A Software Development Manager's Perspective

books:

	• The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman Basic Books, 2002 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 167 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Must Read" for Game Designers

I don't know all the types of people who would benefit from reading this book, but I have it on my [short] list of "must reads" for game designers. I imagine that anyone who creates things that other people are supposed to use would learn something from this book that would be beneficial.

The author presents principles of design that focus on usability. My only gripe, which is not enough of an issue to warrant less than 5 stars, is that some of the examples the author uses are old and almost outdated.

It's a book

It's a good book. It's a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. Also there are no color pictures.

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Recommended for me and by me!!!

I forward the recommendation that was made to me once. A nice book for thinking design and practical concepts. Learn how to be smart beyond how people build your environment for you.

A Software Development Manager's Perspective

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. I am a software development professional, and I choose this book to look for higher level principles that I could apply in my line of work. 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.

I was pleased to see that Norman deals to some extent with computers in his text. He asserts that programmers are often poor designers, and my own experience supports this claim. As someone who has written a lot of "behinds the scenes" software, I know that my strength is not in user interface design. In my current role as a manager, however, I now have new ideas to consider for evaluating user interfaces that my team creates.

The only downside of the book is that it really reads like a textbook, and I found it hard to take in large doses. I am glad that I completed it, but it took me a few weeks rather than the couple of days that a book of this length would normally take. If you are willing to put in a little effort, you will find valuable information here.

Overall: B

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Donald Norman's best-selling plea for user-friendly design, with more than 175,000 copies sold to date, is now a Basic paperback.

First, businesses discovered quality as a key competitive edge; next came service. Now, Donald A. Norman, former Director of the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of California, reveals how smart design is the new competitive frontier. The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

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