The Design of Everyday Things
By: Donald A. Norman
Response to Chapter 1:
In the book The Design of Everyday Things, Norman discusses the phycological aspects of designing everyday objects properly to ease user interaction. After reading the preface to the book, I felt that Norman was going to talk more about the design process, but after reading the first chapter I get the impression that his intention is to go over the reasons for which people attempt to interact with objects and how the design process can be tailored to suit such elementary interaction. He raises quite a few great points regarding the principles of great design which are listed below. One thing I noticed though, throughout reading his multiple examples of poor design, was that I am typically less burdoned by poor design. I rarely push doors that should be pulled, and have never had much trouble with any telephone system even though he makes a few examples out to be horrendously contrived.
- Visibility
- Using natural signals to convey the mapping between intended actions and actual operations.
- Mapping
- Shows the relationships between actions and results, between the controls and their effects, and between the system state and what is visible.
- Affordance
- The percieved and actual fundamental properties of a device that determine how to properly operate the device.
- Feedback
- Full and continuous feedback regarding the current state as a result of a particular action.
- Conceptual Models - Formed largely by interpreting the devices perceived actions and its visible structure.
- Design Model - The designer's conceptual model of how the user should perceive the system.
- User's Model - Mental model developed through interaction with the system.
- System Image
- The actual visible part of the device to the user.
