People make snap judgments. In fact, most users only take 50 milliseconds to form their first impression of your site. This impression lasts the remainder of their visit and even influences return visits. Suffice to say, the first five seconds a user experiences your site is extremely important.
Designing for first impressions is no easy task. 50 milliseconds isn’t enough time to read a single line of copy or even fully comprehend what you’re looking at. So how can you design for good first impressions?
The key is understanding human psychology and emotional reactions. Despite our highly evolved state, all humans have a subconscious “lizard brain" that makes lightening fast assessments about what feels good or bad. If you understand the lizard brain, you can use design to illicit positive first impressions.
This talk discusses the lizard brain and how its secrets influence our actions and thought. It then covers the framework for emotional reactions and how you can use design to illicit positive reactions to visual stimuli.
Ross Johnson has been designing websites professionally for over fifteen years. He brings a unique and comprehensive view to design, shaped by a lifelong love for fine arts and his education in technology, business and social science. This diverse background brings insight to all aspects of design including practicality, business implications and psychology of how people interact with computers.
Ross is a partner at 3.7 DESIGNS a WordPress focused design and development agency. He also sells a premium project management plugin for WordPress called Project Panorama