Final Cmap- Assignment 2

Here is my final Cmap that does not look very pretty as I struggled to add all the maps together. For me the last of the Cmaps was the hardest as it was confusing to connect all 7 maps due to the amount of information on each map which made me think that I should have maybe made less complicated maps as I started. On the other hand I had fun mixing them and to remind myself everything I learned in the course.

Book review on Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

When reading through Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday Things there were one conclusion that I made to myself and that was that the book is a good starting manual for a good designer and that the book is aimed for everyone not only designers because it touches our everyday lives and objects around us but also because it is written so clearly and enjoyably that it is not hard to understand. I guess Donald Norman is pursuing to turn every reader of this book into great observer as poor design gives rise to many of the problems in current society, especially in new technology. On the other hand after reading the book it will also turn us into observers of good design where considerate designers have worked to make our lives easier and it is actually interesting that good design is a lot harder to notice than poor design. Norman explains that notion that good design is harder to notice because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible and ‘serving us without drawing attention’ [1]. Bad design on the other hand screams its shortcomings and therefore making itself very noticeable. Further on it could be argued that what Norman is trying to give away is that we all would need good observation skills along with good design principles because everyone is a designer, meaning that in different ways all of us design our lives, our living space and the way we do things. Therefore for example we can also design our surroundings and overcome the flaws of existing devices which makes one purpose of this book to give us back control over the products in our lives so we could select usable and understandable ones or to have the know-how how to fix those that are not that usable and understandable.

Norman introduces seven chapters in his book; Psychopathology of Everyday Things, The Psychology of Everyday Actions, Knowledge in the Head and in the World, Knowing What to Do, To Err Is Human, The Design Challenge, User-Centered Design.  Chapter by chapter Norman is explaining with illustrative examples most important principles, goals, interpretations and aims of design and especially in design of our everyday things. Through these examples Norman introduces the basics of HCI terminology and the main concepts such as affordances, visibility, mapping, constraints and more. Norman concentrates on a person’s perception of an object and on how people approach tasks that designed objects are meant to help with and thus poses as a supporter of a user-centered design approach.

Norman starts of by focusing on an importance on affordances and arguing that affordances are important when dealing with physical objects and defining what actions are possible. In other words affordances refer to the perceived and actual properties of the object, providing strong clues meaning that when affordances are being used correctly the user of an object knows just by looking the object and without needing  labels, pictures or instructions how to use it and what’s it for. The classic notion of a bad failed design is when simple things need pictures, instructions or labels. What Norman has argued when I researched for reviews about the book that on the recent edition he feels that what was missing is the concept of signifiers as affordances can be confusing when dealing with virtual ones and as a result Norman argues affordances have created much confusion in the world of design. Signifiers however specify how people discover those possibilities as they are signs and predictable signals of what can be done. By that Norman implies that signifiers are far more important to designers than affordances.   Further on Norman introduces and explains the seven-stage model of action and explaining how people do things; what are our goals, execution and evaluation. These seven stages are the following: forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the action, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the state of the world and evaluating the outcome [1]. Norman also reflects to the importance of seven stages of action as a valuable design aid as each stage of action requires its own special design strategies and on a crucial notion of constraints and visibility. Visibility being one of the most important principles of design as Norman argues; the correct parts must be visible and thus convey the correct message [1]. This notion could be seen also as one of the main elements of the book that keeps repeating throughout is the fact that these so called human errors are caused by bad design. I could even argue that the simple notion of visibility made me think about things that surround me the most and the way the message about using them is conveyed to me.

To conclude we can argue that even though the book is written in 1988 the psychology of people stays the same but what changes are the tools and objects in the world, also cultures change. This is why at times it seemed that the book needs more recent examples of different devices that are popular today as technologies change. The principles of design still hold but the way they get applied needs to be modified. However as already stated in the beginning of the book, it is a great starting manual for everyone and an interesting read. It was useful to remind all the important aspects about design principles learned in HCI class. The book got me interested and I Googled for a review and it seems that the book has been assigned in different courses and handed out as required readings in many companies and many readers have admitted that the read changed their lives, making them more sensitive to the problems of life and to the needs of people. And interestingly enough some people changed their careers and became designers because of the book. In the end part of the book it is nice that Norman gives concrete list of tips to make design of everyday things better such as get mappings right, exploit the power of constraints, design for errors and when all else fails, standardize [1].

Bibliography

        1.  Norman, D. A. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, United States of America