Designing for People

Whether it is the car you drive or the app on your smartphone, technology has an increasingly powerful influence on you. When designed with people in mind, this in influence can improve lives and productivity. This book provides a broad introduction on how to attend to the needs, capabilities, and preferences of people in the design process. We combine methods of design thinking and systems thinking to understand people’s needs and evaluate whether those needs are met.

This book also provides a detailed description of the capabilities and limits of people—both mental and physical—and how these can guide the design of everything from typography to teams and from data visualization to habits. The book includes:

Over 70 design principles for displays, controls, human-computer interaction, automation, and workspace layout

Integrative discussion of the research and theory underlying these guidelines, supported by over 1,000 references

Examples of successful and unsuccessful designs and exercises that link principles and theory to applications in consumer products, the workplace, and high risk- systems

For instructors teaching user experience and human factors courses we have created a Facebook group to share teaching materials and suggestions

This is the third edition of An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering (Wickens, Lee, Liu, Gordon-Becker, 2003) textbook. It shows how psychology students can apply their knowledge to design and engineering. It also shows designers and engineers how to consider the capabilities and limits of people in design.