Book Reading #1: Chapter 7

The Design of Everyday Things

By: Donald A. Norman

Chapter 7
Being the last chapter, Dr. Norman reiterated everything that he considers a good user friendly device should have.  I liked that he packed all of his proposals on how to make a device intuitive into one area.  It makes referencing them much easier if I ever find the need to do so in the future.  I believe all the properties of a great design needed most of the description he lays out in the rest of the book, but now that I know the basis a point of reference is very nice.  He also talks about  how some devices must be user unfriendly such as medicine bottles.  He argues that out of all the devices out there intentional confusing devices are a minute group.  The majority of devices that are complicated should not be.  We, as users, need to promote good designs and boycott the bad in order to move the evolution of user friendly designs forward instead of into an endless spiral of poor designs.  He is absolutely right, if everyone complained about bad designs manufacturers will know what to change in the future.  The problem is that this requires everyone to contact the manufactures, stores and other users in order to get the complaint in all the right hands.  As a designer of software, I will do my best to make user-centered designs.