The book offers many examples of poor and good design. Norman explores the benefits of mapping and the importance of a good conceptual model and making things visible. He also discusses how people blame their inability to make something work on themselves, the environment or some unrelated cause when the real problem is in the design of the object.
Norman also devotes a chapter to discussing how people remember things through their memory and through information presented in the world. He writes about the structure of memory and outlines three main categories to describe how we remember things: memory for arbitrary things, memory for meaningful relationships and memory through explanation.
In the fourth chapter Norman writes about how a user can know how to use different devices and discusses the different kinds of constraints – physical, semantic, logical and cultural – and how they limit the possible operations for a device.
The fifth chapter breaks down human errors into two main categories (slips and mistakes) and how to detect slips. Norman then relates slips to the design process to improve design. In chapter six he discusses the different challenges a designer faces when designing a new product. He discusses how certain negative forces like the demands of time and pressure can work against evolutionary design.
The final chapter discusses seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple tasks and the importance of standardizing design when something cannot be designed without difficulties. Norman also writes about how certain things actually need to be designed to be difficult.
In each chapter Norman backs up his claims and explanations with real-world examples and outlines the history of certain designs (like the typewriter and the writing process) in several chapters.
Discussion
Norman did a good job of making abstract ideas about design concrete. While I agreed with what he said, I hadn’t thought as deeply about the subjects as Norman wrote about them. He also gave great examples throughout the book to better prove his points.
Some of the parts I thought were most interesting were:
1) Section about how doors at a school for handicapped children have the latches at the very top of the door to prevent children from going outside alone – from chapter 7.
2) The discussion of the history of the typewriter and the discussion on the faucet designs – chapter 6.
3) Lego motorcycle and how he applies its simple design to the topics discussed in the chapter – chapter 4
I think it might be interesting for Norman to update his book now. Some of the examples he uses are a little out of date, and I’m sure there are a lot more designs he could examine and explain now.
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