Mind Hacks
I’ve just finished reading a great book, Mind Hacks, by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb. It explores 100 different “hacks” related on how our brain and mind work, and how we can find small flaws that expose the way our biological “hardware” / “software” work smoothly (or not) together.
This book should be read for fun by anyone who wants to know more about the human brain, and professionally by all people working on anything that involves interaction with human beings. It’s a great starting point for better design in general, including interface design. Flaws on things we use everyday could be avoided if the people behind them had read this book.
The only thing I didn’t like is that a lot of the examples in the book depend on visiting certain websites, which have to be typed (perhaps they could have also added TinyURL links?). This book would make a great series of DVDs (or a Discovery Channel series of shows).
[...] After reading a recent post by Pedro Pinheiro, my European counterpart (aka Matsu Europe) about Mind Hacks, I was reminded of the writings of Marc Prensky. If you haven’t read them, you should head over there and at least read ‘Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives.’ [...]