Contents, Alphabetical 
Introduction
001 Abbe Principle
002 Accessibility
003 Ackoff’s Law
004 Aesthetic-Usability Effect
005 Affordance
006 Alignment
007 Anchoring
008 Anthropomorphism
009 Aposematism
010 Apparent Motion
011 Appeal to Nature
012 Archetypes, Psychological
013 Archetypes, System
014 Attractiveness Bias
015 Baby-Face Bias
016 Back of the Dresser
017 Biophilia Effect
018 Box’s Law
019 Brooks’ Law
020 Brown M&M’s
021 Bus Factor
022 Cathedral Effect
023 Causal Reductionism
024 Chesterton’s Fence
025 Clarke’s Laws
026 Classical Conditioning
027 Closure
028 Cognitive Dissonance
029 Color Effects
030 Color Theory
031 Common Fate
032 Comparison
033 Confirmation
034 Confirmation Bias
035 Consistency
036 Constraint
037 Contour Bias
038 Control
039 Convergence
040 Conway’s Law
041 Cost-Benefit
042 Creator Blindness
043 Crowd Intelligence
044 Death Spiral
045 Defensible Space
046 Depth of Processing
047 Design by Committee
048 Desire Line
049 Development Cycle
050 Diffusion of Innovations
051 Don’t Eat the Daisies
052 Dunbar’s Number
053 Dunning-Kruger Effect
054 Entry Point
055 Error, Design
056 Error, Human
057 Expectation Effects
058 Exposure Effect
059 Face Detection
060 Face-ism Ratio
061 Factor of Safety
062 Faith Follows Function
063 Feature Creep
064 Feedback
065 Feedback Loop
066 Fibonacci Sequence
067 Figure-Ground
068 First Principles
069 Fitts’ Law
070 Five Hat Racks
071 Five Tenets of Queuing
072 Flexibility Tradeoffs
073 Flow
074 Forgiveness
075 Form Follows Function
076 Framing
077 Freeze-Flight-Fight-Forfeit
078 Gall’s Law
079 Gamification
080 Garbage In – Garbage Out
081 Gates’ Rule of Automation
082 Gloss Bias
083 Golden Ratio
084 Good Continuation
085 Groupthink
086 Gutenberg Diagram
087 Habituation
088 Hanlon’s Razor
089 Hick’s Law
090 Hierarchy of Needs
091 Highlighting
092 Horror Vacui
093 Icarus Matrix
094 Iconic Representation
095 Identifiable Victim Effect
096 IKEA Effect
097 Inattentional Blindness
098 Interference Effects
099 Inverted Pyramid
100 Iron Triangle
101 Iteration
102 Kano Model
103 KISS
104 Knowing-Doing Gap
105 Learnability
106 Left-Digit Effect
107 Legibility
108 Levels of Invention
109 Leverage Point
110 MAFA Effect
111 Magic Triangle
112 Maintainability
113 Mapping
114 Maslow’s Hammer
115 MAYA
116 Mental Model
117 Miller’s Law
118 Mimicry
119 Minimum-Viable Product
120 Mnemonic Device
121 Modularity
122 Nirvana Fallacy
123 No Single Point of Failure
124 Normal Distribution
125 Not Invented Here
126 Nudge
127 Number-Space Associations
128 Ockham’s Razor
129 Operant Conditioning
130 Orientation Sensitivity
131 Paradox of Great Ideas
132 Paradox of Unanimity
133 Pareto Principle
134 Peak-End Rule
135 Performance Load
136 Performance vs. Preference
137 Perspective Cues
138 Perverse Incentive
139 Phonetic Symbolism
140 Picture Superiority Effect
141 Play Preferences
142 Poka-Yoke
143 Premature Optimization
144 Priming
145 Process Eats Goal
146 Product Life Cycle
147 Progressive Disclosure
148 Progressive Subtraction
149 Propositional Density
150 Prospect-Refuge
151 Prototyping
152 Proximity
153 Readability
154 Reciprocity
155 Recognition over Recall
156 Redundancy
157 Reverse Salient
158 Root Cause
159 Rosetta Stone
160 Rule of Thirds
161 Saint-Venant’s Principle
162 Satisficing
163 Savanna Preference
164 Scaling Fallacy
165 Scarcity
166 Selection Bias
167 Self-Similarity
168 Serial Position Effects
169 Shaping
170 Signal-to-Noise Ratio
171 Similarity
172 Social Proof
173 Social Trap
174 Status Quo Bias
175 Stickiness
176 Storytelling
177 Streetlight Effect
178 Structural Forms
179 Sunk Cost Effect
180 Supernormal Stimulus
181 Survivorship Bias
182 Swiss Cheese Model
183 Symmetry
184 Testing Pyramid
185 Threat Detection
186 Top-Down Lighting Bias
187 Uncanny Valley
188 Uncertainty Principle
189 Uniform Connectedness
190 User-Centered vs. User-Driven Design
191 Veblen Effect
192 Visibility
193 Visuospatial Resonance
194 von Restorff Effect
195 Wabi-Sabi
196 Waist-to-Hip Ratio
197 Wayfinding
198 Weakest Link
199 WYSIWYG
200 Zeigarnik Effect
Credits
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index




 

Whether a marketing campaign or a museum exhibit, a video game or a complex control system, the design we see is the culmination of many concepts and practices brought together from a variety of disciplines. Because no one can be an expert on everything, designers have always had to scramble to find the information and know-how required to make a design work?until now.

William Lidwell is the Chief R&D Officer at Avenues: The World School, where he leads teams tasked with conducting research in education and the learning sciences; the development of new educational curricula, programming, and technologies; and the architecture and design of new campuses around the world. The co-author of Universal Principles of Design and The Pocket Universal Principles of Design, he has written other books in a variety of disciplines, including design, education, and management. His online lectures on the psychology of color are available at TheGreatCourses.com, and his online courses on the universal principles of design and logo design are available at LinkedInLearning.com. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Kritina Holden is a Human Factors Technical Fellow with Leidos at the NASA Johnson Space Center. She has over thirty years of experience working in the area of Human Factors, with a focus on human-computer interaction (HCI), human-centered design, and usability. She has served as Principal Investigator for several NASA-funded research efforts, including studies onboard the International Space Station. She is also a subject-matter expert for all of the major spaceflight programs. Tina received her Ph.D. in Engineering Psychology from Rice University. She lives in Houston, Texas.Jill Butler is the founder and president of Stuff Creators Design, an interaction design consultancy. She has over twenty years of experience designing, teaching, and consulting in the areas of graphic design, information design, and typography. She has designed covers, layouts, and typography for more than a hundred published novels and children's books, and more websites than she can count. Her current focus is the UI/UX design of global online K-12 learning systems. Her online courses on the universal principles of design and typography are available at LinkedInLearning.com. She lives in Houston, Texas.