100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

Description

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?

Sample Content

Online Sample Chapter

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People: There's a Special Part of the Brain Just for Recognizing Faces

Sample Pages

Download Chapter 4: There's a Special Part of the Brain Just for Recognizing Faces

Table of Contents

The Psychology of Design
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
Bibliography
INDEX

Updates

Updates & Corrections

Page 126, under "FROM ALGORITHMIC WORK TO HEURISTIC WORK," in the sentence:

"But now 70 percent of people (in developing countries) do heuristic work—there are no set procedures."

The text should read "in developed countries" instead of "in developing countries."

Submit Errata