Read Online The Psychology Of Everyday Things Authored By Donald A. Norman Displayed In Edition

managed to complete it, Woohooo. Only tookyears. Jeff Garzik gave me a copy of this back when he was building the Linux network stack in Home Park I'd seen it praised by a few other people by that time as well via the GT newsgroups, most likely.
I was underwhelmed there were a few good case analyses the oven UI I recall being particularly effective, but very little usable, general principles came out of the read.
I went back in, thinking I'd perhaps missed something, but didn't find much more, then again, i'm probably not the target audience, this book seems to receive much play in computer science programs, but it's really much more of an industrial design text its prevalence in CS programs evidences IMHO the sad state of HCI textbooks.


I'm still eagerly waiting for a single textbook which unifies theory and practice of effective, attractive UI design, Instead, we seem to have the "GUI metrics" crowd, fetishists assuming the existence of some spiritus mundi, just waiting for the right Gaussian to be fitted thus giving rise to twin abominations, MacOSX and GNOMEmeanwhile the "design" crown speaks in riddles, playing a game where men throw ducks at baloons, and nothing is as it seems.
. . but this is why, I suppose, I only write backends and libraries, This took me FOREVER to read but it isn't the The Psychology of Everyday Things's fault, It was me just picking it up at odd moments amp it giving me a lot to think about each time, I don't design every day things, so had absolutely no need to read this book, but found it extremely interesting, If you have any part in designing anything, you MUST read this book,

Norman points out the obvious things I took for granted amp made me think about them in an entirely new light.
He breaks down the simplest devices into their basic functions amp features, then rebuilds them in a way that is both obvious amp yet entirely new.
He then points out places where the design elements are good amp bad, He gets into the basic aspects of design that I never thought about such as aligning the number of controls with the number of functions.
Best of all, he lays all of this out in an interesting manner with common examples as he delves deeper into the problems amp solutions.


When you walk up to a door, how do you know how to deal with it I never thought about it, just used it.
Norman points out the clues I use, such as where the handles amp hinges are located, as well as the conventions, such as pushing to go out of a commercial door, that I just KNOW amp intuitively use.
But what happens when designers fiddle around to make look pretty Can anyone screw up something as mundane amp venerable as a door Unfortunately, yes indeedy!

He relates a funny story about getting stuck briefly in the foyer of a commercial building because of the 'modern' design of the doors.
Hidden hinges, lots of glass, amp handles that stretched across the entire center of the door gave no clue as to which way they opened.
Couple that with one set of doors opening in the opposite direction from the others amp a simple task walking into a building without much thought actually while thinking of other things, like the upcoming meeting became an irritating puzzle.
Not a big deal Actually, it is,

Norman pulls out some truly horrific numbers to make a great point on how important intuitive design is, The average person has something like,different instruction sets to remember on a regular basis, If each one of these took just a minute to remember, you'd spend several months learning them, assuming ahour week devoted to the task! That we've absorbed these instructions amp conventions over decades amp are facing an increasing number of them on a daily basis makes it particularly irritating when they get redesigned into a problem.


Note: This book was published in the late's, While there are some desktop computing examples given, this book is preInternet, Think of how much additional information is required in the wake of that, Think browsers, email, scams, viruses,

While some of the examples are a bit dated, such as VCR's, they're not terrible, The multifunctional switches, confusing menus, amp seemingly random options packed into those machines have carried over into their descendents in spades, Other examples, such as phone systems amp stoves, are still so on target that it's absolutely infuriating, OK, phone systems are complicated, extremely proprietary amp full of more options than ever, but do they HAVE to be so hard to use I don't think so.


I know damn well that designers could do a much better job of laying out the controls for something as simple as a stove.
They've had over a century amp it's still a complete PITA to figure out which knob operates which burner, I can't walk up to any stove amp put my hand on the correct knob, I have to read, sometimes even puzzle out symbols to figure out which is which, Even on my own simple stove, which we've hadyears, I wind up reading to figure out the controls, OK, Marg usually cooks, but that's just STUPID design one more minor irritation in a world filled with them, but one that could so easily be rectified with just a bit of thought!!! It's just infuriating.


While I was reading this book, a couple of examples of its relevance slapped me in the face,
Steve Jobs died. Why was he so successful Many people say that he was an inventor, WRONG. He rarely came up with anything truly new, His forte was in timing amp design, Microsoft had a tablet for years before the iPad but their offering never made it, Why Because the hardware couldn't support the overall expected functionality properly AND the user interface wasn't nearly as well designed as the iPad.
Microsoft tried too early, designed it poorly, amp FAILED themselves right out of the market,
Amazon took the ebook market by storm, The Kindle wasn't the first ereader amp it isn't really all that great hardwarewise, but it has a great interface that leverages a wonderful support system all good design.
It does one thing amp does it really well,

Long review, but design is one of the most misunderstood amp important concepts of our lives, I was completely shocked by my own ignorance about it, I still don't claim to be any expert, but it sure made me see the world in a different way,

UpdateMay Here's a new article by Norman, "I wrote the book on userfriendly design, What I see today horrifies me" with a subtitle: The world is designed against the elderly, writes Don Norman,yearold author of the industry bible Design of Everyday Things and a former Apple VP.

sitelink fastcompany. com

It's a fact, I'm now in mys amp he's right, We're a large segment of the population that isn't cool, but we have the money amp time, Design for us!

UpdateMay I listened to the audio version of a slightly later edition, Fantastic amp I found it much easier, Was that because it was my second read or the media I think a combination, If you've ever had trouble because it was too dense, maybe try the audio, That gives me the entire concept amp I can come back to puzzle out any details in text, Anyway, I gave the audio version astar review here:
sitelink goodreads. com/review/show
I'm just going to be real, This book was incredibly boring, I picked it up because I was told it was a classic of the field and would be useful to have in my reading repertoire.
And truthfully, the only reason I gave it two instead of one is because of the impact this book has clearly had on the design field.
I'm sure at the time of its original release, this book was light years ahead of others in the way that it thought about design.
I can definitely see how its concepts have become a main part of every design education,

But ultimately, I thought this book was too wordy, It said in hundreds of pages what, in my opinion, could probably have been said in less, A lot of it is very common sense, in that most people don't even really think about the concepts,

Altogether, probably still good that I read it, But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't skim a majority of it for the important bits, کتابهایی هستند که دریچهای به یک حوزه ناشناخته ولی مفید باز میکنند. یعنی چیزی درباره یک حوزه جدید نمیدانی و یک کتاب کمک میکند تا حداقلهای مناسبی درباره آن بدانی که از بسیاری نکته و شنیده جستهوگریخته بهتر است. این کتاب که در خلال آشنایی با محققین حوزه طراحی و تحقیق در تجربه کاربری که در فارسی شاید نام مبهمی باشد با نام آن برخوردم و توجهم را جلب کرد نمونه بسیار خوبی برای این دسته از کتابهاست که برای خواننده عادی خارج از یک حوزه هم میتواند بسیار آموزنده و مفید باشد و خبر از قلم خوب و روان یک انسان کارشناس در آن حوزه میدهد. این حوزه هم البته حوزه طراحی است با کاربردهای صنعتی و کسبوکار

یعنی در نهایت چه چیزی بهتر از اینکه بعد از مطالعه این کتاب حس میکنم مشاهدهگر بهتری شدهام. توجهم به جزییات در طراحی چیزها و محیط پیرامونی بیشتر شده است. به قول نویسنده اگر در استفاده از ابزاری دچار مشکل هستید پیش از اینکه مشکل را به پای خودتان بنویسید آن را در طراحی ابزار جستجو کنید. طراحیهای خوب و بد را تشخیص دهید و از خوبها حمایت کنید. همین ناظر بهتر بودن و جستجو به دنبال طراحیهای زیبا مفید کاربردی و آسان بهترین آموخته از این کتاب است. ممکن است گاهی جزییات زیاد و تکراری بهنظر برسند یا ارتباط بین مباحث و طراحی گم شوند اما همچنان اعتماد به دانش نویسنده و استفادهاش از علوم دیگر هرچند کمعمق برای توضیح بهتر مسائل مربوط به طراحی باعث چشمپوشی از این موارد اندک میشود This book has several very important ideas:

Even if you aren't professional designer, you still use design everywhere in your life, including how you design your house, your resume, a report, some code, etc.


Design is all about focusing on people's needs and abilities, You may think you know what those are by the virtue of being a human, but you don't, as most human actions are unconscious.
Therefore, to be a good designer, you need to learn some psychology,

Good design is all about finding the root cause not just the stated problem and using an iterative process there are no failures, just experiments.


Many of the things we attribute to human error are actually caused by poor design, This is because humans make mistakes all the time and a good design must take this into account,

For these alone, it's worth reading, That said, the book feels a little unfocused and scatter brained, It frequently goes off on tangents, most of which are interesting, but not always relevant to the main points, The book is also repetitive, repeating the same message about bad design, constraints, and culture over and over again,


Some good quotes:

Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.
Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable,

We are all designers in the sense that all of us deliberately design our lives, our rooms, and the way we do things.
We can also design workarounds, ways of overcoming the flaws of existing devices,

Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding, Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them Understanding: What does it all mean How is the product supposed to be used What do all the different controls and settings mean

All artificial things are designed.
Whether it is the layout of furniture in a room, the paths through a garden or forest, or the intricacies of

an electronic device, some person or group of people had to decide upon the layout, operation, and mechanisms.
Not all designed things involve physical structures, Services, lectures, rules and procedures, and the organizational structures of businesses and governments do not have physical mechanisms, but their rules of operation have to be designed, sometimes informally, sometimes precisely recorded and specified.


Humancentered design is a design philosophy, It means starting with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet, This understanding comes about primarily through observation, for people themselves are often unaware of their true needs, even unaware of the difficulties they are encountering.
Getting the specification of the thing to be defined is one of the most difficult parts of the design, so much so that the HCD principle is to avoid specifying the problem as long as possible but instead to iterate upon repeated approximations.
This is done through rapid tests of ideas, and after each test modifying the approach and the problem definition, The results can be products that truly meet the needs of people,

A conceptual model is an explanation, usually highly simplified, of how something works, It doesnt have to be complete or even accurate as long as it is useful,

When people use something, they face two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where they try to figure out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where they try to figure out what happened.
. . The role of the designer is to help people bridge the two gulfs,

We bridge the Gulf of Execution through the use of signifiers, constraints, mappings, and a conceptual model, We bridge the Gulf of Evaluation through the use of feedback and a conceptual model,

Most of us start by believing we already understand both human behavior and the human mind, After all, we are all human: we have all lived with ourselves all of our lives, and we like to think we understand ourselves.
But the truth is, we dont, Most of human behavior is a result of subconscious processes, We are unaware of them,

When we speak, we often do not know what we are about to say until our conscious mind the reflective part of the mind hears ourselves uttering the words.


When we perform a welllearned action, all we have to do is think of the goal and the behavioral level handles all the details: the conscious mind has little or no awareness beyond creating the desire to act.


We need to remove the word failure from our vocabulary, replacing it instead with learning experience, To fail is to learn: we learn more from our failures than from our successes, With success, sure, we are pleased, but we often have no idea why we succeeded, With failure, it is often possible to figure out why, to ensure that it will never happen again,
Scientists know this. Scientists do experiments to learn how the world works, Sometimes their experiments work as expected, but often they dont, Are these failures No, they are learning experiences, Many of the most important scientific discoveries have come from these socalled failures,

Eliminate all error messages from electronic or computer systems, Instead, provide help and guidance,

Humans err continually it is an intrinsic part of our nature, System design should take this into account,

Eliminate the term human error, Instead, talk about communication and interaction: what we call an error is usually bad communication or interaction, When people collaborate with one another, the word error is never used to characterize another persons utterance, Thats because each person is trying to understand and respond to the other, and when something is not understood or seems inappropriate, it is questioned, clarified, and the collaboration continues.
Why cant the interaction between a person and a machine be thought of as collaboration

Our strengths are in our flexibility and creativity, in coming up with solutions to novel problems.
We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise, Machines require precision and accuracy people dont, And we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs, So why are we always required to do so Why do we put the requirements of machines above those of people

Seven fundamental principles of design:
.
Discoverability. It is possible to determine what actions are possible and the current state of the device,
. Feedback. There is full and continuous information about the results of actions and the current state of the product or service, After an action has been executed, it is easy to determine the new state,
. Conceptual model. The design projects all the information needed to create a good conceptual model of the system, leading to understanding and a feeling of control.
The conceptual model enhances both discoverability and evaluation of results,
. Affordances. The proper affordances exist to make the desired actions possible,
. Signifiers. Effective use of signifiers ensures discoverability and that the feedback is well communicated and intelligible,
. Mappings. The relationship between controls and their actions follows the principles of good mapping, enhanced as much as possible through spatial layout and temporal contiguity.

. Constraints. Providing physical, logical, semantic, and cultural constraints guides actions and eases interpretation,

Never criticize unless you have a better alternative,

When people err, change the system so that type of error will be reduced or eliminated, When complete elimination is not possible, redesign to reduce the impact,

When many people all have the same problem, shouldnt another cause be found If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed.
And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed, When I turn on the wrong stove burner, it is not due to my lack of knowledge: it is due to poor mapping between controls and burners.
Teaching me the relationship will not stop the error from recurring: redesigning the stove will,

Why do people err Because the designs focus upon the requirements of the system and the machines, and not upon the requirements of people.
Most machines require precise commands and guidance, forcing people to enter numerical information perfectly, But people arent very good at great precision, We frequently make errors when asked to type or write sequences of numbers or letters, This is well known: so why are machines still being designed that require such great precision, where pressing the wrong key can lead to horrendous results

In many industries, the rules are written more with a goal toward legal compliance than with an understanding of the work requirements.
As a result, if workers followed the rules, they couldnt get their jobs done,

Good designers never start by trying to solve the problem given to them: they start by trying to understand what the real issues are.


Don Norman's Law of Product Development: The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.


Good designers are quick learners, for today they might be asked to design a camera tomorrow, to design a transportation system or a companys organizational structure.
How can one person work across so many different domains Because the fundamental principles of designing for people are the same across all domains.
People are the same, and so the design principles are the same,

Every modern innovation, especially the ones that significantly change lives, takes multiple decades to move from concept to company success A rule of thumb is twenty years from first demonstrations in research laboratories to commercial product, and then a decade or two from first commercial release to widespread adoption.
Except that actually, most innovations fail completely and never reach the public, .