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The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

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Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#61

Post by jaclaz »

cinntaile wrote: post #55
jaclaz wrote: post #51

Fun fact, for some reasons it had the title translated in Italian as "La caffettiera del masochista" (The masochist's coffee pot) which is a great textual description of the cover image, moving "the psychology of everyday things" to a sub-title. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6SC0QO0kVZI/YAyILg6A43I/AAAAAAAAV...

The English edition I have has the coffee pot described as a masochist's coffee pot, so I would assume it's the actual title of the artwork.

Sure, it is one of the works by the French artist Jacques Carelman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Carelman

To be picky the original title of the artwork is "coffe pot for masochists" as it was part of a (mock) "Catalogue of impossible things"

https://www.arretsurimages.net/articles/carelman-lintrouvabl...

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#62

Post by gattilorenz »

jaclaz wrote: post #51

Fun fact, for some reasons it had the title translated in Italian as "La caffettiera del masochista" (The masochist's coffee pot) which is a great textual description of the cover image, moving "the psychology of everyday things" to a sub-title. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6SC0QO0kVZI/YAyILg6A43I/AAAAAAAAV...

Additional fun fact: the Italian subtitle is not "the psychology of everyday things" (which in itself is different from the original, since that one mentions "design") but "the psychopathology of everyday things", which is a reference to Freud's "the psychopatology of everyday life"

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#63

Post by jaclaz »

gattilorenz wrote: post #62
jaclaz wrote: post #51

Fun fact, for some reasons it had the title translated in Italian as "La caffettiera del masochista" (The masochist's coffee pot) which is a great textual description of the cover image, moving "the psychology of everyday things" to a sub-title. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6SC0QO0kVZI/YAyILg6A43I/AAAAAAAAV...

Additional fun fact: the Italian subtitle is not "the psychology of everyday things" (which in itself is different from the original, since that one mentions "design") but "the psychopathology of everyday things", which is a reference to Freud's "the psychopatology of everyday life"

Yes, you are right, I completely forgot to mention that other (substantial) change.

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#64

Post by bombcar »

cainxinth wrote: post #49
VieEnCode wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly suspect that many awards in the legal industry work in this way also.

Every single industry that exists gives itself awards. Usually one or two are actually legit and prestigious, but there are often dozens (or hundreds) more of decreasing relevance that exist purely for marketing purposes, and many of those are pay to play (usually indirectly though, i.e., buy ad space or a booth from the awarding org and they’ll give you an award commensurate with your purchase.)

Even the legitimate ones will only have a few entrants, and if someone didn't win they may add a special category that you can be the only entrant for!

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#65

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> Good design is harder to notice than poor design, partly because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.

This is my goal. UX that gets out of the way. People shouldn't stop to admire the light switch. They should just flick it.

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#66

Post by bombcar »

soco wrote: post #37
rwmj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I swear every single hotel in the world is in a competition to make the most complicated, impossible to understand faucet. I'm sure if you understand how it works it somehow is more convenient (saves your temperature setting, perhaps) but it often takes me a few minutes to figure out how to get it to work.

One even had a "button" that you had to press to "unlock" the dial so you could turn it on, that one almost required a call to the desk.

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#67

Post by bombcar »

pacificmint wrote: post #9
smusamashah wrote: post #2

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. 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.

Back in the day, when VCRs were a thing, everybody used to joke about how no one new how to program theirs. Heck, half of them had the blinking clock forever cause people couldn’t figure out how to reset it. After reading this book, I realized that maybe if one person can’t program their VCR, you could have argued that it’s their fault. But certainly if so many people have problems with it, it’s clearly an issue with…

It can also indicate a process that is (currently) beyond the capabilities of the interface available (thinking the difficulty of programming a VCR when you have four buttons and one LED that can display 88:88 and that's it vs a full touchscreen interface on a phone).

Arguably the VCRs did as well as they could - BUT they made the critical mistake of not realizing that programming and setting the clock would be difficult (and for many uses of the machine, not necessary at all, so nobody would bother figuring it out), and so didn't set the VCR to just not display the clock until the time was set. Very few people bought VCRs to use as a clock, after all.

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#68

Post by bombcar »

wodenokoto wrote: post #15

This 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…

Heh one of the most noticeable cases of this is when you buy something and unwrap it and find it covered in obvious "shelf marketing" stickers - your TV doesn't need a giant energy star sticker across the corner (and you have to remove it) nor does it need the specs on a little card attached to the base; but they do want those when it is the demo unit on the shelf, and they know that retail won't bother sticking them on, so they put them on every single product.

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#69

Post by JusticeJuice »

sali0 wrote: post #20

I have heard some great things about this book as far as physical design. Has this book inspired any insights on design of software or other engineering related topics?

Checkout the research published by nngroup, that's very software focused.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/

Re: The Design of Everyday Things – Book Summary and Notes

#70

Post by dan-robertson »

gumby wrote: post #54
dan-robertson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

> Maybe those people just aren’t so afraid to damage/replace their watch but I find that a little hard to believe. It’s a Vleben good: it doesn’t simply signify that you have money to throw away, but shows that you have a lifestyle in which your expensive watch won’t get damaged.

But sports watches / ‘dive’ watches seem pretty popular. Maybe the sports involved aren’t so likely to involve damaging the watch somehow.
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