Review is recent but this is about Don Norman's book from the 1980's, if anyone was expecting something new. IMHO the book was ok but it didn't wow me or anything like that, had a fair amount of stuff that I subjectively felt was wrong (matter of opinion), and a smaller amount of stuff that I thought was objectively wrong (he said X off the top of his head, but published studies said otherwise). I haven't read the review yet. Will try to do so tomorrow.
The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
31–40 of 128 posts
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#32Warning: this book leaves some permanent imprints in your mind that will forever cause you to be annoyed at badly designed doors and other things.
It's a constant frustration when I go into someone's kitchen that they obviously spent thousands on, and I see a hob with up/down buttons, or a stylish but absurdly unusable sink faucet.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#33This is definitely one of the books that has shaped my thinking the most. The book argues very strongly for functional design and design that makes usage obvious. “The way you use a thing should be encoded in the way the thing is, not in a manual”. I’ve been told there’s a follow up that concedes some of this and argues for emotional design. Something a long the lines of “this thing doesn’t need this handle, but it m…
I don’t[1] use a cover for my phone and it seems mostly fine. Granted, I probably wouldn’t be super sad if it were to smash and I had to buy a replacement and maybe I’d be more careful if it would be worse for me. I’m also not so concerned about resale value and therefore micro scratches or slightly chipped/deformed corners. Maybe the newer design of iPhone is less rugged than the rounded design mine has.
Maybe I’m just good at being careful and not smashing it but I do plenty of other quite careless things.
Another thing to consider is that some people own expensive watches that can be many times more expensive than on iPhone. They don’t have covers (can get scratched up; if they have thin plating in a precious metal they can’t take much polishing; can be expensive to repair). I don’t know how bad it would be to smash the face of a watch on eg the corner of a table. Maybe only the crystal would need to be replaced or maybe the hands/dial would be damaged and expensive to repair. Maybe those people just aren’t so afraid to damage/replace their watch but I find that a little hard to believe.
[1] ok I did used to have a cover but I dropped my phone onto a tile floor from ~2.5m (using the flashlight to try to change the lightbulb in a windowless room) and damaged the cover so I stopped using and after that I didn’t really miss it. (And I have a headtorch now…)
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#34Warning: this book leaves some permanent imprints in your mind that will forever cause you to be annoyed at badly designed doors and other things.
> badly designed doors
The lesson I took away is to delete the door if you can figure out how to get the customer to agree.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#35Well the reality of industrial designers is quite interesting. I have a good friend who is doing this (his own small studio) and as someone with a software background the processes are mind boggling. The politics involved are amazing. Weeks of debating color choices. Back and forth between departments (including the realization at a couple of month in that production costs would be through the roof...something mentio…
I used to work for a mortgage broker, and there was a "Best Mortgage Broker of 200x Award" that basically rotated each year around the participating companies.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#36For me one lesson was that when we fail to properly use a thing we should blame that thing for its bad design instead of ourselves. Another was that obviousness of a feature is how that thing will be used. You don't want people placing stuff on top of walls, don't make them flat.
> For me one lesson was that when we fail to properly use a thing we should blame that thing for its bad design instead of ourselves. I think this is a bit too easy. After all it depends on what problem the thing is solving. E.g. if I think of lab test equipment you failing to use it properly might have nothing to do with the design and everything to do with you not having sufficient knowledge in the given domain. I…
Tufte[0] is a good person to demonstrate that kind of UX. His stuff can be pretty crazy, and often needs training, but, once someone knows how to do something he champions, it's amazing.
The example I use, in my life, is Tokyo subway maps[1]. They look crazy complicated; and they are, because it's a complex system.
But after we learn it, using them is as natural as turning a door handle.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#37Warning: this book leaves some permanent imprints in your mind that will forever cause you to be annoyed at badly designed doors and other things.
It's a constant frustration when I go into someone's kitchen that they obviously spent thousands on, and I see a hob with up/down buttons, or a stylish but absurdly unusable sink faucet.
Faucets? You said FAUCETS? As a hotel hopper (in recess) I should have run a blog of crazy shower faucet designs, and I definitely wouldn't have run out of puzzling examples and nasty (cold or hot) surprises.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#38This was my first design book. It was mindblowing. It teached me the concept of design mapping, that helped me greatly.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The book makes you question the sanity of a world that even gets the design of doors wrong.
A "Norman door" is a poorly designed door that confuses or fails to give you an idea whether to push, pull or slide. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-kno...
A couple of years ago at a very nice wine bar in Berlin I accidentally pulled a sliding door completely off its tracks due to it being impossible to work out how it was meant to open - it had a handle that I assumed you pulled on.
Luckily, I wasn't the first (or probably last) person to make that error.
Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes
#40Warning: this book leaves some permanent imprints in your mind that will forever cause you to be annoyed at badly designed doors and other things.
Yes. It does :) But it also leaves you with a sense of why such things happen. Having such understanding helps to counter those "nefarious forces" when you're part of a product design effort.