Design Psychology

The study of the cognitive processes, mental models, and decision-making strategies that designers employ during the product development process. In the context of accessibility, design psychology is relevant because accessibility guidelines and resources must align with how designers actually think and work — supporting action-oriented approaches, facilitating trade-off decisions, and allowing designers to draw on past experience. Research has found that many accessibility resources fail to account for design psychology, presenting information in ways that do not match designers' cognitive workflows, which contributes to the slow adoption of universal design practices in product development.