Design of Everyday Things - Full Blog

Reference

Design of Everyday Things

Donald Norman

Basic Books 2002

Summary

In this work Norman explores the ideas that lead to both successful and unusable design. He provides several real world examples of items that are difficult and easy to use. Some of the key concepts enforced for designers are: project the state of the system in a way the user can understand, give effective feedback to the user for each action, consider the user's susceptibility to making mistakes, provide natural mappings for controls, and constrain the user when possible.

Significant consideration is given to the case in which a user makes an error and must understand the situation. Norman argues that some users attribute blame to themselves and therefore create an inability to use similar systems. Norman points to the designer as the person at fault for these outcomes. Exploration of the differences between different error types are also explored. The ultimate advice seems to be the designer taking user's mistakes into account ahead of time.

Finally, Norman examines how humans perceive and store knowledge. A strong arguent for pitting information into the world is presented. Norman also strongly advocates researching natural mappings and constraints as part of design.

Discussion

This book is a great introduction to issues which all designers should become familiar with. Many interesting real world examples of design issue are given and are somewhat surprising. Very good points about what factors make a design excellent are presented. Overall it is of great use to any Computer Scientist, not only for UI design, but also for architecting code and systems in ways which are understandable and usable by others. The only downside to this book was its rather repetitive nature.