The Design of Everyday Things

The world is filled with poorly and greatly designed products. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman looks at both types and lays out the methodology that can be used to create great products. Going into the psychology of how people use objects and what factors contribute to a good or bad experience reveals how the framework helps build superior products.

Norman cites discoverability and understanding as two of the most important characteristics of good design. Discoverability is the user's ability to determine what actions are possible and where and how to perform them. Understanding is if the user understands what the product does, how the product is supposed to be used, and what the controls do. Discoverability is created by utilizing affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, and feedback. Understanding comes from the conceptual models users develop and sometimes requires previous knowledge.

Affordances are the relationship between a physical object and the agent acting on it. For example, a wired mouse affords being plugged in, grabbed, clicked, moved, etc. It does not afford being connected via Bluetooth, eaten, or stood on. An anti-affordance is any interaction a product prevents. A wired mouse has an anti-affordance when it comes to letting the power running through it shock the agent acting on it. For affordances to be useful, they must be perceivable. If the mouse has a middle click or turbo switch, then the user must be able to tell it is there and what it does.

Signifiers communicate affordances to the user. They let the user know where action should take place. When a door says pull/push or a screen says, “Click here to start.” Without signifiers, not all affordances might seem apparent and lead to a user’s frustration or at the very least a less-than-optimal experience. Beginners learning Excel may not realize that the software can recognize patterns when entering numbers into adjacent cells and put unnecessary effort into entering fields that could be filled out by clicking the corner of a cell and dragging the mouse down. If Excel were to communicate this affordance of recognizing patterns with a signifier, perhaps a clip playing in the corner of the screen demonstrating the feature, the user would know of its existence and have a better experience with the product.

Constraints are things put in place to prevent a user from committing an action. There are four types of constraints- physical, cultural, semantic, and logical. Physical constraints limit possible operations by ruling out those that aren’t physically possible. Example: The square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole. Cultural constraints are societal scripts/frameworks that limit the number of actions to socially acceptable/expected ones. Semantic constraints are those that limit actions based on the situation. When getting in the car as a passenger, you do not enter through the driver’s door. Logical constraints are those that come from a logical relationship between an object and its function.

Mapping is how an operation affects an object. The way light switches turn on a specific light, keys register different characters in a word processor, or controller buttons in a video game make the character perform different actions. Mapping should be easy to understand and make sense to the user. Controls should communicate their effect. Whether it be through labels, spatial/natural mapping, or another way that communicates meaning to the user.

Feedback is how the object communicates to the user. Objects can communicate an object's status and the results of an action or inaction. Haptic feedback in racing games lets the user know that the car is drifting or colliding with something. The red light on a camera lets the user know that the camera started recording when they pressed the button. Feedback needs to be able to be interpreted by the user. When a motherboard’s LED lights flash a seemingly random pattern, the user cannot tell what is wrong with the machine.

Conceptual models are an explanation of how things work, usually oversimplified and inaccurate. These mental models help users understand how to use a product. It does not matter how realistic these models are as long as they are helpful. Incorrect conceptual models lead to incorrect behavior.

The above six plus discoverability make up the seven fundamental principles of design. Design is used to create objects that are used to achieve goals.

There are seven stages of action. Actions are split into two parts- execution and evaluation. The figure below depicts the process. Objects are acted on/with to achieve goals. To design something that helps users meet their goal, their goal/motivation must be understood. Norman refers to Toyota’s 5 Whys process to find a person's root cause.

Errors can occur during actions. Mistakes and slips are the two types of errors.

There are action-based and memory-lapse slips. Slips occur when the goal and action are correctly determined but not performed as intended. Action-based slips are when the incorrect action is performed like when a person mistypes a word because their finger slipped. A literal slip. Memory-lapse slips occur when memory fails. Forgetting to plug in a device so its battery is charged when it is needed.

Mistakes are the result of a user having the incorrect goal or plan. There are three types of mistakes- rule-based, knowledge-based, and memory-lapse. Rule-based mistakes are when the situation is properly assessed but a rule requires an incorrect action based on that assessment. Typically, when a device turns off and won’t turn back on it is most often a result of the battery dying. Plugging in the device will usually turn it on. If the battery is unable to charge or there is something else wrong with the device then a rule-based mistake has been made. A person may only be able to prevent a rule-based mistake if they have the necessary knowledge. A knowledge-based mistake is when a problem is not correctly determined due to a lack of knowledge. The earlier situation could also be considered a knowledge-based mistake because the person was unaware that something else was wrong. Perhaps the outlet they plugged the charger into was broken and they did not know. A memory-lapse mistake is when there is forgetting at the goal, plan, or compare stages of action.

To prevent errors from occurring, their origins must be found and overcome using the seven design principles. Errors can occur at any stage of an action. The process known as Human Centered Design (HCD) is used to solve the right problem by focusing design on meeting human needs and capabilities.

For HCD to find a solution that solves the right problem, the correct problem and best solution must be determined. A double-diamond method is used.

As mentioned earlier, finding the root cause for a goal is important in determining how to help a user achieve their goals. To find that motivation an analysis of the problem must be conducted where the issue is expanded and then condensed to find its root cause. This root cause is then solved through a solution that is found by, again, expanding on the idea and finding the best solution.

The double-diamond is the two phases of design that are done by using the HCD process. It is very similar to Scrum thinking. Observation, Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing are performed iteratively to yield the best solution to the problem. This is where errors are discovered and weeded out. Every time this spiral method is completed a better version of the solution exists.  

While creating the best product for the end user is one goal of design, the goal is also to create the best product for all stakeholders. Those who are involved with the creation and distribution of the product need to be included in the design process. Requirements and restrictions must be put in place to keep a project on track.

The struggle of good design that follows any theoretical process mentioned above is that it is extremely uncommon in the real world. Don Norman’s Law of Product Development states, “The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.” There is no time for an ethnographic study of the target market. There is frustration when a satisfactory product is prototyped for the umpteenth time and small errors, which may be very uncommon for the majority of people, are asked to be fixed. The goal of a company is to generate revenue which is done by providing goods and services. Development is meant to be efficient so that a firm can generate revenue as fast as possible. Supposed best practices appear to be roadblocks for most. When bad design is everywhere, and customers are still buying products, there is little motivation to spend resources on designing properly.

This was a dense read so I couldn’t cover everything of value that I got from this book. That would have been a 298-page report. What I found most useful was the way Don Norman was able to conceptualize and describe the processes that I had inadvertently been using on my projects like Nectar. Looking back and seeing how I was using these formulas, I can now consciously apply them to my projects, doing an even better job and looking for things I didn’t think of before.

I’m starting to notice a pattern in business books related to innovation, product development, and psychology. They all seem to mention memory, radical vs incremental innovation, iterative processes to yield continual improvements through some spiral method, communication across fields, forward-thinking, and reflection. While the repetitiveness may sound like reading is becoming more frustrating each time I open one of these books filled with seemingly redundant information, I still find myself learning. Authors find unique perspectives, apply concepts differently, and keep finding ways to add something new. The emphasis of these concepts shows me how important they are bound to be in the business space I’m entering.