Designing with the Mind in Mind

Jeff Johnson, who has worked in human-computer interaction since 1978 and is the author of GUI Bloopers 2.0, presents the ideas from his book Designing with the Mind in Mind in this 2013 talk. Early user interface practitioners were trained in cognitive psychology, and the first UI design rules were based on it. As the field has grown, designers have come to it from many disciplines, and while most have been exposed to design rules, they don’t always understand the psychology behind them.

Johnson’s aim is to give designers just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that UI guidelines make intuitive sense instead of being a list of rules to follow. Knowing why, when and how a rule applies lets practitioners make informed decisions on every project, including when they face tradeoffs such as competing design rules, time constraints or limited resources.

Many patterns in the UI-Patterns.com library, such as recognition over recall and chunking, are built on the same cognitive principles.