A paperback guide to psychology for anyone learning to design

Some readers come to design through a home they have shaped by hand and want to know why certain rooms, pages and objects feel easy to use. This is a guide to human behavior for people who make things for others, organized around one hundred topics and aimed at web, app and graphic work. It offers research rather than rules of thumb.

This is the second edition of 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, a 256 page paperback from New Riders, published June 25, 2020, in the Voices That Matter series. The author, Susan M. Weinschenk, holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and serves as Chief Behavioral Scientist and CEO at The Team W, Inc. She consults for large companies, start ups, governments and nonprofits, and teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin. The book applies psychology and behavioral science to web, user experience and graphic design.

The description frames the problem plainly. Designers want people to buy something, read more or take some kind of action, and designing without knowing why people act as they do is like exploring a new city without a map. The results come out haphazard and inefficient. The book answers with research on specific questions: what grabs and holds attention, what makes memories stick, what motivates people, how music affects the way listeners feel, how a decision can be engineered, what line length suits text, and whether some fonts work better than others. The range runs from font size to online interactions, and the findings are paired with practical examples.

It suits people who design for screens and print and want a reason behind their choices: students, working designers, and anyone building a site or an app for a small business or a project of their own. It tends to matter at the point where taste alone stops being enough, when you need to explain why a layout works or decide between two options with something firmer than a hunch. If your own design work is a home, a kitchen or a garden, the subject is adjacent rather than direct. The focus here is digital and graphic work, so how far the ideas carry into physical spaces is for you to judge.

As a read, it is a single paperback of moderate length. The title points to one hundred separate topics, which suggests a book to open at any page and take in a piece at a time, though that is an inference from the title and format, not something measured. Lynne Cooke, a Clinical Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, is quoted in the description praising it as well written, researched and designed, and says she “can’t put it down.” That is one reader’s response, offered as such.

What stays with you is the premise underneath the list: people behave in patterns that can be studied, and care for the person using a thing is a skill that can be learned. Whether this is the right book now is partly a matter of taste. If you want evidence behind design decisions, it fits well. If you are looking for images, mood or inspiration, it may feel more analytical than you want.