Reinforcement In UX Design

Using reinforcement strategies to provide a better user experience.

The basic meaning of reinforcement is the process of reinforcing also means strengthening.

Reinforcement is a psychological term used to explain the psychological concepts of human behaviour. It refers to any stimuli which strengthen or increase the probability of a specific response. There are two parts of reinforcement; one is a reinforcer, and the other is a response.

We apply reinforcers every day, like saying “good job” to a kid after he cleans his room or training a dog with treats to follow commands.

Here treats or “good job” acts as a reinforcer and cleaning the room and following the commands are response.

A simple way to understand the difference positive and negative reinforcement:

Positive (+) means addition. Positive reinforcement is adding something to increase a response. For example; Treating the dog after he follows the command or praising the kid after he cleans the room.

Negative (-) means subtraction. Negative reinforcement is taking something away to increase a response. For example, You took a kid’s favourite toy until he cleans the room or withholding payments until the job is complete.

How can we implement reinforcement in designing digital products?

In the current scenario, there are numerous apps which are so similar to each other ‘its end goal, information architect, user interface, users criteria’ these elements hardly differ. So how can you compete or launch a better product in the market?

User Experience can be the key.

Many times we fill our data in the never-ending forms and after hitting the “submit form” the page goes blank, putting us in an uncertain situation about the process. But if we can replace the blank page with a simple message saying “Thank you for submitting! We are processing our data.” Whole experience changes.

These clear messages and concise confirmation updates the user about their successful interactions. This way of implementing positive reinforcement can give a pleasant experience.

Another prevalent example of positive reinforcement is “Rewards”. Rewards work as a motivator for the user to take action. Knowing your user (their desires and fear) and finding the most motivating reward for them. These kinds of interaction can attract more users for the product.

Talking about the negative reinforcement means “something bad”.

Negative reinforcement doesn’t make a good impact on users. It leaves a negative experience on the user. Purposely sabotaging user with consequences to motivate them or change their behaviour can make them quit the platform immediately. Users are fickle — they can abandon the product anytime.

Social media platforms are rich and most controversial platforms. They use both positive and negative reinforcement to maintain the pleasurable experience for all the users and sets the best example for negative reinforcement. On exploiting the guidelines or on offending other users, some platforms take away the advantages from the offenders and based on their behavioural change; they start giving the rewards back.

The implementation of positive and negative reinforcement in a smart way can provide an engaging and enjoyable experience. With them, we can create a safe platform for all kinds of users.

Each interaction a user makes with the platform is like putting a brick of the wall of your experience. We can optimise the experiences by rewards and simple confirmation messages through positive reinforcement and by negative reinforcement, we can ensure safety on a bigger platform with a large number of users.

Using principles of both UX design and behavioural psychology in designing a product can create a mindful design and eventually increase the success rate of the product.

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