The Design of Everyday Things

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.

Rating:
Summary: Strong point, but missing the main ingredient...
Review: This book is a very good waterdown introduction to the issues most designers have to deal with when developing a project. All types of designers should read this book. It is very helpful because even though Mr. Norman often focuses on industrial products, the information he discusses is pivotal to the success of any product during its design stage. This applies to web designers as much as to industrial designers. I was a little disappointed to read reviews about this book from web designers saying that it was not necessarily helpful because it did not talk directly about web design. The reader should be more open and apply the concepts to their specific design field.

Now, there is a major flaw that I need to note about the book. This one deals with the practical issues behind a design, such as the pressure to show a unique interpretation that might win a prize and at the same time be a best seller with consumers. But the book does not deal with the issues behind desire -- the fact that people often buy things which are not usefull to them but are bought to fulfill their undefined desires. The book does not address this aspect of consumerism at all. All designers need to understand desire as much as possible. Mr. Norman merely mentioned it in the last two paragraphs of his final chapter. And it was in the passing; something which could be missed by someone who is not familiar with that topic in relation to design.

Be aware of that. I do recommend this book to be read. But it would be a very different book if he explored the fact that designers are not only pushed to develop something useful for the consumer, but are also pushed to create myth and desire which will keep the consumer coming back for more things which are not necessary to everyday life.

be aware of this, big, big, big boooooo boooo by Mr. Norman.

Rating:
Summary: From the standpoint of an early design student
Review: This book is an incredible examination of the lack of audience research in industrial design. It cites many different examples of things such as digital watches and even seemingly simple faucets, looking into how these new innovations are complicated to its users. How many times have you heard someone blame themselves for being too "stupid" to work their newest digital gadget? Norman looks into these problems from a psychological standpoint and encourages his readers to look at the design of the product and how users should be able to interact with it, rather than blaming themselves for not being able to work with it properly.

Rating:
Summary: Design for everyday Human Behavior
Review: This is one of the seminal works in the field of User Centered Design. Norman wrote this book well before the Windows operating system was as familiar as the Golden Arches--which only reinforces the idea that certain basic usability principles transcend all forms of objects--from glass doors to Windows Explorer.

Norman does a great job of describing why and how we successfully and unsuccessfully use everyday objects with relevant anecdotes. His stories are usually accompanied with lists of principles that explain good design and account for human behavior. For example, the fundamental principals of designing for people are to: Provide a good conceptual model, make controls visible and to constantly provide feedback to the user.

So how does one employ good user-centered design? Norman recapitulates his points at the end of the book by listing the seven UCD principles for transforming difficult tasks into easy ones:
1.Use both knowledge in the world and in the head

2.Simplify the structure of tasks
3.Make things visible
4.Get the mappings right
5.Exploit the powers of constraints-Natural & Artificial
6.Design for Error
7.When all else fails, standardize

It's mandatory reading for any usability software engineer but also an interesting and well written book for anyone who's ever pushed a "pull door" or scalded themselves in the shower (which is all of us).

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Upon opening "The Design of Everday Things", the first thing I noticed was that ironically, the book itself is not very well designed. The margins on both sides of the page are much too small, making it difficult to read the book without wrenching the it open to reveal the text on the inside of the page. The black and white photos of examples are very low quality, and many appeared blurry. There are also several formatting errors. For instance, a paragraph that should have been all italicized *was* italicized at the bottom of the left-hand page, but when it continued at the top of the right-hand page, it no longer was. Finally, there is very little structure to the book. Norman lays out some design principles, but then doesn't provide any system or structure for elaborating on them. In short, I found it difficult to take seriously someone who does not practice what he preaches!

These design flaws aside, I was still mostly unimpressed with the book. Many of the later chapters just repeat what is said earlier, and whole sections of the book fall into the pattern of "Look at this bad example of design. Now look at this one. Now look..." The first few examples in each section can be entertaining and sometimes illuminating, but after them, reading becomes tedious.

I found that 80% of the value of the book was in the first chapter (pp 1-30), in which Norman lays out four important (and good) design principles. The rest of the book consists of no more than repetitive examples, with some misinformation mixed in. (For example, Norman claims that the human mind has a total storage capacity of 125 megabytes, and implies that each "item" stored in memory is represented by the equivalent of ten 0's or 1's. These claims are patently false. See page 67.)

My last complaint about this book is how dated it is. Yes, the design principles still apply to computer user interface design, but whole sections of the book are comically dated. One example: "I am waiting for the day when portable computers become small enough that I can keep one with me at all times. I will definitely put all my reminding burdens upon it... It has to have a full, standard typewriter keyboard and reasonably large display. It needs good graphics... and a lot of memory--a huge amount, actually."

In sum, I was disappointed with Norman's book. It is not well designed and is quite dated, and most significantly, there just isn't very much material beyond the first chapter or two. Look elsewhere.