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The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

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One of the world's great designers shares his vision of "the fundamental principles of great and meaningful design", that's "even more relevant today than it was when first published" (Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO).

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door.

The fault, argues this ingenious -- even liberating -- book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization.

The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how -- and why -- some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

Review

"Even classics can be updated and improved ... Highly recommended."―Choice

"This book changed the field of design. As the pace of technological change accelerates, the principles in this book are increasingly important. The new examples and ideas about design and product development make it essential reading."―Patrick Whitney, Dean, Institute of Design, and Steelcase/Robert C. Pew Professor of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology

"Twenty-five years ago The Design of Everyday Things was instrumental in orienting my approach to design. With this latest revised and expanded edition, Don Norman has given me a host of new ideas to explore as well as reminding me of the fundamental principles of great and meaningful design. Part operating manual for designers and part manifesto on the power of designing for people, The Design of Everyday Things is even more relevant today than it was when first published."―Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO, and author of Change by Design

"Design may be our top competitive edge. This book is a joy--fun and of the utmost importance."―Tom Peters, author of the national best-seller In Search of Excellence

About the Author

Don Norman is a co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, and holds graduate degrees in both engineering and psychology. His many books include Emotional Design, The Design of Future Things, and Living with Complexity. He lives in Silicon Valley, California.

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Popular Highlights in this book

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Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place.
Highlighted by 8,314 Kindle readers
Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
Highlighted by 6,370 Kindle readers
Experience is critical, for it determines how fondly people remember their interactions.
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0465050654
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Revised edition (November 5, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780465050659
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465050659
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.92 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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- #160 in Psychology & Counseling

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Donald A. Norman
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Don Norman takes special delight in the interaction of people and technology. "Develop the skill of observation," he says, "and especially pay attention to the obvious, for this is where you will discover many hidden insights. What seems to be obvious often is not."
Business Week has named him one of "the world's most influential designers," the influence from his books, essays, courses and students, lectures, and consulting.
He is a fellow of many organizations, including the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineers and former lots of things, including VP at Apple Computer, President of a startup, and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group. He has honorary degrees from the University of Padua (Italy), the Technical University Delft (the Netherlands), and the University of San Marino. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal in Computer and Cognitive Science and the Sir Misha Black medal for contributions to Design Education.
He is known for his books "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," "Living with Complexity," and "The Design of Future Things," but he is most proud of his students all over the world, who put into practice his human-centered design philosophy.
His latest book is Design for a Better World: meaningful, sustainable, humanity centered" which draws upon his rich history to address some of the most pressing problems facing the world today. The real issues are not technical, nor can they be solved simply by technology. The most difficult is human behavior, which is why design can play such an important role. Design is a way of thinking, of solving the core underlying issues, combining a knowledge of technology, all areas of human activity, and most important of all, human behavior.
He lives at www.jnd.org, where you can find chapters from his books and loads of essays.
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Don Norman
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Jason Sanders

this book gave me direction in my human factors career

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2024

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the book is engaging and helpful. It gave me a new perspective on objects and a new perspective on address issues that are related to the objects that are not human centered design.

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Mark Smith

Must read for all people mastering the Power Platform

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2024

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Great book about empathising with people using technology in the world that we create. I like the key takeaway it’s not often human error it’s bad design.

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Informative and Enjoyable Read

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2015

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The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman

“The Design of Everyday Things” is a very good sequel to the first edition of this book, “The Psychology of Everyday Things” published in 1988. In this informative and enjoyable edition, educator and cognitive engineer, Don Norman provides readers with an interesting look at what constitutes good design. An advocate for user-centered design this is a helpful introduction to the world of design. This enlightening 370-page book includes the following seven chapters: 1. The Psychopathology of Everyday Things, 2. The Psychology of Everyday Actions, 3. Knowledge in the Head and in the World, 4. Knowing What to Do: Constraints Discoverability, and Feedback, 5. Human Error? No, Bad Design, 6. Design Thinking, and 7. Design in the World of Business.

Positives:
1. An accessible and well-researched book. Excellent resource for professionals in the field but intended for all to enjoy.
2. The interesting topic of design in everyday products.
3. Don Norman’s credentials are outstanding and his mastery of the topic is manifested from his astute observations based on experiences in engineering, cognitive science and business. “My experiences in industry have taught me about the complexities of the real world, how cost and schedules are critical, the need to pay attention to competition, and the importance of multidisciplinary teams.”
4. A very good format. The book starts with a clear preface on where the book is going to take you.
5. Good use of tables and charts to complement the narrative.
6. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on what constitutes good design. It all starts with asking the right questions and Norman does a wonderful job of that. “Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding. Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them? Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?”
7. Explains the differences between the three main designs discussed in this book: industrial design, interaction design, and experience design.
8. Norman is an advocate for human-centered designs. “The solution is human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.”
9. The six fundamental principles of interaction: affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, feedback, and the conceptual model of the system. These principles are discussed with many examples to help the reader understand these important concepts. “Good conceptual models are the key to understandable, enjoyable products: good communication is the key to good conceptual models.”
10. Helpful insights on how people use products; and the seven stages of action. “When people use something, they face two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where they try to figure out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where they try to figure out what happened.”
11. One of the strengths of this book is the very important but often times ignored aspect of psychology in design. “The approach I use here comes from my book Emotional Design. There, I suggested that a useful approximate model of human cognition and emotion is to consider three levels of processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.” “All three levels of processing work together. All play essential roles in determining a person’s like or dislike of a product or service.”
12. A key premise of this book, “…in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error.” “The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.”
13. A chapter dedicated to how knowledge of the world combines with the knowledge in the head. “The design implications are clear: provide meaningful structures. Perhaps a better way is to make memory unnecessary: put the required information in the world. This is the power of the traditional graphical user interface with its old-fashioned menu structure.”
14. An excellent chapter on how designers can provide the critical information that allows people to know what to do, even when experiencing an unfamiliar device or situation. The four kinds of constraints: physical, cultural, semantic, and logical.
15. Insights on how to deal with failures. “Interruptions are a common reason for error, not helped by designs and procedures that assume full, dedicated attention yet that do not make it easy to resume operations after an interruption. And finally, perhaps the worst culprit of all, is the attitude of people toward errors.”
16. Type of errors, the difference between mistakes and errors. “Slips occur when the goal is correct, but the required actions are not done properly: the execution is flawed. Mistakes occur when the goal or plan is wrong.” “What is a designer to do? Provide as much guidance as possible to ensure that the current state of things is displayed in a coherent and easily interpreted format—ideally graphical.”
17. A key tidbit on checklists. “It is always better to have two people do checklists together as a team: one to read the instruction, the other to execute it.”
18. The key to success of resilient organizations, “A resilient organization treats safety as a core value, not a commodity that can be counted.”
19. Many great examples of sound design thinking. The Human-Centered Design Process. “There is no substitute for direct observation of and interaction with the people who will be using the product.”
20. A real-world practice that resonates, “In product development, schedule and cost provide very strong constraints, so it is up to the design team to meet these requirements while getting to an acceptable, high-quality design.”
21. Notes, references, and so much more…

Negatives:
1. I would have liked to have seen more examples of product failure. Perhaps, legal matters interfere with authors’ ability to share such information.
2. More illustrations would have been helpful.
3. For those of us in the field, appendices that provide more detailed information would have added value.
4. The kindle did not take advantage of its linking capability. In other words, the notes provided were not linked.

In summary, this was a very informative and enjoyable book to read. Norman succeeds in providing readers of all backgrounds with helpful insights on what constitutes good design in everyday products. A highly recommended read!

Further recommendations: “Emotional Design” by the same author, “Inspired: How to Make Products Customers Love” by Marty Cagan, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal, “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People” by Susan Weinschenk, “Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy” by Cindy Alvarez, “Principles of Product Development Flow” by Donald G. Reinertsen, and “Well-Deigned” by Jon Kolko

48 people found this helpful

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Andrew Kraus

See the world through the eye of a designer

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2024

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I really enjoyed this book. As a frontend software engineer and UX designer, it taught me many valuable design concepts and armed me with the tools to not just spot bad and good design when I see it , but to be able to better articulate why it is I feel one way or another about the design of, well, anything.

5 people found this helpful

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Luz

Exactly as described

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2024

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The pages and the cover were in good conditions.

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George

Came in good condition!

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2023

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Great book for Designers.

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Keith Levkoff

Useful information about how things SHOULD BE designed!

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2021

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I've just started reading this book - and I must say I am quite impressed.

I've read a few reviews that essentially accused the author of being a cranky old guy complaining about how the world has changed - and I must agree with them. However, as far as I'm concerned, it's a message that needs to be heard. Not all change is good... and, many times, change makes the world more complicated to navigate... often in ways that are not at all helpful. Many modern products are very poorly designed when it comes to little details like practicality and usability. And too many designers of modern equipment and software expect their users to either already know how to use their product - or to be willing to do extensive research, or read a long detailed manual, before being able to use it. When I purchased my last new car I didn't need to read a book before being able to drive it off the lot. So why DID I need to look up the details about how to make a phone call on my new phone? Shouldn't how to make a simple phone call be simpler and more obvious than how to drive car? And, likewise, shouldn't it be obvious how to turn a lamp on and off? Doesn't this seem like a bit of a step backwards to you?

Advanced features are very nice, and can be really handy once you understand them, and set them up, but you shouldn't need a manual to make a simple phone call. (If you were trapped in a burning building, and you found a phone lying on the floor, but it wasn't the same brand as the one you normally use, would you be able to figure out how to call 911 on it? And, for that matter, could you even trust that a modern hotel room would have a plain old light switch located at the normal spot on the wall next to the door?)

My point is that this book provides an EXCELLENT perspective on the things we SHOULD be paying attention to when we design things... and it's great that someone is putting that sort of thinking into print, to remind us that designs need to be both attractive, functional, and practical, before we forget that little detail entirely.

9 people found this helpful

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Symytry

Essential Reading For Designers

Reviewed in Canada on June 24, 2023

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It may not seem like it but if you are employed in the game design industry in game design or level design, then you should read this book! For newer folks just starting out, it will enable you to understand more about how to think about usability and commonality in your work. If you’ve been at it for a while, it’s a great refresher on important human concepts that you may just take for granted and not think about as much as you should.

Ivan Navarrete

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Reviewed in Mexico on June 22, 2023

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The book arrived in good condition, it was delivered before the delivery time, the book cover is not the best material, however I am satisfied with my purchase. 😉

Bruno

Geweldig boek maar deze uitgave is zwak

Reviewed in Belgium on December 30, 2023

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Kocht deze versie als geschenk. De uitgave is enorm teleurstellend... Cover foto helemaal uitgewassen en lage resolutie.

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Gaizka

Libro esencial para diseñadores industriales o de UX

Reviewed in Spain on September 18, 2023

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Un clásico del muno del diseño, completamente esencial para cualquier persona del gremio.

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jnf

Für jeden geeignet

Reviewed in Germany on April 1, 2023

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Das Buch war an der Uni für die Einführungsvorlesung zu Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) Pflichtlektüre. In der Vorlesung wurde es als ein Muss für alle vorgestellt, die UI/UX-Design machen. Nach zweimaligem Lesen kann ich dies bestätigen. Aber auch für Leute, die mit HCI oder Design nichts am Hut haben, kann ich das Buch empfehlen. Es liefert einem eine ganz andere Sichtweise auf Dinge, die man täglich im Leben benutzt. Und da ist meine größte Erkenntnis: Fehler durch "menschliches Versagen" - egal ob das große oder nur kleine Auswirkungen hat - sind meist nicht durch den Menschen verursacht, sondern durch schlechtes Design. Das ist eine Denkweise, mit der man sich selbst weniger herunterzieht.
Norman macht aus etlichen Beispielen aus dem Leben deutlich, wie einfach oder kompliziert Gegenstände entworfen werden. Dabei gibt er einfache Modelle, die helfen das menschliche Handeln und die Psychologie hinter ihrem Handeln zu verstehen. Er beantwortet Fragen wie:
-Wie funktionieren mentale Modelle?
-Wie denkt der Mensch und führt Aktionen aus? Was können dabei für Probleme auftreten? Was ist wenn Fehler auftreten?
-Wie funktioniert (vereinfacht) das Gedächtnis und was können wir daraus für Design lernen?
-Wie kann Design Menschen dazu beeinflussen das "Richtige" zu tun und Fehler zu vermeiden?
-Wie kann ein Team im Idealfall ein Designprojekt funktionieren?

Die Beispiele aus dem Alltag, die er in dieser überarbeiteten Version anführt, sind so gewählt, dass sie modern sind und wahrscheinlich auch noch in einigen Jahren aktuell sind. Auch wenn es nun bereits einige Zeit her ist, dass ich das Buch gelesen habe, denke ich immer noch häufig an Beispiele aus dem Buch; zum Beispiel wenn ich wieder einer "Norman-Tür" begegne und drücke statt zu ziehen, oder wenn ich zum hundertsten Mal versuche die Temperatur in meinem Kühlschrank anzupassen, den Drehregler aber immer noch nicht verstanden habe.
Das Buch ist sehr gut lesbar, sprachlich einfach gehalten, interessant und unterhaltsam. Es gibt einige Abbildungen, die zum Verständnis beitragen.
Fazit: Klare Leseempfehlung.

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