Books like 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

01

The Design of Everyday Things

Donald Norman · Psychology

The Design of Everyday Things began as The Psychology of Everyday Things when first published in 1988, and Donald Norman revised it substantially for a 2013 edition that updated the examples for a digital age.

A kindred psychology read.

02

Designing Design

Kenya Hara · Philosophy

Kenya Hara is one of Japan's most respected graphic designers, best known for his long association with Muji, and Designing Design is his attempt to articulate what design actually is — and, more specifically, what distinguishes a distinctly Japanese approach from the Western design tradition.

A kindred psychology read.

03

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Wassily Kandinsky · Philosophy

Wassily Kandinsky's 1911 manifesto is the founding document of abstract art.

A kindred psychology read.

04

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman · Psychology

Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, published in 1995, made a widely influential argument: that the cluster of abilities involved in managing emotions — self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skill — predicts life outcomes at least as well as IQ, and possibly better in many domains.

A kindred psychology read.

05

Laws of UX

Jon Yablonski · Science

Laws of UX is Jon Yablonski's collection of ten principles drawn from psychology and cognitive science that bear directly on user interface design.

Shares user experience and cognitive science with 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.

06

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

Both dig into cognitive science.

07

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Timothy D. Wilson · Psychology

Timothy Wilson's central argument is uncomfortable: we don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

Both dig into behavior.

08

The Time Paradox

Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd · Psychology

The Time Paradox is built on a single, counterintuitive claim: that the most powerful force shaping your decisions is not your values, your personality, or your intelligence — it's your habitual time perspective.

Both dig into behavior.

09

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Frans de Waal · Science

Frans de Waal's central argument is that we've spent most of the last century asking the wrong questions about animal intelligence.

Both dig into behavior.

10

Learn Like a Pro

Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe · Self-help

Learn Like a Pro is a concise, evidence-based guide to studying more effectively, written by Barbara Oakley — the engineer-turned-neuroscientist best known for A Mind for Numbers and the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn" — and Olav Schewe, a student learning consultant.

Both dig into cognitive science.

11

Make It Stick

Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger and Mark A. McDaniel · Science

Make It Stick is a book about how memory actually works, and why the study techniques most people rely on — re-reading, highlighting, massed practice — are among the least effective ways to learn.

Both dig into cognitive science.

12

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook

Jim Kalbach · Business

Jim Kalbach's The Jobs To Be Done Playbook is a practitioner's guide to applying the jobs-to-be-done framework in product development and innovation work.

Both dig into user experience.