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We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.
Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as:
- What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen?
- What makes memories stick?
- What is more important, peripheral or central vision?
- How can you predict the types of errors that people will make?
- What is the limit to someone’s social circle?
- How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step?
- What line length for text is best?
- Are some fonts better than others?
These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.
Immediately useful tips This appealing short book brings together little nuggets of psychology, which the author makes immediately relevant to design decisions.It’s simply and clearly written. You can choose whether to read it straight through, focus on just one of the 10 sections, or simply pick out a single item of the 100. Each one is:- self-contained,- described with an example,- supported by appropriate research, and- finishes with one or more ‘Takeaways’ that you can use immediately.
Concise yet densely packed with UX goodness I have been waiting for a book like this for so many years now. I think with every profession there are certain ideas that are taken for granted and, over the decades, become “fact” for practitioners. But just because research showed something 40 years ago doesn’t mean that study was well done, or correct, in the first place. The strength of this book is that the author cites more recent research about principles you either thought you knew, and were wrong, or that you thought you knew, and are still right. I feel a certain sense of liberation reading a book like this, because if you cannot challenge your closely held beliefs, what kind of professional are you?The structure is terrifically usable: one hundred “chapters” that are often only 1 or 2 pages long. In a book like this, the references are as valuable as the author’s own writing. I can look up the sources and make up my own mind if I have any questions. But most of the time, I appreciate the author’s explanations of the book’s segments:* How people see* How people read* How people remember* How people think* How people focus their attention* What motivates people* People are social animals* How people feel* People make mistakes* How people decide.Amidst all the success of the book is some occasional lack of proofreading on the editor’s part. This is not the author’s fault, but I do think the editor was not up to the task. But that does not inhibit the usefulness of the book. It is dense, yet concise. A really good reference to keep on the shelf at one’s desk, no matter what research and design projects one works on.