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The Design of Everyday Things (Paperback)

by Donald A. Norman (Author) "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..." (more)
Key Phrases: control deck, upper thread, chord keyboards, The Design of Everyday Things, The Design Challenge, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Anyone who designs anything to be used by humans--from physical objects to computer programs to conceptual tools--must read this book, and it is an equally tremendous read for anyone who has to use anything created by another human. It could forever change how you experience and interact with your physical surroundings, open your eyes to the perversity of bad design and the desirability of good design, and raise your expectations about how things should be designed. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Anybody who has ever complained that "they don't make things like they used to" will immediately connect with this book. Norman's thesis is that when designers fail to understand the processes by which devices work, they create unworkable technology. Director of the Institute for Cognitive Sciences at University of California, San Diego, the author examines the psychological processes needed in operating and comprehending devices. Examples include doors you don't know whether to push or pull and VCRs you can't figure out how to program. Written in a readable, anecdotal, sometimes breezy style, the book's scholarly sophistication is almost transparent. Gregg Sapp, Idaho State Univ. Lib., Pocatello
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details
Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
"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. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
control deck, upper thread, chord keyboards, natural mappings
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Design of Everyday Things, The Design Challenge, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things, User-Centered Design, United States, The Psychology of Everyday Actions, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Catalog of Unfindable Objects, Jacques Carelman
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Customer Reviews

158 Reviews
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4.2 out of 5 stars (158 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, a seminal work of design psychology, August 4, 2000
By Michael F. Maddox (Tallahassee, FL, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Design of Everyday Things (Paperback)
Although this book is a product of the 1980's, its essential premise is not dated nor obsolete. Dr. Norman vividly illustrates the good and bad of design, and provides an excellent guidebook for the understanding of basic user-centric design in products, fixtures, software, and the everyday things that make up our world.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the design and creation of software, architecture, or consumer products. You will find some dated, quaint information within its pages, such as the descriptions of the "computer notepad" and hypertext (both of which came to fruition with Palm Computers and the Web), but, as a whole, the book is a collection of relevant, interesting material. It is an excellent starting point for the study of design.

For those interested in additional study on software and user interface design (programmers, such as I), I recommend Alan Cooper's books on user interface design, and ANY of Jakob Nielsen's books. In addition, the Edward Tufte trilogy on visual representations is extremely good, although not software-specific.

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64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Design for everyday Human Behavior, September 12, 2002
By Jeffrey Sauro (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Design of Everyday Things (Paperback)
This is one of the seminal works in the field of User Centered Design. Norman wrote this book well before the Windows operating system was as familiar as the Golden Arches--which only reinforces the idea that certain basic usability principles transcend all forms of objects--from glass doors to Windows Explorer.

Norman does a great job of describing why and how we successfully and unsuccessfully use everyday objects with relevant anecdotes. His stories are usually accompanied with lists of principles that explain good design and account for human behavior. For example, the fundamental principals of designing for people are to: Provide a good conceptual model, make controls visible and to constantly provide feedback to the user.

So how does one employ good user-centered design? Norman recapitulates his points at the end of the book by listing the seven UCD principles for transforming difficult tasks into easy ones:
1. Use both knowledge in the world and in the head

2. Simplify the structure of tasks
3. Make things visible
4. Get the mappings right
5. Exploit the powers of constraints-Natural & Artificial
6. Design for Error
7. When all else fails, standardize

It's mandatory reading for any usability software engineer but also an interesting and well written book for anyone who's ever pushed a "pull door" or scalded themselves in the shower (which is all of us).

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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Universal Examples of Good (and Bad) Design, January 6, 2000
By Chris Harper (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Design of Everyday Things (Paperback)
When I started my first job out of college I was given a copy of this book by my boss. Since then, I've had a chance to do GUI design for the web as well as client/server applications. This book has proven invaluable. It completely changed the way I thought about design and usability. The examples given show how everything can (and should) be made more usable... every time I turn on the wrong burner on my stove, or pull on a door I should be pushing I curse the designer who should have read this. The examples may not be specifically about computer user interface design, but the lessons learned are directly applicable.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious Read
Not exactly a page turner, it took me several months to get through this book. I enjoyed the content but the delivery was excruciating at times. Read more
Published 10 days ago by Software Craftsman

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Revealing - A great read if you build anything from software to houses.
This was a quick, but very fascinating read about the way people interact with the objects and devices that they encounter in their environment. Read more
Published 29 days ago by John Fuex

5.0 out of 5 stars "Required Reading" that became a favorite
It's not often that a book you are required to read for a college course becomes a favorite, but this one did. In fact, today I did a Google search for "norman door. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Nora McDougall

5.0 out of 5 stars Still applicable and a great re-read/reference
I'd read this around 8 years ago and lost my copy, so I purchased it again. It's definately a timeless look at how humans interact with the design of everyday things. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Floyd

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview of Design Fundamentals
Although I only read about half of this book, what I did read was quite good. This book presents some interesting insight into the design of everyday things, and provides amusing... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Eric Boyer

3.0 out of 5 stars A little disappointing on Kindle
This book has several very important pictures that show product design trade offs in real life. In the Kindle version these pictures are incomprehensible. Read more
Published 2 months ago by an avid reader

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opener
This is by far one of the best book available on User experience out there
Published 3 months ago by Elar Alexander

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic in its field
I was worried when I started reading this book that now, two decades after its original release, it would be totally obsolete. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Trevor Burnham

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Kindle edition
I got the Kindle edition of this book.
Font is very hard to read and there is a lot of mangled words. Read more
Published 6 months ago by I. Ranitovic

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for every Designer
As a human being we think we know other people and how they see and use products. This book tells many amusing anecdotes about products that were not successful because the... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Michiel Besseling

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