Review: 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan M. Weinschenk, Ph.D.
This book is pretty self-explanatory. It is, literally, 100 things that every designer needs to know about people. And, quite honestly, I think it's a book that even non-designers should read. It enlightens users on how they, well, use the web.
Weinschenk is a great writer; she has anecdotes, examples, and thoroughly explains every "thing" in this book, and even references other books she's written about certain topics.
Her first section is called "How People See," which details how users see things with their brains. She goes into detail about the psychology of the brain with her first "thing": What You See Isn't What Your Brain Gets. She also delves into other interesting "things," such as meanings behind colors vary between cultures, things that we see close together belong together in our mind, and peripheral vision's importance in every day life (yes, even on the internet).
She continues on to different sections:
"How People Read" (font sizes, line lengths, etc.)
"How People Remember" (how short-term memory works, how much we can remember, etc.)
"How People Think" (how we process information in bite-size chunks, wandering minds, ways to be creative, etc.)
"How People Focus Their Attention" (attention is selective, multitasking is not what we think it is, what gets our attention, etc.)
"What Motivates People" (variable rewards are powerful, we are inherently lazy, forming habits takes a lot of small steps, etc.)
"People Are Social Animals" (we can tell when a smile is faked, group size limit is smaller than you think, etc.)
"How People Feel" (there are seven basic emotions, we go to the familiar when we are sad or scared, anecdotes are more persuasive than data, etc.)
"People Make Mistakes" (there is no fail-safe product, not all mistakes are bad, etc.)
"How People Decide" (mood influences decisions, people think choice = control, etc.)
This book reads very easily. Most "things"/ chapters are only a few pages long and are filled with little blurbs of additional information in different colored boxes, making it read much like a textbook. And at the end, there is even a "Takeaway" section, which briefly sums up what was discussed in the chapter in bullet points. Weinschenk knew that designers (and perhaps other people) would be reading this, and may only want to freshen up on certain topics, so these short, yet detailed chapters are easily comprehensible.
I would highly recommend reading this book, even if you are not a designer. As someone still learning about this field I learned a lot about what I need to do as I progress through my career; but I also learned about how I, as a user, influence designers and how designers influence me. I've learned that some things I do on the internet are for a reason. In addition, I've learned why ads and flashy things are almost always on the side (*cough* #2: Peripheral Vision is Used More than Central Vision to get the Gist of What You See *cough*).
My Rating: 5/5. Get the book here.
