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
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