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Donald Norman

This book might have been written a decade ago when PCs were a lot cruder than they are today. Yet I would say without hesitation that this book should be on the top five list of anyone who writes designs anything, buys anything, writes computer programs, designs systems or selects software and hardware for their company. It is an invaluable guide to what can go wrong with the design of everyday objects.

Taking examples from the simplicity of a door which you can't tell where to push (or whether to pull or push) to the complexity of an airliner or a nuclear power station, Norman describes the essential principles that any designer should consider. Sometimes the mistakes are so trivial that you can only assume that those responsible are practical jokers. Take the oven hob with four plates, organised two by two in a rectangle. Probably nine out of ten have four control knobs in a row with no possible way of deducing or remembering which refers to which ring. Yet simply arranging the controls in a rectangle like the rings would take away any confusion. Trivial, yet rarely done.

Even the Design Centre doesn't escape attention - a recurrent theme of Norman's is "it probably won a prize", illustrating the many times when aesthetics have won over usability, an all to obvious example being the Design Centre cafeteria. Norman does mention computer systems, but it is not these references to the days when the graphical user interface of the Mac was a novelty that makes the book valuable. Instead, every principle that the designers of everyday objects should consider provides a telling lesson for the design and usability of computer systems than most designers, programmers and evaluators are still ignoring today.

As if this weren't enough, the book is eminently readable with lots of entertaining examples from the real world. I think the back cover blurb says it all, with recommendations from as eclectic a bunch as professors of architecture, computer science and media technology, Doug Hofstadter, the author of the hypnotic masterpiece Godel, Escher, Bach, and Isaac Asimov. This book has been out of print for a while - now it's back, run don't walk to the bookshop (noting along the way all those exquisitely disastrous examples of design) and buy a copy.
 

The Design of Everyday Things
An updated paperback version of the same book. Ironically the layout of this version isn't particularly good - bad, non-user oriented design crept in!

See also Norman's new book, Emotional Design:

"We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects. Here is a book at last that strikes back both at the objects and at the designers, manufacturers and assorted human beings who originate and maintain this perversity. It will do your heart good and may even point the way to correcting matters."

Isaac Asimov

Published by BasicBooks (ISBN 0-465-06709-3) in 1988

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