The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

A lot of people voice their disappointment with this book, because they expect it to be an in-depth, authoritative guide written for professional designers, and it turns out to be something else. Let me tell you a little secret, design people: it's not "the design bible", it's not "the UX bible", it's not anything bible. It's more of a religious pamphlet aimed at laymen who don't normally think about design in their everyday work, to bring them the gospel of good design practices in an extremely condensed form. Developers love this book, because it's good (duh!) and also because it comes with recommendations from several luminaries in the field, most notably Jeff Atwood, the co-founder of StackOverflow. I'm no exception. It helped shift my focus from making software that does its job well, to making software that helps its users do their jobs well. It explains in very simple terms why you should care about how users experience and interact with the things you make and how to start thinking about making their interactions more satisfying and rewarding. It also walks you through the typical interaction cycle, from the idea of action that user wants to perform, to the interpretation of feedback they receive; it is a tremendous help when you are trying to 'debug' the interactions and figure out the exact reason why users find your design distracting, irritating or counter-intuitive. There are sections clarifying the terms you might have heard elsewhere but don't know exactly what they mean (A/B testing, root cause analysis, iterative vs. waterfall approach) or how they might help you improve your design. There is a particularly illuminating chapter explaining why fridge controls and stove controls (among many other things) come in so many different and incompatible designs, how companies are trying to solve this problem with standardization and why standards sometimes create more problems than they solve. What else? It's also short, well-written and entertaining. The jokes are rare, poignant, and usually delivered with a deadpan snark. To give you an example, "The typewriter was a radical innovation that had a dramatic impact upon office and home writing. It helped provide a role for women in offices as typists and secretaries, which led to the redefinition of the job of secretary to be a dead end rather than the first step toward an executive position". Nice, huh? To summarize: buy this book if you want to know more about design in general and/or become a better designer to complement your other skills. Don't buy this book if you expect a huge how-to manual or a cookbook aimed at experienced designers.

When I bought this book I assumed this was written by an industrial design engineer giving examples of good and bad designs. But this mainly addresses topics of design philosophy and user psychology. Still good, still worth a read.

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman “The Design of Everyday Things” is a very good sequel to the first edition of this book, “The Psychology of Everyday Things” published in 1988. In this informative and enjoyable edition, educator and cognitive engineer, Don Norman provides readers with an interesting look at what constitutes good design. An advocate for user-centered design this is a helpful introduction to the world of design. This enlightening 370-page book includes the following seven chapters: 1. The Psychopathology of Everyday Things, 2. The Psychology of Everyday Actions, 3. Knowledge in the Head and in the World, 4. Knowing What to Do: Constraints Discoverability, and Feedback, 5. Human Error? No, Bad Design, 6. Design Thinking, and 7. Design in the World of Business. Positives: 1. An accessible and well-researched book. Excellent resource for professionals in the field but intended for all to enjoy. 2. The interesting topic of design in everyday products. 3. Don Norman’s credentials are outstanding and his mastery of the topic is manifested from his astute observations based on experiences in engineering, cognitive science and business. “My experiences in industry have taught me about the complexities of the real world, how cost and schedules are critical, the need to pay attention to competition, and the importance of multidisciplinary teams.” 4. A very good format. The book starts with a clear preface on where the book is going to take you. 5. Good use of tables and charts to complement the narrative. 6. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on what constitutes good design. It all starts with asking the right questions and Norman does a wonderful job of that. “Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding. Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them? Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?” 7. Explains the differences between the three main designs discussed in this book: industrial design, interaction design, and experience design. 8. Norman is an advocate for human-centered designs. “The solution is human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.” 9. The six fundamental principles of interaction: affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, feedback, and the conceptual model of the system. These principles are discussed with many examples to help the reader understand these important concepts. “Good conceptual models are the key to understandable, enjoyable products: good communication is the key to good conceptual models.” 10. Helpful insights on how people use products; and the seven stages of action. “When people use something, they face two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where they try to figure out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where they try to figure out what happened.” 11. One of the strengths of this book is the very important but often times ignored aspect of psychology in design. “The approach I use here comes from my book Emotional Design. There, I suggested that a useful approximate model of human cognition and emotion is to consider three levels of processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.” “All three levels of processing work together. All play essential roles in determining a person’s like or dislike of a product or service.” 12. A key premise of this book, “…in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error.” “The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.” 13. A chapter dedicated to how knowledge of the world combines with the knowledge in the head. “The design implications are clear: provide meaningful structures. Perhaps a better way is to make memory unnecessary: put the required information in the world. This is the power of the traditional graphical user interface with its old-fashioned menu structure.” 14. An excellent chapter on how designers can provide the critical information that allows people to know what to do, even when experiencing an unfamiliar device or situation. The four kinds of constraints: physical, cultural, semantic, and logical. 15. Insights on how to deal with failures. “Interruptions are a common reason for error, not helped by designs and procedures that assume full, dedicated attention yet that do not make it easy to resume operations after an interruption. And finally, perhaps the worst culprit of all, is the attitude of people toward errors.” 16. Type of errors, the difference between mistakes and errors. “Slips occur when the goal is correct, but the required actions are not done properly: the execution is flawed. Mistakes occur when the goal or plan is wrong.” “What is a designer to do? Provide as much guidance as possible to ensure that the current state of things is displayed in a coherent and easily interpreted format—ideally graphical.” 17. A key tidbit on checklists. “It is always better to have two people do checklists together as a team: one to read the instruction, the other to execute it.” 18. The key to success of resilient organizations, “A resilient organization treats safety as a core value, not a commodity that can be counted.” 19. Many great examples of sound design thinking. The Human-Centered Design Process. “There is no substitute for direct observation of and interaction with the people who will be using the product.” 20. A real-world practice that resonates, “In product development, schedule and cost provide very strong constraints, so it is up to the design team to meet these requirements while getting to an acceptable, high-quality design.” 21. Notes, references, and so much more… Negatives: 1. I would have liked to have seen more examples of product failure. Perhaps, legal matters interfere with authors’ ability to share such information. 2. More illustrations would have been helpful. 3. For those of us in the field, appendices that provide more detailed information would have added value. 4. The kindle did not take advantage of its linking capability. In other words, the notes provided were not linked. In summary, this was a very informative and enjoyable book to read. Norman succeeds in providing readers of all backgrounds with helpful insights on what constitutes good design in everyday products. A highly recommended read! Further recommendations: “Emotional Design” by the same author, “Inspired: How to Make Products Customers Love” by Marty Cagan, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal, “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People” by Susan Weinschenk, “Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy” by Cindy Alvarez, “Principles of Product Development Flow” by Donald G. Reinertsen, and “Well-Deigned” by Jon Kolko

Another great book for the year 4.5 out of 5 stars. While popular among designers (especially the UX/UI community), I’d say the design and psychological concepts presented have a wide range of applicability to any industry and for consumers/users of anything and thus I hope more people read it. As someone with a background in healthcare and who has been reading broadly on self-help and global issues, I found many conceptual ties between the design concepts in the book and each of these topics that people tend to treat as separate silos. For instance, are the treatment plans therapists create fully useable from the patient’s perspective? We like to write that we sent the patient home with their home exercise plan(HEP) and patient was able to verbalize (and sometimes return demonstrate) understanding but how likely are the patients to recall what was taught once home? If they don’t recall what is available to help them recall what terms mean and what the exercise looks and feels like? And better yet, how can we improve the delivery of the HEP to improve adherence to the program? Beyond healthcare, how are we designing whole industries and systems? Design thinking differs from the thought processes in other areas of study yet I see some possible applicability/laterally transferable aspects to processes such as differential diagnosis in science. Overall this is a great intro on the process and a great addition to anyone’s mental toolbox. Content aside: Norman can be dry at times (or maybe it was the subject?). Some sections feel a touch too brief (likely because he had to edit it down to a manageable book size). The book’s look and feel (size, matte finish, page quality, use of font sizes and alignments) were delightful except for the black and white photos that needed more contrast (or color) to illustrate their point.

I've just started reading this book - and I must say I am quite impressed. I've read a few reviews that essentially accused the author of being a cranky old guy complaining about how the world has changed - and I must agree with them. However, as far as I'm concerned, it's a message that needs to be heard. Not all change is good... and, many times, change makes the world more complicated to navigate... often in ways that are not at all helpful. Many modern products are very poorly designed when it comes to little details like practicality and usability. And too many designers of modern equipment and software expect their users to either already know how to use their product - or to be willing to do extensive research, or read a long detailed manual, before being able to use it. When I purchased my last new car I didn't need to read a book before being able to drive it off the lot. So why DID I need to look up the details about how to make a phone call on my new phone? Shouldn't how to make a simple phone call be simpler and more obvious than how to drive car? And, likewise, shouldn't it be obvious how to turn a lamp on and off? Doesn't this seem like a bit of a step backwards to you? Advanced features are very nice, and can be really handy once you understand them, and set them up, but you shouldn't need a manual to make a simple phone call. (If you were trapped in a burning building, and you found a phone lying on the floor, but it wasn't the same brand as the one you normally use, would you be able to figure out how to call 911 on it? And, for that matter, could you even trust that a modern hotel room would have a plain old light switch located at the normal spot on the wall next to the door?) My point is that this book provides an EXCELLENT perspective on the things we SHOULD be paying attention to when we design things... and it's great that someone is putting that sort of thinking into print, to remind us that designs need to be both attractive, functional, and practical, before we forget that little detail entirely.

I used this for my design class. This helped open my mind to scenarios that we need to think about the pros and cons of the situations.

Finally I got a chance to read this amazing book. Don Norman treats design very methodically and shows that good design is not a black box but something even more analytical people can understand and apply. There are many important lessons but I found the concepts of discoverability, affordance, signifiers, feedbacks, mappings and constraints a simple, yet a powerful model to understand design. I am not a designer by a far stretch but I can now appreciate good vs bad design with a deeper understanding of the designer's intent in building something. Even of design is not your field, you will greatly benefit from the book and you will realize that design is not just a touchy feely topic. Although, I would have to say that for a design book, the images are not printed very well (in the paper back edition). And the during introducing the core concepts, in the first chapter, the author forgot to include 'constraints'. Also the order of these terms keep changing though out the book. This does not align well with the mapping concept the author so strongly professes. However, now that this edition is out, don't get the previous version, since this one has far more relevant examples including hand held devices. As an additional resource, there is also a design course on udacity offered by Don Norman.

I find the history of small things quite interesting. I love seeing how history is created not by seismic events but by small rather insignificant looking items. I came across The Design of Everyday Things after reading the excellent works of Steven Johnson: How We Got to Now and Wonderland. I assumed Don Norman’s book would be the same vein. Unfortunately, it is not. Do not misunderstand me, The Design of Everyday Things is a good book. Instead of examining specific items, Norman really discusses the overall design of things, focusing mostly the psychology and how humans interpret the world. This is a very interesting subject; a subject that I have read about extensively. However, this just was not the book I was looking for. So, all in all, this was a consumer error, which is funny, because a major theme in the book is that user error is usually a design problem. Therefore, I would say that the title and the cover art of this book misled me. The original title of this book was The Psychology of Everyday Things. I think the original title is more appropriate. With the current title, I assumed the author would spend more time scrutinizing the design of individual objects, their history, and their progression. Maybe with a little more research, I would not have made this mistake.

Kocht deze versie als geschenk. De uitgave is enorm teleurstellend... Cover foto helemaal uitgewassen en lage resolutie.

I read the book and sometimes got a little confused but I read most of it drunk. He gives a lot of cool examples that make you go "Oh that's why fire escape doors have that bar in front of them and open outwards". I wish more people in the design/manufacturing field would have read this book. It would make for far less waste and frustration in the world

Das Buch war an der Uni für die Einführungsvorlesung zu Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) Pflichtlektüre. In der Vorlesung wurde es als ein Muss für alle vorgestellt, die UI/UX-Design machen. Nach zweimaligem Lesen kann ich dies bestätigen. Aber auch für Leute, die mit HCI oder Design nichts am Hut haben, kann ich das Buch empfehlen. Es liefert einem eine ganz andere Sichtweise auf Dinge, die man täglich im Leben benutzt. Und da ist meine größte Erkenntnis: Fehler durch "menschliches Versagen" - egal ob das große oder nur kleine Auswirkungen hat - sind meist nicht durch den Menschen verursacht, sondern durch schlechtes Design. Das ist eine Denkweise, mit der man sich selbst weniger herunterzieht. Norman macht aus etlichen Beispielen aus dem Leben deutlich, wie einfach oder kompliziert Gegenstände entworfen werden. Dabei gibt er einfache Modelle, die helfen das menschliche Handeln und die Psychologie hinter ihrem Handeln zu verstehen. Er beantwortet Fragen wie: -Wie funktionieren mentale Modelle? -Wie denkt der Mensch und führt Aktionen aus? Was können dabei für Probleme auftreten? Was ist wenn Fehler auftreten? -Wie funktioniert (vereinfacht) das Gedächtnis und was können wir daraus für Design lernen? -Wie kann Design Menschen dazu beeinflussen das "Richtige" zu tun und Fehler zu vermeiden? -Wie kann ein Team im Idealfall ein Designprojekt funktionieren? Die Beispiele aus dem Alltag, die er in dieser überarbeiteten Version anführt, sind so gewählt, dass sie modern sind und wahrscheinlich auch noch in einigen Jahren aktuell sind. Auch wenn es nun bereits einige Zeit her ist, dass ich das Buch gelesen habe, denke ich immer noch häufig an Beispiele aus dem Buch; zum Beispiel wenn ich wieder einer "Norman-Tür" begegne und drücke statt zu ziehen, oder wenn ich zum hundertsten Mal versuche die Temperatur in meinem Kühlschrank anzupassen, den Drehregler aber immer noch nicht verstanden habe. Das Buch ist sehr gut lesbar, sprachlich einfach gehalten, interessant und unterhaltsam. Es gibt einige Abbildungen, die zum Verständnis beitragen. Fazit: Klare Leseempfehlung.

What an amazing book

Bazı şeyler gerekenden fazla, bazıları da gerekenden az detaylandırılmış ancak kitap anlaşılır ve güzel. Fakat büyük problem basımında. Cidden orijinal bir kitabın kapağının bu kadar kolay aşınmaması gerekirdi. Özellikle sırtının köşesi çok aşındı.