People prefer to stick with the current situation rather than change. William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser (1988) summarized many studies on the idea of status quo bias. Their conclusion is that when choosing from alternatives, people have a bias towards sticking with the status quo.…

Here’s something that’s at least a little ironic: if reading is so unnatural, maybe we should let it go. I say ironic because I’m an author. I write books with words in them and assume (and hope) that people will read them. So it doesn’t…

Many people now do some of their reading (as defined in the section above) on paper and some on an electronic device. The world seems split these days between people who like reading physical books and those who prefer reading on a device. Even with…

One of the ideas I talk about a lot when I give keynotes is that technology changes quickly but humans don’t. Most of the ways that people’s eyes, ears, bodies, and brains work has come about from eons of evolution. And these aren’t likely to…

That is, if they read it at all. Clicking Doesn’t Mean Reading As the CEO of Chartbeat, a company that analyzes real-time web analytics, Tony Haile (2014) has seen a lot of data on what people are doing online. In the advertising world, clicks were…

You are, unfortunately, working late at night again. You have a report due in the morning but it isn’t quite done, so you’re sitting in your home office trying to finish it. You decide to take a short break from the report and read one…

If you’ve ever had to name a button on a website, app, or landing page, then you’ve probably had the moment where you’re going back and forth between options. “Sign up” or “Register”? “Order” or “Shopping cart”? Is there a way to word these requests,…

For years, I—and most other designers I know—have believed, and written, and taught that if you want whatever you’re designing to be easy to understand and use, then you have to make it easy to read. You have to use a font size that’s large…

If you’ve ever deleted some information and then realized that you didn’t want to delete it and tried to undo the action you will realize how important feedback is to humans. The computer doesn’t need to tell you that it in fact reversed the action…

People don’t like being bored. It’s boring to be bored. People prefer taking action because it provides a sense of control and reduces uncertainty. One of the reasons that modern apps and social media are so popular is that they are easy to use in…