100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

Design is as much about psychology as it is making pretty mockups or complex task flows. User-centered design is all about people; the better we understand how they think, read, and act, the better our work will be.

Unfortunately, learning cognitive psychology can seem out of reach for designers. It’s complex and time-consuming to learn. Often, it’s difficult to transform the academic research into applicable insights.

Fortunately, Susan Weinschenk (Ph.D. in Psychology) has made it easy. Each chapter in her book discusses a psychology insight directly applicable to design, supported by case studies and anecdotes. My favorites were on canonical perspective, how people learn information, and the goal-gradient effect. It’s an interesting book and a good “Psychology 101 for Designers.”