“Susan is an International Treasure to the User Experience/Human Factors profession. Through her writing and speaking, she is the most effective bridge between academic research and applied design in the world.”
Her clients call her ‘The Brain Lady.’
Forbes called her “a real Ph.D. level expert.”
To the rest of us in the design community, she’s known simply as Susan Weinschenk. Her accolades on right on the mark though— she graduated from Penn State University with a (you guessed it) Ph.D. in psychology. She specializes in brain science, behavioral science, and user experience design. What started out as one psychology student’s interest in technology developed into a lifetime of innovation in combining the fields of neuroscience and web design.
Her early career focused on studying the ways that people remember, think, and perceive (called cognitive psychology). Her goal was to understand this kind of everyday unconscious mental processing we all go though so she could use it to make technology easier to use. It was just an interest then, but one she would carry with her throughout her career.
Weinschenk recieved her undergraduate degree form Northeastern and then she went on to finish a Masters as well as a Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. After graduating, she became a professor and taught psychology for several years at State University of New York (Oswego).
Today, she lives with her husband in Wisconsin, and her career focuses on using psychology to enhance user experiance. By studying what motivates and influences human behavior, Weinschenk is better able to understand not only what consumers need from products, but what companies need to do to attract more customers. Weinschenk is the founder of The Team W, a business wich consults and coaches individuals and companies on the design for websites, medical devices, software, television commercials, physical devices, experiences, and physical spaces to make them more usable, motivating, and persuasive.
She is a pioneer in behavior design, a field which is behavioral psychology applied to design (be is product design, web design, graphic design, etc) for greater consumer engagement. She has published five books on the subject, including 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, How to Get People to do Stuff, and Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?
For an article written by Weinschenk about her work with user experiance, click here.
For an interview with Weinschenk by Dominion Enterprises, click here.
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