

Mental Shortcuts Made By The User

Users create mental shortcuts that they use to make decisions faster and take action more quickly when using a product. This makes the design process easier for designers as they can use this information and add it to their designs to give users as decision makers a better experience.

How To Design For Head Processing

Cognitive Loading

Designers need to remember that the users do not have an unlimited capacity to process information. The designer needs to think about the conscious level of the users and how much they can process before they stop. The users should not need to think about every decision they have to make, such as navigating the website to find what they want. Most decisions should be intuitive.

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

The User’s Sensitivity To Effort

The user might not want to think about decision-making when using your product. If users have had to think a lot when using your product, they might want to stop and not do anymore. The designer needs to think about this during the design process.

User interface design firms can help if you need support with this type of design. The right balance needs to be found, and this can be hard if you haven’t thought about this before.

Designing For Both Decision Processing Types

You cannot just choose one decision-making type and create a design. Both need to be used to give users the best experience. Great designers understand that people use both types of decision-making when interacting with products.

Finding the right balance between the two types is not easy, and new designers will make mistakes. Companies hire UX designers and use their UI design services to create the best designs and improve customer satisfaction.

Why You Need Decision Architecture

Products need decision architecture to give users the best experience when using the product. Without this, users will not want to use the product again as they need to think a lot, and they find that frustrating.

Photo by Amélie Mourichon on Unsplash
Photo by Amélie Mourichon on Unsplash

People don’t want to use products that are hard to use. The experience needs to be easy and intuitive. This will cause people to continue using your product and not find another one. This should be the goal of every designer. If you need help, find user interface design firms and use their UX design services to help you create the best designs.

Conclusion on UX Decision Making

Decision architecture needs to be an essential part of your product’s design. There are several decision making strategies and different ways to affect the decisions users make quickly. This includes using colors and specific layouts to change how the user feels and influence the actions they take when interacting with your website. You need to think about all of this in the design process to help users achieve their goals and to get what you want from users.

If you need help doing this, finding user interface design firms that have done this before will help make the design process more manageable. You do not have to solve this yourself; use UI design services and professional help.

Good luck!

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Angela Huang
Angela Huang

Written by Angela Huang

Aspiring UX designer and writer.

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