- A Guide to Positive Reinforcement in UX Design
- Michiel Mulders
- The Nuggets translation Project
How to use positive reinforcement in UX design
We love pointing out other people’s mistakes, but why not provide positive reinforcement when the user has done something important
Applications often lack a positive feedback mechanism that allows users to have a more positive user experience. Positive reinforcement emphasizes rewarding and reinforcing the user’s correct behavior. When a user creates an invoice with our app, we show the user an interesting badge. In this way, we’ve turned a key behavior into a positive experience, and the goal is that users will learn the app faster and become more confident in using it.
In this article, we will discuss the following topics:
What is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement? How to use positive reinforcement in experience design? How can positive reinforcement be used to reduce user concerns? What is the connection between nudge theory and positive reinforcement? When should we use positive reinforcement?
Positive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement
Positive reinforcement strengthens the possibility of a particular response by adding stimuli after an action has occurred. Negative reinforcement also increases the likelihood of a particular response, but by eliminating unwanted consequences.
For example, every student has experienced both positive and negative reinforcement while studying for a test. Suppose you study every night for a week, then your parents allow you to see some friends. This is an example of positive reinforcement, because you get the result you want because of a particular behavior.
Let’s say you study all week, you don’t have to mow the lawn on weekends, so that’s an example of negative reinforcement. Because you eliminated an unwelcome consequence. Who likes to mow the lawn?
Notice that in both cases, the goal of getting good grades is reinforced, either by adding stimulus or by eliminating a negative consequence.
Positive reinforcement in user experience design
Now that we have a clear understanding of positive reinforcement, let’s apply this information to ux design. Positive reinforcement is important in frequently used applications, so it reinforces a behavior. Users often have no incentive to act. However, motivation is important for creating a particular behavior. Thus, positive reinforcement creates the right motivation for the user to act. By rewarding users for their behavior, we reinforce their behavior. However, keep in mind that consistent and predictable rewards weaken positive reinforcement. Psychology Today’s article, “Use Unpredictable Rewards to Keep Behavior Going,” teaches us how to Keep positive reinforcement Going with Unpredictable Behavior.
Obachan implements a good but small example of positive reinforcement on his website. Each time a customer adds a product to their shopping basket, the site displays animations and celebratory emojis. Even this brief feedback can encourage users to add items to their shopping basket, which is the most important online operation.
Source: Getobachan.com
Let’s take a look at AdEspresso’s contact form. Once you submit the form, the button text is updated to “sending…” To display the current status. In other words, the site will tell you they have received your submission and are processing your request.
Once the request is complete, we will see a Toast message confirming our submission confirming your submission. This example shows how positive reinforcement can eliminate the user’s feeling of being suspended in the air.
We should not only warn users when they make a mistake, such as not meeting the requirements of a password field. It is equally important to tell users that they are doing the right thing.
We know this might seem like a small user experience addition. However, who doesn’t like a pat on the back? Communicating the success of a form submission to the user is like patting the user on the back and creating a pleasant user experience.
Let’s look at other real-life examples.
Examples of positive reinforcement in user experience
First, Taxfix’s app helps expats file their taxes in Germany. The app guides you through a series of questions to complete your tax return. Most importantly, the app will tell you how much money the IRS will refund in a variety of situations.
Taxfix shows us a positive message when we complete our tax returns as we complete the daunting task of paying taxes.
Most importantly, this behavior is imposed by showing how much we save using Taxfix. Taxfix does an excellent job of creating a positive user experience by directly demonstrating the positive benefits we derive from completing our tax returns.
Also, let’s take a look at Intercom.com. They provide a good landing workflow for users trying to set up their first Intercom dialogue project. It shows both the overall progress and the progress of the different steps. It also gives you detailed descriptions of what information you still need. In addition, you can leave the landing process and pick up where you left off later.
Some other examples of positive reinforcement include:
Tell the user what they have done, such as submitting a form. Reward users for performing critical actions on your Web application. Instead of telling the user what they did wrong, tell them how to prevent the error in the future. For example, give them the option to set default values for form elements, or turn on specific Settings that prevent specific errors. Add visual feedback to user interactions. Use animations to provide users with positive feedback on their progress. Reducing concerns by providing feedback, this allows users to build confidence in the tools they are using. Provide information about why form submission may take longer than expected, or what’s going on in the background. For example, it takes time to convert a video from one video format to another. This is communicated publicly with the Toast message, which notifies users of a slow process and provides them with a progress bar to prevent them from worrying that the tool will not work properly.
In short, we can enhance user activism by providing positive feedback through messages, Toasts, notifications, or status updates.
Reduce user concerns with positive reinforcement
Users may feel worried or even anxious when their interactions with the interface do not provide any feedback.
Let’s go back to the form submission example. What if AdEspresso does not provide any status updates on the submit button or does not display a message confirming that they have received our Toast submission? It’s a natural human reaction for many users to try filling out the form again when the submission is likely to succeed when we don’t receive feedback about our behavior. However, this can increase the user’s sense of worry or anxiety.
Let’s take a look at this small example where not providing positive feedback for submitting forms can lead to more serious problems. Suppose a competitor allows users to upload their completed projects. However, submitting the form does not provide any feedback. As a result, many participants try other means of communication to get in touch with the organizers when they are unsure of the status of their project submission. Participants can use a list of websites, alternative email addresses on social media platforms or even submit via LinkedIn. Competition organizers receive submissions through many different communication channels, which adds an additional overhead to keep track of all submissions.
In short, positive reinforcement can prevent this behavior by simply providing feedback about participants’ project submissions. In other words, positive reinforcement can provide the user with clues about what’s going on.
Positive reinforcement and nudge theory
First, let’s explain the nudge theory. Nudging is an umbrella term for ways of changing people’s behavior by modifying the context of their choices.
Imagine you go to a grocery store and they put unhealthy products at eye level. Next, you go to a grocery store where they put healthy products at eye level. By putting healthy food at eye level, we created positive reinforcement and encouraged users to buy more healthy products, while the first grocery store encouraged the opposite behavior.
INudgeyou conducted a similar experiment to find the effect of food unit size. They served apples and cakes at the two-day meeting. On the first day, they served whole apples and cakes. Here, participants ate an average of 93.9 grams of cake, compared to 12.7 grams of apples. The next day, iNudgeYou cut the apple and cake into small pieces. Now, right now, participants ate an average of 61.2 grams of cake and 20.4 grams of apples. Participants ate 60 percent more apples and 35 percent less cake.
Now we can simulate nudging theory in interface design. Add a little animation to the “Add to Cart” button, which is triggered whenever the user scrolls down the product page and can be nudged to click it.
When you add several items and haven’t added any new items in the past 10 minutes, some online stores try to draw attention to the shopping basket. Here, the site wants to draw your attention to the basket to remind you to check out the products that have been added.
When do we use positive reinforcement?
The most obvious place to add positive reinforcement to network interactions is during data entry operations and form submission. Most online operations revolve around data entry — logging in, registering, commenting, entering purchase details, or updating status.
Here, we found a large potential for user error. We should provide positive feedback about user interactions. Often, users feel insecure about the data format they want. Here, we can eliminate any doubt by providing positive feedback. Assuming the user has filled in the supported zip code format, in this case we display a green check mark to confirm that the data is correct. In this way, we eliminate any doubt and make the experience of filling out the form more enjoyable.
In addition, we can use positive reinforcement to strengthen the user’s relationship with a particular tool. By providing frequent positive validation of their actions, users can quickly gain confidence in using the tool. For example, invoicing tools can show users a badge or a celebratory emoji when they create their first invoice.
In short, positive reinforcement is critical to improving the user experience of a site.
Finally, I recommend some interesting articles for further reading: “How To Use Gamification to Enhance the Learning Process” by Sarah Gallo “6 Proven Techniques to Make Your Customers Pay for Your Time” by Joseph Ola “New Experiments: A simple trick can make you eat healthier, “by Pelle Guldborg Hansen.