Book Reading #1: Book Response

The Design of Everyday Things

By: Donald A. Norman

Book Response 

I found this book to be very informative and a great read for anyone designing anything and for end users as well. Pretty much everyone should read this book. It gives clear guidelines to follow and concepts to always consider when designing any device. Dr. Norman uses many examples of both good and bad designs on what makes a device user friendly. He explains exactly what makes a design more difficult than it needs to be and give plenty of examples as to how it can be improved. When reading this book, it is good to keep the fact that it was written in the 80’s in mind when topics of what good future designs will be like arises.  There are many points where he predicts future devices that are common today and gives some examples that are solved now.

I had similar views on a few of the ideas he explained, but the vast majority was completely new to me. I greatly benefitted from reading this. Most of his guidelines for creating human-centered designs were so simple that I will not be possible for me to forget very easily. I may forget what Dr. Norman called them, but the concepts will be engrained in my head. Every time I come in contact with an overly complicated device, I will immediately think of this book. I will no longer blame myself for not knowing how to properly interact with devices around me. I will no longer feel silly for not being able to open a door of any kind. I will further scrutinize manuals for newly bought devices without mercy. After reading this book I cannot but notice how many things in our society can be so much better. It made finding devices to write review about incredibly easy.

Dr. Norman’s belief on how the mind and memory works is incredibly fascinating to me. As a computer engineer, I always explained the mind as working similar to a computer, since that was the closest conceptualization I could think of and understand to an extent. His description of how he thinks the mind works was very different. It was still easy to understand, and made a lot of sense when analyzed. I always pair memories that are similar even if the situation is completely different. My conceptual models of the mind and of memory are now considerably different to take in consideration what he had explained to be true. Hopefully it is more accurate and will help me understand where I myself am more likely to make mistakes. I also considered myself a rather forgetful person, but now I feel more of a motivation to keep track of important things in my environment. With the now seemingly futuristic devices at my disposal in this day and age, I will try not to depend on my memory as much as I once did.

More than just potential designers should read this book. It is an incredibly simple read that does not require much technical insight. Anyone who reads this can benefit greatly and can be a more conscious consumer of marketplaces. If everyone read this book, the number of poorly designed devices would drop dramatically because know one would buy them. That is how it should be! As Dr. Norman explained, society would be correctly promoting the evolution of user-centered devices. We could transfer that same concept to movies and boycott poor quality films as a society while we are at it, too!  No more remakes!