The Three Levels of UX Design

---

The world is never as it seems and there are always deeper layers to the simplest things. If you are a connoisseur of any kind you will appreciate what this means.

According to Don Norman - the design thinker, researcher and author - there are three levels to design;

- Visceral Design

- Behavioural Design

- Reflective Design

Each level of design corresponds with the levels at which the brain processes information. The visceral is the reactive, automated, hard-wired part of the brain. This is where an animal like a lizard primarily operates. The behavioural level of processing is the level of brain development associated with mammalian life and is associated with the ability to learn new behaviours. Think about the process of teaching your dog new skills. The most complex level of processing is the reflective level, this is where human-beings often operate, we are able to consider and form opinions, tastes and judgements that are often seperate from our behavioural or visceral understanding of the world. This is why you can ride a bicycle (behavioural) while thinking about (reflective) how good your bicycle made you feel when you first saw it at the store (visceral).

The first level of design is visceral. When it comes to UX, visceral design is about beauty, prettiness, cleanliness etc. These things in turn are formed from concepts such alignment, consistency, spacing and colour choices. This level of design is an important starting point. Even at the most rational level, research shows that using more objects which we deem more attractive correlates strongly with greater performance in measured tasks. At the most common sense level, we all prefer things that look nice to us. This is why, in my opinion, it is difficult to be a good UX Designer if you are not at least competent with your User Interface (UI) Design skills.

The second level of design is behavioural. In the world of UX, this is largely about usability. After all, although humans can learn to use highly complex things such as musical instruments, the goal of good behavioural design is to make the usability of something as seamless, simple and pleasurable as is possible in relations to what is being accomplished. This is where a deep grasp of processes such as usability-testing becomes very important for a UX Designer. The improvement of behavioural design is much more iterative and dynamic than visceral design, it is the of job of a UX designer to have their fingers on the pulse of their users’ behaviours and tendencies, only then can we make the small and consistent interactive changes necessary for cutting edge user experience design.

The third level of design is reflective. This relates to designing for the ‘thinking brain’. It is concerned with things such as self-image, personal satisfaction, morality and collective identity. In UX, reflective design is important at multiple levels. For example, if we are designing an online page that we want users to ‘share’ we must design with an understanding of how the content communicates a message aligned with the ‘users’ aspirational identity. In an online world, where user trust must be safeguarded, is your design honest? Are you being upfront with your intentions or not? We live in a world where users have become sensitive to these things and are able to express great displeasure and pleasure with an amplified effect. This is where focus groups and one-on-one interviews, if performed with skill, are highly valuable. In my opinion, it is the job of a UX designer to understand and empathise with the ever-changing range of socio-cultural and psychological reference points of the user. Only then can we create effective reflective design.

And yes, these different levels of information processing are interacting between themselves and how they interact often create the experience but we’ll discuss that another day…

Best,

Mark