What is Halo Effect in UX design?

The Halo effect is a social psychology phenomenon that causes people to be biased in their judgments by letting their feelings about one trait influence their overall opinion of the product. This can have both positive and negative consequences.

• If a user likes one aspect of something, they are likely to form a positive opinion about the whole product.
• If a user dislikes an aspect of something, they are likely to form a negative opinion about the whole product.

There is no logical reasoning that supports the formation of bias off of only one aspect. However, it is exists.

Why does the Halo effect exist?

The Halo effect allows us to make “snap judgments” as we form an opinion and claim to “know” something just by seeing one aspect of the product or interface. As Humans, we have inherited this from our ancestors who needed this to survive.

Halo effect in interfaces

The Halo effect can impact interfaces, just like any other product. A user will likely carry their first impression of an interface forward for a long time.

A famous example of this – found by the thinking aloud technique by Neilson Norman group – is the website’s internal search feature. When users felt that the website’s search results were bad, they formed an opinion that these people do not care about customers since they have made such a poor website. This led to them thinking that they should not buy any of the website’s products.

Another impact of the Halo effect appears while setting up an account on a website or an app. If it is extremely complicated to make an account, or provides a poor user experience because of any other reason, the users will likely have a negative impression that will impact every future action they perform on the website.

The website below has a complicated sign-up page with information scattered everywhere, along with a poor UI. All these elements could lead to a poor impression being formed about the website.

Research conducted by Lindgaard and Dudek in 2002 showed that the visual appeal of an interface impacts user satisfaction rates. Despite having a task failure rate of over 50%, user satisfaction remained high with the websites they found visually appealing.

It is essential to consider the Halo effect while designing interfaces, as one aspect of the interface will impact user perception about the entire website and its products (if applicable).