Users do not like to be visually distracted when filling in forms. They often want to get it done as quickly as possible. Therefore it is vital to design a clear and tidy form. Users do not mind filling in a rather long form with easy to understand and neat design than a short, visually cluttered and complicated form.

What should marketers take away from this research? For one, marketers should be very suspicious of market research that claims to uncover the "why" behind a decision, such as "Why did you buy that Budweiser?" This isn't big news, but the research underscores why it might be difficult or impossible for a consumer to explain the thought process behind a purchase (since most of that process occurred subconsciously).

eyetracking can solve the problem of asking the conscious why because we can derive it looking at perception.

Spontaneous is characterized by words like "flamboyant", "unpredictable", "unconventional", "free-spirited", "dynamic"…greatest fear = "boredom".

His mind was distant, his body on auto-pilot. He approached the counter and ordered without glancing at the barista. After the steaming drink was set down, he reached into his coat, pulled out his wallet, removed a bill, and told the cashier to keep the change. "Nice wallet." Looking up, he saw a woman admiring his Braithwaite. "Thanks." "You look a little distracted." As he cautiously began to explain the thoughts that had been overrunning him, she interrupted, surprised to find someone echoing her own enveloping ideas. He smiled as he listened to her recent insights, gladdened to find this new connection: a sense of harmonious collaboration uniting the two as they talked into the night.

Consumer search trends analyzed for the report show that comparison shopping has become a priority, while brand consciousness has lessened in importance. This change in behavior has led advertisers and search engines to adapt quickly to the new economic environment, seeking out new ways to target users.

Principles appear at different stages of a project and can be used in a variety of different ways. Being able to develop useful principles is, in my opinion, a core skill for all service designers.

In my experience, a common misperception of the evaluation of content quality is that its scope is limited to the correction of typos and grammatical errors. Correcting spelling and grammar only scratches the surface. To truly consider content quality, we need to examine its quality along several dimensions. Consequently, the content quality checklists that follow cover everything from usefulness to voice to accuracy.

10 tips for writing effective e-mails

When we look at a scene in front of us, we need to focus on the important items and be able to ignore distracting elements. Studies have suggested that inhibition of return (in which our attention is less likely to return to objects we've already viewed) helps make visual search more efficient - when searching a scene to find an object, we have a bias toward inspecting new regions of a scene, and we avoid looking for the object in already searched areas

The study raises questions about the emotional cost - particularly for the developing brain - of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter. "If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,"

When a digital photograph was attached to a patient's file, radiologists provided longer, more meticulous reports. And they said they felt more connected to the patients, whom they seldom meet face to face.

Hunkering gives the designer a chance to get lost in the reality of their design. Like visiting a vacation spot you've only seen pictures of, the initial impression takes a little getting used to. Then, once you've had a chance to orient yourself, to find the familiar elements you were expecting and place them relative to each other, the vacation spot becomes more comfortable.

Since so many technology companies covet and would love to emulate the kind of phenomenal success Apple has had with the iPhone, maybe the time has come to begin taking visual design seriously. Perhaps now is the time to focus on transforming visual design into a competitive advantage, a way to build relevant differentiation into products

Dating websites will soon be able to compare partners in terms of whether the personal body odour of the other party will be pleasant to them. This has a very serious biological background.

Try to learn as much as you can about the business that you are advising, what drives it, and the changes that it is capable of making. Be user-centred, in the widest sense: the users who will use the product, the staff who will help them to do so, and the client who is commissioning all of it. Involve users as much as you possibly can. If you're forced to do an expert review, at least try to do a 'persona-led heuristic inspection' to bring some users into it.

instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.

Even when you ignore environmental stimuli, your brain may still be sensitive to their content and store information that will influence subsequent decisions,

To avoid unwanted or unnecessary purchases, keep your hands off the goods.

how can you be sure that the car you order will live up to your expectations? European and Asian researchers are using immersive virtual reality and emotional design to offer a solution.

We believe that this circuitry has been co-opted through evolution, enabling the brain to exploit the same circuitry to adjust its sensitivity endogenously," says Reynolds. "It doesn't just adjust sensitivity in response to changes in input strength, it also enables the brain to emphasize task-relevant information and suppress neuronal signals driven by task-irrelevant clutter.