The Design of Everyday Things

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, a seminal work of design psychology
Review: Although this book is a product of the 1980's, its essential premise is not dated nor obsolete. Dr. Norman vividly illustrates the good and bad of design, and provides an excellent guidebook for the understanding of basic user-centric design in products, fixtures, software, and the everyday things that make up our world.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the design and creation of software, architecture, or consumer products. You will find some dated, quaint information within its pages, such as the descriptions of the "computer notepad" and hypertext (both of which came to fruition with Palm Computers and the Web), but, as a whole, the book is a collection of relevant, interesting material. It is an excellent starting point for the study of design.

For those interested in additional study on software and user interface design (programmers, such as I), I recommend Alan Cooper's books on user interface design, and ANY of Jakob Nielsen's books. In addition, the Edward Tufte trilogy on visual representations is extremely good, although not software-specific.

Rating:
Summary: Helpful for any Field of Design
Review: As a game designer, I approached this book with an open mind, not knowing if I could pick anything up from it. It surprised me though. Although the book was written in 1987 and could use an updated version, the design principles stated there remain relevant up to today, even in a field that had been rarely touched upon when that book was written. (Yes, it does talk about games, but only in terms of difficulty level, and only pertaining to D&D.) In particular, the game designer could look at the Seven Stages of Action to see if her game is performing up to par on the usability front.

You might not find anything here that is imemediately useful in your design work, but all designers worth their salt should broaden their horizons and continuously search for things, both new and old to be able to use in their craft.

Rating:
Summary: this is a smear
Review: Don Norman is the kind of smart, grandfatherly figure who has been allowed to reach the utmost of his personal limitations. If you see one of his cranky live appearances, you at once realize you've found someone whose self-regard is surpassed only by Edward Tufte. They're both curmudgeons of the first order who profess to know what is wrong with the design of objects and information. But with a quick glance at their books you can determine their actual worth. The most useful design lesson from this is the one he inadvertantly teaches: He previously published this book as The Psychology of Everday Things because he thought it was nifty that the initals spelled "P.O.E.T.." How that for a design rationale? Adding insult to injury he gave a later book the Oh-Come-On! title: "Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles." Aside from being a precious, dumb title, it's also an impossible read. On top of that, "Au-to-mo-biles?" This guy is old guard. This book dissappeared at some point in my travels and I didn't notice because it's advice is now so basic there's no need to refer to it again. I hope they eventually release this book on wax cylinder so I can listen to it on my Victrola.

Rating:
Summary: A New Perspective for Designers of Anything
Review: Donald Norman provides a new and interesting perspective to the design of ordinary objects. His title sums up the topic of his book perfectly. Throughout the book, Norman provides examples of objects that are either poorly designed or well designed. He makes us think about not only the objects in his book but also about objects we come across everyday. After reading this book, I found myself analyzing the design of ordinary items all the time. I recommend this book for anyone who is designing or inventing anything. The book is an easy read and appropriate for a wide range of audiences.

Rating:
Summary: A major disappointment
Review: I found this book to be a major disappointment. The author does have a collection of anecdotes about poorly designed items he's encountered but the constant whining gets tiresome very quickly. He then promised to offer some insights into how to get the design process right but never quite managed. The best he could come up with was these four bullet points:

* make it easy to see what's possible
* make it easy to see what's not possible
* make it easy to see what happened
* make the mapping between action and effect obvious

Even if you do find those points insightful, you'll find that beyond examples of when those points are violated, there is precious little useful advice on how to achieve these things.

The physical book itself was hardly a model of good design. The margins were far too narrow with some headings disappearing completely into the binding area and random paragraphs were set in italics for no apparent reason.

Rating:
Summary: The Sound Basis for good functtional design
Review: I have really enjoyed reading this book, and I have been challenged by its message.

I have learnt ergonomics as part of a mechanical engineering degree and I can assure any of you that the basics presented there are well covered by this book. It has nothing on population data and such, but the essential foundation for good design is an understanding of the psychology of using things and performing tasks. Norman takes you through this psychology clearly and carefully.

This book deserves its modern classic status and will serve you well as a primer for user-centric design.

Rating:
Summary: See The Psychology of Everyday Things
Review: Take a look at the The Psychology of Everyday Things (the hardcover edition of this book). They changed the title for the paperback edition.

Rating:
Summary: See The Psychology of Everyday Things
Review: Take a look at the The Psychology of Everyday Things (the hardcover edition of this book). They changed the title for the paperback edition.

Rating:
Summary: Review of The Design of Everyday Things
Review: The books makes some interesting points and is well worth reading. However, the presentation seems to me rather too enthusiastic. I feel a more considered approach may have been better for the subject. The content is also rather dated now. Many of the pictures seem poor quality and not always very helpful.
I have one specific criticism and this causes me to wonder about the relevance of some of the other points made in the book. A picture of a sound mixing desk is shown as an example of a poorly designed product. Actually all the mixing desks I have come across have been quite well-designed for their purpose. If he considers mixing desks so bad a design, perhaps the author should be challenged to come up with a better one.
In summary, this is an interesting book, but not the great book the hype would have you believe.

Rating:
Summary: Good Info but needs a rewrite
Review: This book contains some good information but needs to be rewritten making it more to the point. It also needs more clear definitions of what it is talking about. It sure did seem to go on and on about things that I think about all the time anyway. Sure does not deserve a 5 rating and a 3 damns it too much so finally I end up with a 4 that seems a bit too high... 3.5 would be fair.