Visceral beauty in a website can even trump actual usability: if a page has poor usability, users will still like it if they find it attractive.

cognitive load. If we are trying to make a buying decision and there are many factors to take into account – such as weighing up prices, product features, how often we might use the product, whether the product is likely to be better quality than the other options, etc – it can overwhelm and overtax our conscious System 2 minds

Neuro design is the use of insights from neuroscience and psychology in creating more effective designs.

When our brains are offered choices that are too complex to fully research and rationally compute, we fall back on our gut feelings. These gut feelings are often driven by mental shortcuts

A/B testing only took designers so far. Neuro design allows them to understand and predict which designs are likely to be more effective before they even exert the effort to create them.

saliency map. This is a visual map of whatever our brain thinks is worth drawing our attention to.

indulgence, were triggering related concepts in the minds of participants and affecting their behaviour. This shows how priming also triggers the things that we mentally closely associate with the prime: such as old age being associated with walking more slowly. The images we see immediately before or at the time of a decision can influence our beh

‘expressivity halo’: ‘people who communicate in an expressive, animated fashion tend to be liked more than difficult-to-read people; even if they are expressing something such as irritation. Because we’re more confident in our reading of them, they are less of a threat.’

For many purchase decisions we don’t invest too much time or consideration. We just get a quick feel for whether we like a brand or product and whether we think it matches what we are looking for. Psychologists call this type of conclusion drawn on small bits of evidence ‘thin slicing’.