Designing with the Mind in Mind
by Johnson, Jeff · first published 2010
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Explains the psychological reasons behind common UI design guidelines, such as visual perception and contrast, rather than just listing rules; suits designers and developers who want to understand why interfaces work.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…short, we're wired to notice differences in color or brightness than we are for absolute values of color or brightness. As such, it's not about one color, it's about the contrast. Check out Jeff Johnson's Designing with the Mind in Mind: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In... or Colin Ware's Visual Thinking for Design: http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Thinking-Kaufmann-Interactive-T... Both of those do a much better…
on “Design Tip: Never Use Black” ↗> I was heavily inspired by the book “Designing with the Mind in Mind” by Jeff Johnson. Are there any other good resources for learning design principles like this? There are a lot of frameworks like Bootstrap & Foundation that don't provide the tools, but not the insight…
on “Designing for Human Attention” ↗Completing the above, now for UX: — Start by reading "Designing with the mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In...) — Now you understand that UX design is actually cognitive psychology + sociology. Of course, most cognitive psychology/sociology…
on “Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?” ↗"Designing with the Mind in Mind" by Jeff Johnson is pretty good. But it's a book.
on “Ask HN: Can you recommend good papers on UI design for complex systems?” ↗I would also recommend "Designing with the Mind in mind" by Jeff Johnson. Less generic that what has been listed in this article since it focuses more on user interfaces, it's a great overview of basic design principles, with clever illustrated examples.…
on “Design Books Every Hacker Should Read” ↗Great book indeed. Not quite as easily-digestible, but also very relevant and still well-readable: Jeff Johnson's Designing with the Mind in Mind [1], unemotionally explaining the psychological principles behind common HCI guidelines. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0124079148
on “The Psychology of UX” ↗"Designing with the Mind in Mind" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8564020-designing-with-t...) is an excellent book that approaches design from a fundamental psychology perspective.
on “Ask HN: Good books or articles on UI design?” ↗Such checklist/rule based approaches do not help anyone. Trying to understand why the said rules work from the standpoint of visual perception is much more beneficial in the long run. Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson (of Xerox PARC) is an introductory book on the why behind UI design guidelines that I often recommend to entry level designers.
on “Rules for creating good-looking user interfaces” ↗…was another online paid tutorial site. Yes, it says "Downtown Chicago" above the "Apply now" button. No, it is not perceptually visible, and it needs to be since this is a critical constraint. The book "Designing with the Mind in Mind" gives a great overview of some of these issues.
Thanks dude. Totally agree about Designing with the Mind in Mind. Another similar book is 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. Here's a little gem that summarizes some of that material: http://uxmag.com/articles/psychological-usability-heuristics Excited…
on “Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?” ↗…impressive results values in mimicking the brain functionality based on the human cognition and brain neurology and it is about time the user interface aspect get the same treatment. Excellent books like Designing with the Mind in Mind can be a good guiding principle based on human cognition for effective and intuitive user interface [1]. For the research presented by data it is kind of plain obvious that your childhood upbringing…
on “This is a teenager” ↗"Designing with the Mind in Mind" includes a summary of time intervals which are significant for interface design. http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In...
on “Ask HN: What response time is acceptable for auto complete inputs.” ↗