The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman is really about just that -- the way everyday objects are thought about, put together, and presented to users.  The prospect of analyzing objects as ubiquitous as a door or the knobs of a water faucet is rather daunting (the book estimates the number of "everyday objects" at roughly 20,000), but Norman handles the task elegantly and in an engaging, digestible manner.  In the book, he lays out several principles that he believes to be elements of "good design":

• affordance (inherent function of an object i.e. a handle affords pulling, a chair affords sitting)
• conceptual model (how the object ought to be used)
• natural mapping (controls need to make sense in their placement and function)
• standardization (objects of similar function should be laid out the same way i.e. all faucets should turn the same way)
• constraints (considerations that make it difficult or impossible for the user to use the object incorrectly)
• feedback (a detectable response that lets the user know they have performed a task successfully or incorrectly)
• design for error (when the user does one thing wrong, it shouldn't cause the whole system to fail)

Through the course of seven chapters, Norman re-iterates these simple principles in various ways.  He approaches each from two main perspectives befitting his qualifications -- from a practical, engineering-and-usability viewpoint, and from a psychological analysis methodology.  These dual approaches give his arguments greater weight and help the reader understand not only how things ought to work, but why we think about their functions the way that we do.  Design is about infinitely more than merely looking pretty, though aesthetics are a key part of the equation -- if a product is unattractive, consumers won't buy it or want to use it to begin with.  He discusses the ideas of intuitive interface, user learning, subconscious behavior  and locked-in conceptual models with and authoritative yet conversational tone that borders on crotchety at times, but The Design of Everyday Things is well worth reading for its principles of good design alone.

I read the first chapter skeptical of Norman's relevance to modern design or user interaction; I found his theory that a user should just know how to use something and be unable to make a mistake a somewhat senile and unrealistic notion.  I work at a computer helpdesk (a grand intersection of obtuse design and incompetent users if there ever was one) and I can state for a fact that even if a perfectly intuitive object were created, there would be at least one user out there who would be unable to figure it out on the first try with no mistakes.  That's why companies (and Norman even somewhat contradictorily allows for this in his "design for error" principle) design products for the "lowest common denominator," i.e. the one person who just can't figure out how to use the product.  Norman ranting about a door being difficult to open or a radio difficult to operate sounded like so many retired faculty members complaining about their e-mail systems; it was hard to approach the book with anything other than a "nod and smile" approach.

However, as I read on, I realized that Norman was right about a great deal of things in the book; I had merely to shake off my mindset that objects are the way they are and that users simply have to adjust, and instead be open to the idea that products are often manufactured without a very good consideration of how the human brain processes information.  Norman didn't stop his arguments at an arbitrary "the old system was better," he delved into the engineering and psychology principles that made the old system better.  I really began to understand the function of the designer -- to make something elegant and functional that requires minimal instruction -- as being so much more than making pretty objects or arranging pleasing color patterns (though it is sometimes these aspects of designs that are awarded the higher proportion of accolades).  After shedding my admittedly cynical perceptions of the mechanically-inept user, I came to realize that Norman was right: when a user has trouble with a device, the fault often lies in the design and not the user.