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The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
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The Design of Everyday Things

by Donald A. Norman

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2,163191,400 (4.08)8
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great ( )
  tarngerine | Oct 21, 2009 |
What it is is part polemic, part an explanation of methodology. Donald Norman uses everyday things to illustrate how design can and should be done to making things usable for everyday people. Sometimes things are designed pretty well: push bars on doors for instance. Sometimes not so well: clear doors with no visible cues on whether to push or pull.

Full review at my blog: http://reading.kingrat.biz/reviews/de... ( )
  KingRat | Aug 21, 2009 |
More than any formulas or facts, what I'm taking away from this famous little book is a sense of authority to judge design of things I use everyday. The following things suck: the dock in OS X, my alarm clock, the knob on my coffee machine, etc.
  leeinaustin | Jun 14, 2009 |
An interesting and engaging study of the principles of functional design. ( )
  wulf | Sep 4, 2008 |
The second book to read to get into interaction design, right after "The inmates are running the asylum".

After reading the book, one cannot help but see all the usability problems which surrounds us in everyday life. ( )
1 vote clyde7 | Mar 8, 2008 |
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“You would need an engineering degree from MIT to work this,” someone once told me, shaking his head in puzzlement over his brand new digital watch.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Canonical titleThe Design of Everyday Things
Original publication date1988
First words“You would need an engineering degree from MIT to work this,” someone once told me, shaking his head in puzzlement over his brand new digital watch.
Last words(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0465067107, Paperback)

With the many recent advances in technology, it seems, there has followed a diminution of quality. Electronic books have several advantages over their print counterparts, for instance. But for the time being, they're hard to use and unattractive to boot. Computers, which are supposed to make our lives easier, are commonly sources of frustration and wasted time. Movies are wondrously chock-a-block with special effects--but someone forgot the story. And so on.

Donald Norman, a retired professor of cognitive science, is bothered to no end by the fact that grappling with unfriendly objects now takes up so many of our hours. Over the course of several books, of which The Psychology of Everyday Things was the first, he has railed against bad design. He scrutinizes a range of artifacts that are supposed to make our daily living a little easier, and he finds most of them wanting. Why, he asks, does a door need instructions that say "push" or "pull"? A well-designed object, he argues, is self-explanatory. But well-designed objects are increasingly rare, for the present culture places a higher value on aesthetics than utility, even with such items as cordless screwdrivers, dresser drawers, and kitchen cabinets. In their concern for creating "art," many designers don't seem to consider what people actually do with things. Such disregard, Norman suggests, leads to few objects being standardized: think of all the different kinds of unsynchronized clocks that lurk in microwave ovens, VCRs, coffee makers, and the like--and of all the different kinds of batteries needed to drive them. Why, he wonders, must we reset all those clocks whenever the power goes off? Some designer somewhere, he ventures, ought to develop a master clock that communicates with all other electric clocks in a home--one that, when reset, synchronizes its slave units.

You don't need to be especially interested in technological matters to enjoy Norman's arguments. The book's underlying question is aimed at a global audience: will the design of everyday things improve? If this entertaining and, yes, well-designed book changes even a few minds, perhaps it will. --Gregory McNamee

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:19 -0400)

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