Don Norman's "The Design Of Everyday Things" Book Review

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is a book originally published in 1988 under the name The Psychology of Everyday Things. The book itself focuses on design principles within interaction design, and how to best apply them. Ever since the original release, technology and the design field has changed a lot. Therefore, a new and updated version was released in 2013.

Norman himself explains that because of technology’s rapid advancement the examples in the earlier versions of his book have become irrelevant. However, he argues that the principles within design that the book focuses on are still relevant. This essay will focus on the revised and expanded edition which was released in 2013. Continuously throughout the book Norman defends the idea that more often than not humans are not to blame for mistakes or errors, but that instead we should blame bad design. In the first two chapters he describes principles of design, and introduces terms such as affordances, signifiers, constraints, feedback, and mappings. These terms will be explained in greater detail later on. Chapter three and four simply explain how human memory works, and how to properly apply this knowledge to design.

After this is the fifth chapter which details what sort of mistakes a human can make, and how you could implement ways to avoid them, or ways your user could easily fix them should they occur. The remaining two chapters go more into detail about design thinking and business. In other words, the book describes that what businesses and colleagues will try to push for may not always be beneficial to implement into the product. Although many of these chapters focus on different aspects of design, several of them mention the terms introduced in the first chapters of the book.

Affordances

In the original version of the book Norman introduced the term affordance into the design field. The term is used by Norman to describe what an object or application will let the user do with it. An affordance can be described as the relationship between a person and an object. For example a phone or tablet device can afford to be carried. They are light, can be held in one hand, and phones are small enough to be put inside your pockets. All of this is in contrast to desktop computers, which are large, heavy, and difficult to carry. The desktop computer does not have the affordances of the light and small phones or tablets, but it does have its own set of affordances. A desktop computer usually has better processing power, and can handle more challenging tasks than the smaller devices.

In addition it is easier to replace parts of the desktop computer if they break. Smartphones or tablets usually have custom made components which are either very expensive to replace or unavailable for the average consumer. However, these affordances of the desktop computer may not be as visible as the phones’ and tablets’ affordances. If an affordance is visible it may clearly communicate to the user how best to operate it. A device with a touchscreen and a few buttons clearly communicate to the user that the finger is needed to navigate. Should a clear affordance be difficult to implement, or if making a one would ruin another necessary aspect of the product, it may be better to include a signifier.

Signifiers

While an affordance may communicate to the user what the object is capable of doing, a signifier will signal to the user how to perform the required actions. A signifier can be described as any perceivable indicator which tells the user what the appropriate behaviour is for this product. Signifiers can be everything from subtle clues implemented in the product, to external signifiers left by other users in order to help new users with the product. External signifiers often comes in the form of post-it notes or signs, and usually indicates bad design. It usually indicates bad design because the product’s appearance was not enough to communicate to the user how to operate it. A good signifier can quickly tell the user what to do, and the user may not even have realised it.

The power button on a laptop would in most cases take experimentation and time to find without the power symbol. This is because the power symbol is known to most people, but the specific shape of the power button may not be. Should the symbol be faded or removed due to repeated use, an experienced user would be fine because the signifier had previously taught them where they should press. However, someone who had never used that product, and therefore never known what the correct button is, would need to take some time to find the right button. They may try pressing several other buttons until they find the correct one. Luckily, because the product is turned off, this means that the user will not make the product do actions the user did not want it to. This is a form of constraint.

Constraints

Constraints are meant to limit the actions the user may take. This is usually meant to stop users from doing actions they are not supposed to. Pressing the windows button on the keyboard of a powered down laptop will not turn it on and open the start menu. A more obviously intended constraint is how smartphones turn the screen black when you are in a phone call with it pressed to your face. The black screen means that the user cannot interact with it, which in return stops the user from accidentally pressing buttons on the screen with their face. Should the user wish to press an on screen button while in a phone call they would be able to after moving it further from their faces, because the smartphone recognises when it is being touched by a cheek, and when it is being touched by a finger. By doing this the designers have limited the mistakes a person could make during a phone call. However, if the designers wish to communicate the possible actions, and if there was a problem, they would need to give the users feedback.

Feedback

Feedback can be any sound, message, or any other signal meant to communicate something to the user about the action they just performed. The product should through feedback tell the user if their actions were successful, or if something went wrong.

For example if an user was browsing a web store and added something to their cart they would be unsure if the item was added if they were given no feedback. Therefore, many online stores turn the ‘add to cart’ button into an ‘added to cart’ button that may even switch colors or display a check mark. Many stores also show a little symbol by the link or symbol to the shopping cart with the number of different items added to it. Now the user will not click the add to cart button an unnecessary amount of times, or click the link to the page for the shopping cart in order to see if the item was added. This way the user is quickly reassured that their item was added, and that they may continue their shopping undisturbed. A lack of feedback can confuse the user. A person may attempt to use a ticket machine on their local train station. They went through all the stages and paid for their ticket, but got no feedback that the order had been processed and the ticket had been printed. The person will then become confused, and think that perhaps something went wrong, or that the machine is simply still processing the order.

Meanwhile the ticket lies ready, but the user may not pick it up before much later. This heavily slows down the process of buying a train ticket, and the user may become stressed if the train arrives soon. Feedback that does not provide enough information may also do more harm than good. If a program crashes and an error message shows up simply saying “There was an error. ” it will do little to actually help the user, and the user could easily have guessed that something went wrong. Therefore it ends up doing little to actually solve the problem, and to prevent it from happening again by allowing the user to know what caused the error. It is however easier to prevent errors ahead of time by creating good mappings.

Mappings

Mappings are appearances, positions and other qualities of buttons or controls that relay to the user what they may be used for. For example the arrow buttons on the keyboard are in an order that makes it easy to determine which direction is which simply by touch. The up and down button are in the middle, and the up button is over the down button. Likewise the left arrow button is on the left, and the right is on the right side. However, if you rearranged them, and instead put them in one single line it could easily become hard to seperate them from each other. Despite having different symbols that convey to the user which direction it represents, most would likely press the wrong one when typing quickly.

However, these symbols are signifiers, which means the mapping no longer helps the user understand the controls. Good mappings should quickly and clearly convey to the user how to operate the product. If the user is unsure, or mistakes one button for another at a quick glance, the chances for something to go wrong increases. My opinion on the bookI have studied design within art for a few years, and have therefore encountered little of what has been written about in the book during my studies. However, this book quickly made me understand just how much design applies to almost everything we surround ourselves with everyday. It was interesting to me to learn about these new terms, and I have thought about them several times while interacting with my household objects. Personally I think Norman’s explanations are easy to understand. However, they are often described in more detail than I needed in order to understand what he wanted to explain. I did appreciate how he brought back the terms listed above several times through the book, and explained how they may assist in designing intuitive systems, preventing errors or mistakes, and create a pleasant experience for users. Overall I enjoyed the book, and believe I will have use for what I have learned from it for years to come no matter what field of study I pick after this year course.

In Summary

Affordances are the possible actions the user can go through with. Signifiers are used to convey what possible actions there are, and how to do them properly. Constraints limit the actions the user may take. Feedback communicates to the user whether their actions were successful or not. Mappings if done properly will make it intuitive for users to operate the buttons or controls. If done badly, most of these can confuse an user, or frustrate them. However, if done correctly they create a good design which in return often creates a pleasant user experience. Therefore, how you apply them is important. A good understanding of these terms can help to implement them properly. This is the goal of the book, which it has succeeded in for decades after it’s original release, and will hopefully continue to do in decades to come.