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Donald A. Norman

The Design of Everyday Things, revised and expanded edition (The MIT Press) Paperback – 20 Dec. 2013

by Donald A. Norman (Author)

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Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we try to figure out the shower control in a hotel or attempt to navigate an unfamiliar television set or stove. When The Design of Everyday Things was published in 1988, cognitive scientist Don Norman provocatively proposed that the fault lies not in ourselves, but in design that ignores the needs and psychology of people. Fully revised to keep the timeless principles of psychology up to date with ever-changing new technologies, The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful appeal for good design, and a reminder of how -- and why -- some products satisfy while others only disappoint.

ISBN-10

0262525674
ISBN-13

978-0262525671
Edition

2nd revised and expanded ed
Publisher

MIT Press
Publication date

20 Dec. 2013
Language

English
Dimensions

15.24 x 2.7 x 22.86 cm
Print length

368 pages
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Product description

Review

Part operating manual for designers and part manifesto on the power of designing for people, The Design of Everyday Things is even more relevant today than it was when first published. --Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO, and author of Change by Design

This book changed the field of design. As the pace of technological change accelerates, the principles in this book are increasingly important. The new examples and ideas about design and product development make it essential reading. --Patrick Whitney, Dean, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology

This book changed the field of design. As the pace of technological change accelerates, the principles in this book are increasingly important. The new examples and ideas about design and product development make it essential reading. --Patrick Whitney, Dean, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology

About the Author

Business Week has named Don Norman as one of the world's most influential designers. He has been both a professor and an executive: he was Vice President of Advanced Technology at Apple; his company, the Nielsen Norman Group, helps companies produce human-centered products and services; he has been on the faculty at Harvard, the University of California, San Diego, Northwestern University, and KAIST, in South Korea. He is the author of many books, including The Design of Everyday Things, The Invisible Computer (MIT Press, 1998), Emotional Design, and The Design of Future Things.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ MIT Press; 2nd revised and expanded ed edition (20 Dec. 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262525674
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262525671
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 2.7 x 22.86 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 13,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 4 in Materials Science
- 7 in Industrial Design (Books)
- 8 in Industrial Design Studies

Customer reviews:
1,298 ratings

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Donald A. Norman

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Don Norman is a voyeur, always watching, always on the lookout for some common-day occurrence that everyone else takes for granted but that when examined, yields insight into the human condition. (If you are rushing to catch a train, how do you know if you got to the station on time? Empty platform? You probably are too late. People milling about, looking at their watches,peering down the tracks? Probably OK. Who needs technology when people are so informative, even if as an accidental byproduct of their activities.

Business Week has named him one of "the world's most influential designers," the influence from his books, essasys, courses and students, lectures, and consulting.

He takes special delight in the interaction of people and technology. "Develop the skill of observation," he councils: especially pay attention to the obvious. "Question the obvious and you will dis cover many hidden insights. What seems to be obvious often is not."

He is a fellow of many organizations and former lots of things, including VP at Apple Computer and even President of a startup. He has honorary degrees from the University of Padua (Italy) and the Technical University Delft (the Netherlands). He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal in Computer and Cognitive Science and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is known for his books "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," and "The Design of Future Things," but he is most proud of his students, now all over the world, who put into practice his human-centered design philosophy. his latest book is "Living with Complexity," which argues that complexity is necessary: Our tools must match our tasks. When people cry out for simplicity, they are wrong -- people want understanding. That is not the same as simplicity -- simple thing are often the most confusing.

He is currently revising "Design of Everyday Things" to keep the message the same but update the examples. Expected publication date is August 2013.

He lives at www.jnd.org, where you can find chapters from his books and loads of essays.

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Douglas F.

Good but let down by technical language and poor photos

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 December 2020

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This book is a classic in its field but ... The picture quality throughout his printing is terrible, the photos are small, low resolution and in black and white so you really have to peer at them to understand what is being shown / discussed. Not great for a book about design. Whilst this updated version has lots of new content it uses fairly technical language and isn’t a book that you just flow through it feels more like an effort to read it. It’s a good book but one you must want to read

4 people found this helpful

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Elliotfinch

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 April 2022

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This is a really good, and inciteful book about the psychology of how we interact with things in our day to day.
If you're designing anything that will be used by a human (like most things), I think this book is a must read.
It has subtly changed the way I think when designing something.

I'm not really one for reading. But I have read this twice, and got the audio book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 May 2021

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I bought this because I'm moving my teaching towards a design focus (I'm sick of seeing my workshop filled with dozens of identical projects!), and this book is fascinating. It's definitely going to take two reads to get the full message from it.

But, generally, if you find yourself getting frustrated by the made world around you - doors you can't find, taps that turn the wrong way - this is the book for you.

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Maarten de Vries

I can understand why it's a "must read" for designers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2010

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This book is obviously about design and everyday things, like doors, taps and electr(on)ic equipment, but it's also about psychology and not so everyday things, like museums, aircraft and nuclear power plants etc. If you're only mildly interested in these topics, then this book might be a bit "heavy" for you, but if you're really interested in them, it's a classic, that is on the mandatory reading list of many design schools. Personally, I originally wanted to be a car designer, so I really enjoyed it! In fact, from now on, I think I will remember this book, every time I encounter things that are designed very well, or very badly!

Basically, the book is an almost emotional plea for design, based on usability, as opposed to aesthetics (the statement "it probably won a design prize" is not a compliment in this book!) and cost (of materials, manufacturing etc). These factors are also important, but they matter more to the manufacturers and the (often corporate) customers of the product, than the ultimate user, and what's the *use* of a product that the user doesn't know how to use?

Designing for usability is probably more complex than you think, even for something as small and seemingly simple as a ballpoint pen. We could overcome this complexity if we could learn from our mistakes, but the multiple forces of a competitive market often prevent this process of evolutionary design. As a result, the same mistakes get made over and over again, and new ones are constantly added too, often on the back of new technologies, which are actually supposed to make our lives easier! Norman calls this "the paradox of technology".

To overcome this, Norman proposes "seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple ones":

1. "Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head." The design of the object should help the user to form a good "conceptual model" or "mental map" of how it works, preferably without instruction labels (if it needs them, it's probably not designed very well) or the user manual, because most users don't read them anyway. A great example of an often misunderstood object is the thermostat. Many people don't understand that this is a simple on/off switch with a single speed. If they want to heat up a room asap, they turn the thermostat to the maximum temperature, but this doesn't make it go any faster. On the contrary, you risk overheating the room and having to cool it down again!
2. "Simplify the structure of tasks." Don't rely on the user to remember too many things at once, because our memory is limited.
3. "Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation." Make it obvious which actions the user can/should take, and provide feedback when he/she has taken that action.
4. "Get the mappings right." The left switch is for the left light, the right switch is for the right one.
5. "Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial." If you don't want people to insert the battery the wrong way, then make sure it doesn't fit that way. This is a physical constraint, but there are also semantic, cultural and logical ones.
6. "Design for error." Errors are not bad, they are normal! Design things in such a way that trivial errors are easily reversed ("undo") and serious errors are avoided in the first place.
7. "When all else fails, standardize." Think of the round clock-face, the QWERTY keyboard, turn a screw clockwise to tighten it etc.

The other thing I found really interesting was the relationship between usability and aesthetics. On one hand, something that looks very complicated probably isn't very easy to use, but on the other hand, "easy looking is not necessarily easy to use (...) We found that to make something easy to use, match the number of controls to the number of functions and organize the panels according to function. To make something look like it is easy, minimize the number of controls. How can these conflicting requirements be met simultaneously? Hide the controls not being used at the moment. By using a panel on which only the relevant controls are visible, you minimize the appearance of complexity. By having a separate control for each function, you minimize the complexity of use. It is possible to eat your cake and have it, too." This is one of the things Bang & Olufsen does very well, for example, and Normal actually uses an example of B&O in the book.

In summary, I can understand why this is a "must read" for designers, even though it was originally published back in 1988, because the seven principles are basically timeless. My only "buts" are:

1. I think the book could have been structured more clearly, which is of course ironic, considering it's a book about design and it actually includes a discussion about the structuring of writing material! I sometimes got a little bit "lost" in the text and I would have preferred to see the seven principles in the table of contents. A bit dull maybe, but very usable ;o)

2. I would love to see Norman apply his principles to some of the new technologies that have appeared and gone mainsteam between then and now. I've just found his follow-up book, called The Design of Future Things , but I'm not sure that's quite what I had in mind ;o)

Your comments are welcome!

20 people found this helpful

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Daniel J. Staple

Nobody in design, engineering or development should miss this book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 May 2014

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I highly recommend reading this to avoid daft and lasting mistakes - the book has a damning phrase "he probably won an award for that". It talks about how to design things that are actually usable and useful, how "aesthetic" design mistakes can ruin the way stuff works, or confuse users, and at worst be dangerous. Told with examples and anecdotes, this book should be a must read for anyone involved in any product design aspect - be it hardware design, software design, development and engineering.

13 people found this helpful

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W. Reilly

Common Sense Design - all too uncommon

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2012

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This is my first time reading this book. And I have to say I am really enjoying it. It is obviously based on the authors most loved interest. Norman shows that he is an ordinary person who gets frustrated with (bad) design in the same way we all do. But then he sets about trying to help us create guidelines for better or even great design. This book is not about clean lines and hidden details. It's about obvious usability and making life easier.

The book is technically old in the sense that he refers to old tech/computers/phone systems that were common for the time of writing. Which as we know Tech moves on kind of fast. But you have to stop yourself from saying "this is so out of date". Because really the principles are timeless. Good design will always be based on how well the design fits its purpose.

So if you have an interest in design and particularly the design of things you rely on everyday. Or if you will be responsible for the design of everyday things. This is the book to get your ideas and thinking focused on the user.

5 people found this helpful

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John NL Leyson

Great new release from MIT Press!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 January 2021

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Most certainly an interesting release from MIT Press. Packed with new design psychology stuff! It would have been more fun if they added more colours.

One person found this helpful

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Peep_squeak

An Essential Design Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2016

Verified Purchase

A design classic. The Design of Everyday Things will make you take the time to look at things you use without a second thought and understand the why and how of product design. As a designer I find myself applying rules and ideas from this book to my own work and going back to it time and time again.

If you're working in any area of design, whether it's web design, user experience, product, print or interior, this book will be a worthwhile investment. I'd also read it alongside other books like Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think.

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