BOOK REPORT: The Design of Everyday Things

BOOK NAME:The Design of Everyday Things

 

AUTHOR:Donald A. Norman

 

Here's the download of this book:

http://files.cnblogs.com/caozhu1/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things.pdf

 

The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman is a book that gives an

interesting treatment of usability and design of everything from doors to computers.

Over seven chapters and 217 pages (of core content), Norman lays out a very logical

and technical treatment of the subject. This has been done very successfully in the

realm of design patterns in software that have their conceptual root in architectural

patterns.

 

Norman gives a number of illustrations based on who people have difficulties using

doors of varying styles. Who has not had a mishap of trying to pull a "push" door

or push a "pull" door? While giving the reader something that they can relate to,

Norman outlines the factors that distinguish good designs from poor ones. He talks

about the visible queues that objectives give users as to the proper use in addition

to feedback that the user has accomplished their goal in using objects. Some examples

are a bit dated (given that the book was published 20 years ago) such as the difficulties

of slide projectors and VCRs. However the principles that he relates transcend time

and apply as much today as they did 20, 40, and 100 years ago. It is also interesting

that he calls for things yet invented that are now in existence such as the PDA/smartphone

and CDs that contain the artist and song information for display on your radio. At the end,

I got a bit of a laugh from his trepidation about the issues that would come from being

able to search the world's collection of hypertext documents. However, the early days of

the internet did prove his fears correct. We take Google's work for granted.

 

Further, he goes into the psychology of actions in which explains both execution and

evaluation of actions, i.e. one has to know the proper uses of things as well as interpret

the aftereffects of their actions. For execution, people have what they know and what

the environment tells them. Many times people can use objects correctly the first time

without any prior knowledge because the design gives clues and constraints that direct

and limit what people can actually do with them. Evaluation is important because for a

variety of reasons people make mistakes. Sometimes the user is at fault, but other times

the design gives no information or worse misinformation about how the object should

be used.

 

With these concepts in mind, Norman addresses how to avoid the common pitfalls of

unusable design. As is often the case there are trade offs. Devices with fewer controls

look simpler, but this often requires a single control to handle multiple functions in

context specific ways. On the other hand if an object has more controls, it will seem

more complex to the user. He suggests segmentation and making only part of the

controls visible at once as ways to combat the complexity.

转载于:https://www.cnblogs.com/caozhu1/archive/2011/05/26/2057734.html