The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Summary:
This book tries to explain to the reader some of the many flaws that are encountered in the design of things that we use everyday, goes into ways that the designs could be improved, and discusses a process to design them better. He uses the POET process to describe the design better. This process is a user centered design process. Some of the principles of design that he uses include the following: Use knowledge of the world and knowledge of the head, Simplify the structure of the tasks, make things visible, get the mappings right, exploit the power of constraints, design for error, and standardize. Using knowledge of the world means that knowledge to use the design can be found from clues in the environment while knowledge of the head is strictly knowledge of the user. Simplifying the structure of tasks means that the design should make things as simple as possible. If things are too complicated then restructure them so that they are not as complex. One way this can be achieved is by keeping the tasks similar and providing mental aids to help the user through the design. Making things visible means that the design should bridge both the gulf of evaluation (how long it takes to evaluate the design) and the gulf of execution (how long it takes to execute the design). It is also very important to get the mappings correct. This means that what the user wants needs to match up with the functions and how they are executed. Using the power of constraints can greatly limit the errors that the user can make because it makes many wrong options impossible to even try. There are several different types of constraints: Physical Constraints (can't physically be done), Semantic constraints (things only make sense to do them this way), Cultural Constraints (culture dictating how something works based on a standard, or the accepted norm), and Logical Constraints (the conclusion we decide on when thinking about the problem). Designing for errors means that the design should take into account that there will be errors made because we are human. By making it easy to fix errors the overall design is improved.

Another thing that this book discussed was the use of memory and how short term memory and long term memory work. It is a known fact that we can only keep 5 or 6 unrelated things in our brain to remember at a time. The problem with long term memory is that it is harder to access and sometimes contains errors in the memory. We remember things by several different means. There is a memory for arbitrary things. These memories have no relationship to each other what so ever. There are also memories of meaningful relationships which form a relationship with themselves and other things that are already known which helps them to be remembered. Lastly, there are memories through explanation which are derived from an explanation, but not necessarily learned.

Discussion:
Overall I found a lot of this book to be repetitive. It had some interesting points about the design process and how things that we use every day do have faulty designs, but it kept repeating the process and why they were faulty over and over. This made the book rather monotonous to read. I feel like all the useful information in the book could have been discussed throughly and all the examples used in about half the space. I also felt like this book was a little bit outdated since it was first published so long ago. It had valid points, but in a few years I feel like some of the examples used will go over the heads of students because they will not have been exposed to some of the things used.