What one Psychology course or book you would strongly recommend for people who are building new products?
At the end of the day, I see psychology behind apps and websites. For example, the anonymity in Blind and Quora, "People who visited your profile" in Orkut and Linkedin but it is not available in Facebook. 1) What level of Psychology a software engineer /product manager know? 2) What one solid resource you would recommend (not like BS in Psychology)? #pm #product #productmanager
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465050654/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fB91Eb1PRE2PH Because your product is going nowhere without good UX.
The best apps would be the ones that people always go to but aren't addictive.
Yea in a ideal world I agree. In the FAANG world it’s what metric can you grow for us. All roads lead to direct or indirect monetization , which starts with engagement.
I have had the same dilema than you for years and found very useful all the books recommended above. Another great source is Interaction Design - they have many short courses in Psychology. They’re very comprehensive. https://www.interaction-design.org/courses/psychology-of-interaction-design-the-ultimate-guide
The answers here are good, but since you used the specific examples of Quora anonymity, I felt I had to add this. How anonymity influences 1 single user- that you can learn from psychology. But if you want to understand how it changes the social dynamics of the user population, that would fall more under the realm of sociology. E.g. what is the difference between Quora, StackOverflow, Yahoo answers? At the surface, all of them are Q&A sites, but when you dig deeper, you will find there are a zillion small tweaks that change how the community behaves. E.g. Quora’s incentives structure & social hierarchy is very different from StackOverflow, which is very different from Yahoo Answers. Found this book to be useful for learning more about that: - Kraut, Resnick “Building successful online communities” https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-Evidence-Based/dp/0262016575
The Body Keeps the Score https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771 (Limited applicability to software, but a fascinating read on the link between psychology and trauma)
Brain Rules by John Medina
Don’t make me think - lots of examples of good vs great designs Growth.design also does detailed case studies
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591847788/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bw91EbMBRX8D0 Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593189647/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rx91Eb66E18HE Thinking, Fast and Slow https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374533555/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Yx91Eb3KHY0E0