The Design of Everyday Things (1988)

After reading this I revamped how my light switches work at home. ( )

DoeT isn't the world's best written book—Norman's style is too often kvetchy-casual, sounding more like a modern-day ranty blog post than a classic of academic design writing.

But that is only one way in which this book is ahead of its time. The observations and recommendations regarding usable design here hold to extremely well 25 years later; even though Norman's examples concern ancient phone systems and slide projectors, it all translates perfectly well to virtual touchscreen UIs of today. And when he makes predictions about the future, he's eerily prescient. Watch him describe smartphones, the World Wide Web, Nest thermostats, and Siri… in 1988. Not only does he correctly predict future technology, he's better aware of its problems than today's designers.

That alone excuses the book's stylistic shortcomings and proves its undeniable worth. ( )

Obviously dated, but thoughtful and pragmatic. The sections about computers will give you a giggle, but I imagine it was sound enough at the time. ( )

This book goes about as deep into the theory and practice of design as a layperson could want to go. Many of the examples are hopelessly outdated, resulting in the impression that the author is an incompetent old fogey who cannot use a telephone. I'm sure that he's actually very clever, because his diagrams and explanations of the philosophy of design are fantastically easy to understand and apply. The book contains a lot of great thoughts on user error (the examples of which had me laughing until I cried). It probably won an award ;) ( )

Good, smart points; too often people blame themselves for errors with devices when the designs are faulty - something even as "simple" as doors.

The lessons here are undortunately not well learned, 23 years later, perhaps even less so as products are rushed to market today. Another one for the toolbox. ( )