I’m not sure where I saw this book recommended, but I think it was on a list of science books everyone should read
somewhere. It looked rather interesting, so I put it on my list at the library. Turns out it’s not really science, so perhaps I am mis-remembering the source of the recommendation.
What it is is part polemic, part an explanation of methodology. Donald Norman uses everyday things to illustrate how design can and should be done to making things usable for everyday people. Sometimes things are designed pretty well: push bars on doors for instance. Sometimes not so well: clear doors with no visible cues on whether to push or pull.
The target audience for the book seems to be mostly laymen. Norman repeatedly tells his readers it’s not their fault if things don’t work right for them. If they were designed properly, these objects would be usable. Although he does include a methodology and some classifications of things like errors that normally would be directed at professionals, in this case it seems to me his aim is slightly different. If you don’t think of things like this, I’m hoping my readers (i.e., your customers) will and will force you to.
Norman is basically pushing four principles:
- Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment by constraining what actions a user can actually do. For example, make a computer disk so that it can only go into the drive in the correct manner.
- Make things visible. Levers and push bars and whatnot that give clues as to what is possible.
- Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system. Using appropriate sounds and visual signals. Kind of the same as the previous principle, except that this applies to what the system currently is, rather than what you can do.
- Use natural mappings so that people associate the actions naturally, or think of what can be done the way they would do other things. For instance, make a switch that moves up roll a window up, rather than have the switch move down to roll the window up.
He has a lot of details for specific systems, but those examples and instructions seem more about illustrating the polemic than they are for creating a complete methodology.
One problem with the book was just that it felt really dated to me. Whenever Norman used examples that weren’t everyday objects, such as computers, those examples are mired in the days of WordPerfect and DOS. For example, he used as an example the task of deleting files. Norman suggested having a temporary
place where such files go so that errors in deleting could be recovered from. We’ve had the recycle bin
in Windows for 14+ years and longer in other operating systems. So some of his recommendations, while good, might not really resonate anymore.
The really big problem though was that the text really seemed to wander a lot. While each chapter has a theme, mostly it seemed like those themes were pretty fuzzy. The practical effect was that Norman included a lot of design horror stories no matter what the actual topic was. They weren’t off-topic exactly, but each felt more like another in a long litany of horror stories.
Overall, the message is still relevant though. Lots of things really are needlessly complex, and designers really should pay a lot more attention to regular users rather than their other biases such as cost, aesthetics, or use by power users. Worthwhile reading, but be prepared to skim.
Some other blogged reviews:
Title: The Design of Everyday Things
Original title: The Psychology of Everyday Things
Author: Donald A. Norman
Imprint / publisher: Basic Books / Perseus
Format: Paperback
Length: 216 p. (not including supporting material)
Publication date: 2002 (originally 1988)
ISBN-10: 0-465-06710-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-465-06710-7
Subject: Design, Industrial — Psychological aspects
Subject: Human engineering
LC classification: TS171.4.N67 1990
