These kinds of things assume critical importance in the design of an aircraft cockpit.<p>For example, the lever that controls the landing gear has a little tire for the knob. The flap controls have a knob shaped like a flap. All so you know what the control is without needing to look (or the cockpit is filled with smoke).<p>The common theme with all these designs is they are driven by accidents. For some strange reason, humans are pretty bad at creating intuitive designs. It's only usage that makes it clear, and it always seems obvious in hindsight.<p>For example, aviation has standardized phrases for things, to avoid confusion. For decades, the maximum power setting on the engines was "takeoff power". I kid you not. This was fixed after a crash caused by the pilot yelling "take off power" to do a go-round, and the copilot idled the engines. This was in civil aviation. The Air Force had to undergo a crash as well to change "takeoff power".<p>The lead Boeing cockpit designer of the 757 explained to me that every intuitive cockpit feature was paid for in blood.
<i>> Good design is harder to notice than poor design, partly because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.</i><p>This is my goal. UX that gets out of the way. People shouldn't stop to admire the light switch. They should just flick it.
For me one lesson was that when we fail to properly use a thing we should blame that thing for its bad design instead of ourselves.<p>Another was that obviousness of a feature is how that thing will be used. You don't want people placing stuff on top of walls, don't make them flat.
Fun fact, <i>for some reasons</i> it had the title translated in Italian as "La caffettiera del masochista" (The masochist's coffee pot) which is a great textual description of the cover image, moving "the psychology of everyday things" to a sub-title.<p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6SC0QO0kVZI/YAyILg6A43I/AAAAAAAAVaI/dvyKQtCJw1caGq5y0SjOMxU5VUyFRpSNgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG-3213.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6SC0QO0kVZI/YAyILg6A43I/AAAAAAAAV...</a>
Well the reality of industrial designers is quite interesting. I have a good friend who is doing this (his own small studio) and as someone with a software background the processes are mind boggling. The politics involved are amazing. Weeks of debating color choices. Back and forth between departments (including the realization at a couple of month in that production costs would be through the roof...something mentioned on slidset 1, week 1) etc. etc.<p>It was also eye opening for my naive world view that awards are simply bought. A red dot award is basically pay sum x and you are guaranteed to "win".
I am always amazed at how poorly designed bathroom sink faucets are.<p>The spout where the water comes out is always so close to the far edge instead of to the middle of the sink.<p>Placing the spout so the water exits in the middle of the sink would be so much nicer. You wouldn't have to lean over, your hands wouldn't be hitting the back of the sink, and you'd have so much more room to wash your hands.
This is definitely one of the books that has shaped my thinking the most.<p>The book argues very strongly for functional design and design that makes usage obvious. “The way you use a thing should be encoded in the way the thing is, not in a manual”. I’ve been told there’s a follow up that concedes some of this and argues for emotional design. Something a long the lines of “this thing doesn’t need this handle, but it makes the thing feel manageable and less intimidating”.<p>My biggest eye opener, though, was the idea of designing for display in the store versus usage at home.<p>An updated example for me is the iPhone. It has premium materials that are assembled with tiny tolerances and has a very nice feel in the hand. But once you’ve been impressed by these in the store and you buy it, you slap on a $5 cover and never enjoy the premium materials and physical design.<p>The reasonable thing would be to have the phone shell-less and with interchangeable covers, like an old Nokia phone, but that is not nice in the show room.
For additional reading related to UI/UX, usability testing, service blueprints, usable web pages and all sorts of related topics, head over to the Nielsen Norman Group webpage (<a href="https://www.nngroup.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.nngroup.com</a>). Yes, that's Don Norman who wrote the book referenced by the OP and also Jakob Nielsen (a.k.a. the king of usability) :-)
I took a class with Donald Norman and did a work study internship with him. At the time I had no idea who he was and wasn't particularly interested in the class. I was working in neuroscience lab at the time and I thought that would be my career direction. He was the head of the Cognitive Science department.<p>The most amazing thing was the way he taught. It was almost all stories and anecdotes. He didn't start with the theory he started with a problem or a situation, often a case study. He used the example as a way to explain the theory or the issue at hand. Ultimately you did read a lot of research or theoretical papers but because you started from a real world problem it was never boring.<p>At the time it was just a class that surprised me by being much more interesting than I expected. Ultimately it was about the most useful class I ever took.
I took a UX methodology class a few years back and the teacher kept referring to this author as the father of UX design. I think its a great book to explain intrinsic usability, how a product should feel natural to the user without needing any instructions. One example was designing mall entrance doors where there is a lot of human traffic, having an arrow or no arrow showing the direction, should you write exit ? Etc.<p>I very much liked the book.
This is the UX design bible. Like most holy books, it's gone unread, and UX designers will fall back on simpler things, like design kits and ignoring the user
Attention all designers: That skeuomorphic, non-flat design that you might think is unstylish but in reality is so very usable… this book explains why.<p>In the UI of the 2000’s, the UI is visible, the <i>chrome</i> is visible and it has meaning and utility. Buttons are easily found and pushed because they visibly look like they are extending from the display. That’s an affordance. The window corner used to have a “rough” texture just like exterior stairs have texture strips to keep your feet from slipping. They indicated that the friction from your mouse-pointer on the screen will move the window corner.<p>These designs allowed user decisions about UI function to exist in the <i>subconscious</i> where they weren’t a distraction from the actual problem at hand.<p>The bar these days seems to be “is it possible for the user to eventually accomplish their task?) as opposed to “how can we demand even less of the users’ brain for the task to be accomplished?”<p>I am anticipating this will not be a popular response, but I can’t help but think wrt/ UI design, we’ve collectively thrown out the baby with the bath water for vanity and it’s going to take some criticism to get it back.<p>Reading this book and studying the UI designs it inspired (ex: early to late 2000’s Mac UI) is IMO the best education a young UI-designer can get.<p>Edit: I don’t want to lay too much at the feet of designers because it’s probably Product Managers that also need to read this book and <i>care</i> about it.
I can also assure everyone that this book is worth reading. Thanks to OP for doing what I wanted to do in a 2nd reading: Make notes. But the most important bits still stayed with me even without writing notes. So just enjoy reading it. You will see the world differently. It will annoy you a bit. But at least now I now why my desk is always cluttered. I choose products more wisely and put more thoughts into designing things. There is always something hidden and this books helps a lot in getting a start in that direction.
I have heard some great things about this book as far as physical design. Has this book inspired any insights on design of software or other engineering related topics?
Review is recent but this is about Don Norman's book from the 1980's, if anyone was expecting something new. IMHO the book was ok but it didn't wow me or anything like that, had a fair amount of stuff that I subjectively felt was wrong (matter of opinion), and a smaller amount of stuff that I thought was objectively wrong (he said X off the top of his head, but published studies said otherwise). I haven't read the review yet. Will try to do so tomorrow.