The Design of Everyday Things

This is a blog post for the summary and discussion of our first reading assignment: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman.

This book is all about analyzing 'everyday things' - figuring out why they are successful or failures. As we can see by the cover, not everything is a success. Norman covers all types of things - phones, doors, and watches seem to reappear quite often in his analysis. In this analysis, the main objective is to find principals of good design. In fact, he encourages the reader to not feel discouraged when they cannot understand simple things. Instead, he says the designer is to blame... Interesting.

When reading the book, I noticed that Norman would come up with an idea then share a story about how the idea occurred. I liked that structure. Norman would then go into some detail about the idea and why it was important to good design. While reading, I tried to take note of some of these features:

• Conceptual models allow users to understand how to use something just by looking at it. An example he gave of this was scissors - it is obvious that your hands go into the holes and there is then only logical way to move your fingers. This is also an example of physical constraints which limits the actions one can perform with the object.
• Feedback is essential in design. When a user is performing options in a word processor (an example Norman uses), they need some response to what actions they have taken. If there is no feedback, the user can become confused and perform the same action multiple times without realizing that the action has been noted by the processor.
• Mappings are important to design, and natural mappings are something that all designers should strive for. A natural mapping that Norman mentions is a steering wheel in a car. Turn it left and the car turns left... Natural, what a great idea! Seems simple enough, but some designs really mess up here. If there are 10 buttons on a machine, the designer should strive to have around 10 functions, not 30.
• Visibility is an area that is interesting as well. This idea possibly takes away from the elegance of something, however it is essential in a good design. Of course we all like large, glass doors that are aesthetically pleasing. But is it worth the cost of being confused when you arrive at the door - push or pull? Norman argues that good design comes before beauty.

It was pretty cool to read through the book and soak in all the experiences that Norman discussed. My favorite part of the book was reading through all of the different stories he shared about encounters with good and bad design. It was also interesting to read why he thought each was good or bad. I have not really broken down everyday things with such scrutiny, it is almost humorous how much we take these devices for granted. However, we all remember that really crappy soda machine that never seems to work precisely how you expect it to. Bad design is something that we take note of - it can be really frustrating! Good design is something that is natural to understand and use, so we often discard merit of good design because it is expected. If there is anything to take away from this book, I would say it is to take note of good design in everyday things - really take the time to learn why it is so natural to use.

There is one part where I stray from Norman's thoughts. I think that visibility is important in design. However, I do not think that it should trump elegance. If something is aesthetically pleasing to look at, consumers are naturally inclined to buy it. Especially compared to something that looks like... Ugh! Hopefully designers can find a way to integrate elegance and functionality, but elegance should never be completely disregarded.