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What makes a product feel not just usable, but desirable?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Marty Gage, co-author of User Experience Research: Discover What Customers Really Want, about how teams can move beyond guessing and uncover the experiences people actually desire.

Marty shares a practical framework for connecting emotional needs to product strategy: desired emotional states, benefits, features, and sensory cues. They discuss why great design is not just about making something easy to use, but about understanding how people want to feel, what value they want from an experience, and what details communicate that value.

The conversation explores useful, usable, and desirable design, the meaning behind cues like simplicity, familiarity, organization, and accessibility, and how methods like collaging and contextual inquiry can help teams translate customer insight into actionable design direction.

If you want to build products and services that connect with people, align teams, and reduce the risk of guessing wrong, this episode offers a clear way to think about user experience research as the foundation for better innovation.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

If this show has been useful or thought-provoking for you, please do us a favor and help other people discover the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast player.

To leave a review on Apple Podcasts: search for The Design Psychologist, tap the show, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit “Write a Review.”

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How many users do you actually need for a usability study?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Laura Faulkner about one of the most repeated ideas in UX research: that five users are enough. Laura explains why that rule of thumb can be useful in some situations, but dangerous when teams treat it like a law.

They discuss sample size, research risk, stakeholder alignment, and why the real question is not “How many users?” but “What decision are we trying to support, and what happens if we miss something important?”

Laura also shares practical advice on making research more influential inside organizations: sharing early and often, treating research as community property, helping stakeholders take ownership of findings, and building a point of view from human data rather than personal opinion.

The conversation also explores synthetic users and AI, including where AI can help researchers think through test plans and where teams still need fresh data from real people.

If you want to design better studies, communicate findings with more impact, and help research actually change product decisions, this episode gives you a grounded, human-centered way to think about evidence, risk, and influence.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

If this show has been useful or thought-provoking for you, please do us a favor and help other people discover the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast player.

To leave a review on Apple Podcasts: search for The Design Psychologist, tap the show, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit “Write a Review.”

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What does it actually mean to say a product is usable?

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, Thomas Watkins talks with Phil Kortum about the System Usability Scale, or SUS: one of the most widely used tools for measuring usability. They discuss why this 10-item questionnaire has lasted for decades, what makes a usability metric trustworthy, and how researchers can use SUS scores to compare products, track improvement, and communicate usability in a shared language.

The conversation covers why a number is not automatically objective, how SUS differs from measures like Net Promoter Score, when the positive version of SUS may be better to use, and why usability researchers still need effectiveness and efficiency measures alongside subjective ratings.

They also explore Phil’s work on voting systems, where usability is not just about convenience but whether people can successfully cast a vote.

If you want to understand how to measure human experience with more rigor, this episode gives you a clearer way to think about usability, evidence, and the difference between a score that sounds scientific and a metric you can actually trust.

If today’s conversation helped you think more deeply about your work, I’d love it if you left a quick rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening app. It helps more thoughtful designers discover the show—and keeps these meaningful insights coming your way. Just a star rating or a sentence or two makes a big difference. Thanks for listening!

If this show has been useful or thought-provoking for you, please do us a favor and help other people discover the show by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast player.

To leave a review on Apple Podcasts: search for The Design Psychologist, tap the show, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and hit “Write a Review.”