What if you could
read your user's minds?
You can’t. But you can do the next best thing: understand the psychological mechanisms that shape every decision, perception, and habit your users bring to your work.
That’s exactly what the UX Psychology Lens gives you.
Applied psychology at your fingertips.
The UX Psychology Lens doesn’t replace your expertise — it grounds it in the science of how people actually think and behave.
Bring it to a design review and you’ll spot cognitive friction you’d have missed. Bring it to a research session and you’ll ask better questions. Bring it to a stakeholder meeting and you’ll explain user behaviour with evidence, not gut feeling.
UX Psychology Lens in one glance:
50 psychological influences. Each one a focused lens you can apply directly in your work.
Every lens comes with.
- A concise explanation of the underlying mechanism,
- A targeted check question to assess its relevance in your specific context,
- Hands-on do's and don'ts for immediate application,
- And deeper background, examples, and arguments in the accompanying book.
See why professionals
use the cards.
Hundreds of professionals across numerous domains are using the UX Psychology Lens to improve their outcomes. They bring the cards to client or stakeholder workshops, to design sessions, or research preparations.
They tell us about the difference it makes – again and again.
“I find it much easier now to profoundly argue some design decisions, which makes my communication with clients better.”
Helen – a very experienced freelance designer, took a UX Psychology Lens course in Vienna.
“Although we learn psychology, I never found the bridge between psychology and design so applicable”
Richie – a student (Human factors) who experienced the cards in a lecture.
“I love the fact, that I can now contribute to design discussions even if I am not a designer”
Robert – a software developer, was given the cards by a designing colleague.
Cards come
in categories.
For efficient handling and orientation, the cards come in 7 colored categories.
Foundation
Which basic psychological mechanisms are mostly relevant in UX?
– Cognitive ease
– Mental models
– Priming
– Filters of Perception
– Stress and Emotions
– Cognitive Dissonance
Perceiving & Reading
How does perception shape our behavior?
– Gestalt Laws
– Peripheral Vision
– Color Perception
– Change Blindness
– Shadow Effect
– Salient Content
– Satisficing & Reading
– Text Comprehension
Memorizing & Remembering
How does our memory influence our behavior?
– Memory Limits
– Primacy and Recency Effect
– Memory Reconstruction
– Context-dependent Memory
– Recognize versus Remember
– Picture Superiority Effect
Thinking & Problem Solving
How do we approach problems and why do we often fail?
– Framing Effect
– What You See Is All There Is’ Effect
– Availability Heuristic
– Law of Instrument
– Anchor Effect
– Confirmation Bias
– Interference (Stroop) Effect
– Focus Effect
Acting & Avoiding
Why do we sometimes act and other times avoid acting?
– Commitment and Consistency
– Zeigarnik Effect
– Endowed Progress Effect
– Reactance
– Tendency to the Status Quo
– Loss Aversion
– Aversion to Extremes
– Types of Errors
Deciding & Choosing
How do we come to decisions?
– Hick’s Law
– Paradox of Choice
– Sheer Exposure Effect
– Distinction Error
– Default Effect
– Aesthetics Effect
– Ikea Effect – Labour Love
Social Influences
How do subconscious mechanisms shape our social behavior?
– Halo Effect
– In-group Effect
– False Consensus Effect
– Authority Effect
– Social Proof Effect
Why these 50? And which influences are covered?
There are hundreds of documented psychological influences on human behavior. So how did I get to these 50? They were selected because they explain behavior that matters most, in situations that UX professionals actually face. The influences come from crucial cognitive activities: Foundation principles of the brain, Perception & Reading, Memory, Problem solving, Acting Avoiding, Decision Making and Social influences.
Over 30 years of applied psychology work — across industries, cultures, and contexts — one thing became clear: not all influences are equal. Some show up everywhere. Some are subtle but decisive. Some are so deeply wired into human cognition that ignoring them in design is simply not an option.
The 50 influences in the UX Psychology Lens are the ones that consistently proved their relevance — in usability labs, in field research, in design reviews, and in the analysis of real failures and real successes. Selected because they explain the behaviour that matters, in the situations UX professionals actually face.
This isn’t a comprehensive encyclopedia of psychology. It’s a carefully curated set of the mechanisms most likely to make or break a user experience — distilled from decades of practice into something you can actually work with.
Special bundle
50 psychological influences. Each one a focused lens you can apply directly in your work.
Every lens comes with.
Where the UX Psychology Lens is most impactful:
Apply them at the right moment in your process — research, design, evaluation — and patterns that were invisible become obvious.
In research — you will move beyond surface behavior and uncover what actually drives your users,
In design — you will identify cognitive friction points before they ever reach your users.
In stakeholder conversations — you will explain user behavior with evidence, not gut feeling.
A dedicated set of included process cards, alongside the book, gives you methodological guidance on how to use the lenses most effectively — whether you’re working solo or with a team.
The science
The 50 principles are drawn from decades of cognitive, behavioral, and perceptual psychology research. Each one was selected for a single reason: it directly explains something real that happens between a user and a system. No filler, no fluff — just the mechanisms that matter.
Is this for you?
If you work in UX research, design, or strategy — and you’ve ever felt that something important about your users was just out of reach — yes, absolutely.
Not a UX practitioner?
The UX Psychology Lens is also used by safety engineers, technical writers, L&D managers, and industrial designers who need to understand user behaviour without a psychology or UX background.
If you work with systems, processes, or documents that people have to use — and you want to understand why they use them the way they do — the cards are built for you too.
