This book was interesting to read. Don Norman, the author of the book, talks initially about those things that cause people issues in everyday life. Some examples are the phone system at people's work places, different types of doors (those that cause problems are those that have no visible sign on which way they open, or give mixed signals), and other sorts of things. Later in the book, he describes several different aspects of design, and explains what one must think about when they design objects.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were a few things I noticed as I was reading the later chapters of the book. One was that the examples seemed a little bit out of date. Granted, the original version of the book was published in 1988, and this edition doesn't have much changed from the original. I can see the relevance of all the examples, and can relate to them myself. But I can see that many of these examples would have to change for the next generation, as well as some of the text. My younger brothers might know what a typewriter is (barely), and I used one myself, but many of the next generation after mine don't know what a record player is, and might not even know what a typewriter is. Another possibility is that in a couple generations, there might not be land line phones at all. With the way technology has grown exponentially, land line phones could possibly become a thing of the past as the populace turns to cell phones and iPhones and similar devices, especially those which can access the internet as well as being used as phones. There were also many ideas mentioned which have been implemented already. This was the main thing I noticed as I read the book. Despite this, the information he wrote about is still relevant to today. There are still issues with designs of all sorts of things, and I've been noticing those things that are not as well designed ever since I started reading this book.
Commented on Steven's blog.
Yes, the cacophony of bad designs just starts raining down after just reading the first few pages of the book. This book should be required reading for every CS/CE major...and while we are at it, the business majors—in the hopes that any future executives might actually become interested in the design of an object rather than just blindly to the bottom line!
ReplyDeleteAlthough some examples are not common in society anymore, I feel their errors still manifest themselves in high tech gadgets and anything where form defines function rather than the other way around.
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