My Interview with Dr. Susan Weinschenk about Her 100 Things

I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Susan Weinschenk regarding her new book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. Susan is Chief of User Experience Strategy at Human Factors International, which is where we first met (Susan was instrumental in landing me my first job at HFI!). In her latest book, Susan combines psychology with user experience into a Top 100 list to make you better designers. Without further ado, let’s see what the @thebrainlady has to share about herself and her new book.

Back when you got started, what made you become interested in applying cognitive psychology to technology?

I was a psychology grad student, working on a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. Penn State had a language requirement for grad students, but you could substitute a programming language for a foreign language. So I took my first programming course. This was many, many years ago. Computers were not user-friendly – in fact the term “user-friendly” had not been invented yet. I became interested in what would happen when everyday, normal people had to use computers…not computer scientists. (Back then you only interacted with a computer if you were a specialist.) So my career in usability/human factors was launched the moment I received my first computer printout that said, “Job aborted”.

What motivated you to write this book?

The book comes from my blog. In October of 2009 I started the series “100 Things You Should Know About People”. I had just read the book and seen the movie, “Julie and Julia”. The book and movie are a real life story of a woman who started a blog to write about making all the recipes in Julia Child’s book over the course of 365 days. I became interested in what made a blog really popular. I decided that people liked going on a “journey” with the blog author. So I decided to write a 100 things blog series. I didn’t realize at the time that it would take me 1.5 years and would turn into a book! I like to write books. When I decided to write another book turning the blog into a book was one of several ideas that I sent to my editor at Peachpit/New Riders. He liked that idea the best, so that’s what the book became. With the popularity of interface design/usability/user experience, there are people from many different disciplines who now “do the work”. Many, if not most, of the people doing the work these days do not have a psychology background. And, of course, because I have a psychology background, I think the psychological point of view is critical to design.

How did you narrow the book down to these 100 things?

It wasn’t easy! I kept writing and writing for 1.5 years. I reviewed new research and old research, and then worked to organize the material in a way that I thought would make sense. It was very hard to come up with exactly 100…no more, no less.

As an Asian person who grew up in the west I found #39 “Culture Affects How People Think” unbelievable. Have you applied this concept to any of your own design work? If so, could you share an example?

I don’t personally do design work for other cultures. I work collaboratively with colleagues in those other cultures, but I don’t do the design for those projects. It’s probably better to have people from the culture do the design. But now that I’m familiar with that research I try to make less assumptions and then test, test, test, of course.

In #46 “People Actually Can’t Multitask,” you wrote about how age does not determine better multitasking experience. Are there any studies about sex and multitasking – I heard that women are better multi-taskers since we have a much thicker Corpus Callosum (bridge that connects the right and left frontal lobes)?

The latest research shows that it is not true that women have a thicker corpus callosum — Luders, Eileena; Narr, Katherine L.a; Zaidel, Eranb; Thompson, Paul M.a; Toga, Arthur W. (2006). “Gender effects on callosal thickness in scaled and unscaled space.”. NeuroReport 17 (11): 1103–1106. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000227987.77304.cc. PMID 16837835. (Although interestingly which gender you feel you are is determined by the shape of your corpus callosum– Dubb A, Gur R, Avants B, Gee J (2003). “Characterization of sexual dimorphism in the human corpus callosum”. Neuroimage 20 (1): 512–9. doi:10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00313-6.PMID 14527611)

#56 “People’s Ability to Delay Gratification (or Not) Starts Young” is intriguing. Has there been new data from the research that is still in progress?

There is ongoing, longitudinal research on delaying gratification. It seems to be a personality trait that you are born with or not, and being able to delay gratification is a marker for success in our modern culture.

Even as a pioneer in the industry I’m sure you look to others for inspiration, who do you follow to stay fresh?
I have many blogs that I follow that review various research studies. I am also a voracious reader. I usually have about 5 books going at any one time. I am a fast reader. I read literally hundreds of books every year.

What are the key things you want people to take-away from the book?

That there is a body of research and knowledge about people that you need to know about and apply if you are designing anything a human is going to use, and that people are endlessly fascinating.

About Dr. Susan Weinschenk
She has a Ph.D. in Psychology (from Pennsylvania State University) and over 30 years of experience applying psychology to the workplace. She has written several books including the aforementioned and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? (New Riders Press). She is Chief of User Experience Strategy at Human Factors International. She is also a great speaker and presenter. You can catch up with her on her blog What Makes Them Click or follow her on Twitter at @thebrainlady.