Like listening to a greatest hitsalbum to get a feel for a band’s most influential work, reading 100 Things Every Designer Needs to KnowAbout People by Susan M. Weinschenk, PhD, is an excellent way todelve into design through the lens of how people think and interact.
The book covers some of the mostimportant lessons for designers from Daniel Pink, Steve Krug, John Medina,Sheena Iyengar, Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi, Paul Fitts, and many other writers andresearchers. (J.M. Keller, creator of the ARCS model of instructional design,even gets a nod.) At the very least, the book provides good entry points to theseexperts’ work for those who want to explore further.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People is broken downinto 10 chapters based on how people see, read, remember, think, focus theirattention, are motivated, interact, feel, make mistakes, and decide – allthings that designers and educators could benefit tremendously from knowing moreabout! And I especially liked how Weinshenk debunked many “common knowledge”myths. Here are a few lessons from the book.
Vision trumps all of the senses
The first two chapters, “HowPeople See” and “How People Read,” are full of practical, tactical lessons fordesign of both graphics and text that any designer will be able to use rightaway. For example, you may know that you shouldn’t use red and green as thesole indicators of right and wrong because some people are color-blind. This booktakes that a step further by showing what different screens look like withdifferent types of color deficiencies, and even gives Web sites that show youthe same for your own designs.
Some of the most powerfullessons in the “How People See” chapter have to do with the impact ofperspective and placement of elements on the screen, and how people interpretmessages based on them. For example, if there are two blocks of text close toan image, with one below and one on the right, most people will associate thetext below with the image, rather than the text on the right. The lesson forthe visual designer who wants to create clearly understood interfaces is clear.
Weinshenk also debunks severalmyths about the readability of serif versus sans serif type, all-caps versusmixed case words, and longer versus shorter lines of text. Citing researchstudy after study, she makes a distinction between practices that improvereadability versus practices that change people’s perceptions of readability.Frustratingly, these effects are sometimes at odds, but at least this bookhelps you make informed decisions about how to design for each effect.
People don’t remember well
At all.
Several items in the “How PeopleRemember” list might be a little frightening to people who design stuff thatthey hope learners will remember. At the same time, though, your experiencewith learners or friends and family has probably clued you in to how quicklypeople forget even important events, and how prone people are to fill ininformation around their gaps. To me, these facts together make a fairlycompelling argument for favoring performance support over courses wheneverpossible so that learners don’t have to rely on memory. As Weinshenk writes, “Designwith forgetting in mind. If some information is really important, don’t rely onpeople to remember it. Provide it for them in your design, or have a way forthem to easily look it up.” Having said that, sometimes you do need youraudience to remember something – especially in the short term. This bookprovides for that too, with guidelines for presenting information in ways thataid that process.
Emotion is important, too
As instructional designers, manyof us are used to appealing to people’s brains with facts and data. Butmarketers know that behavior change more often comes from people’s emotions,and Weinshenk doesn’t neglect the emotional side of design. Throughout the bookshe pays a lot of attention to the importance of story in helping people makeemotional connections to content, building intrinsic motivation to engage withcontent, and even understanding and retaining information.
In the “How People Feel”chapter, though, she hones in on specific ways to appeal to people’s emotions,such as using anecdotes instead of data, capturing attention through surprise,establishing trust through a site’s visual design, and promoting a sense ofachievement through challenge.
Conclusion
As broad-based as this book is,it’s also a really easy read; each of the “100 Things” is no more than a fewpages long and she writes in an entertaining and personal way. It’s easy toread straight through and it’s a great on-the-go read as well, as you caneasily read a few things any time you have to wait for a plane, a bus, a train,or a meal. It would also be a great book for a design study group or, as Imentioned earlier, as jumping-off points for those who want to study more abouthow to design with a human audience in mind.
Have you read this book? Whichof the “100 Things” was the most powerful for you as a designer? Let’s talk – commentbelow or tweet using #lswellread!
Bibliographic information
Weinschenk, SusanM. (2011) 100 Things Every Designer Needsto Know About People. Berkeley: New Riders. 256 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0321767530.
Publisher’s List price: $29.99
Amazon: Paperback $17.99, Kindle $10.80
Barnes & Noble: Paperback $17.99, NOOK $13.19
