Neuroscience

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan M. Weinschenk, PhD

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People is a list of all the bits of psychology that they should be teaching in design school. It’s neatly organized, easy to refer to, and easily the best $30 I’ve spent on books in the last few years. If you’re even remotely interested in improving the effectiveness of your designs through an understanding of cognition, this is a great place to start.

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide is a dissection of the unconscious systems we use to make decisions. He takes us through the impossibly complex system of rewards that form our emotional decision making system and ultimately make us supremely efficient decision makers, even if it seems like we make bad decisions all the time. Awareness (I won’t say understanding) of these systems is incredibly enlightening for designers.