Design of Everyday Things By Don Norman: Summary of Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things.

Don Norman discusses About Discoverability and Understandability in this chapter.

The door narrative exemplifies one of the most essential design principles: visibility.

When designing doors that push, the designer must offer signs that tell where to push.

Alternatively, make the supporting pillars visible.

The vertical plate and supporting pillars are natural signals that are automatically processed, so there is no need to be aware of them.

I refer to the usage of natural signals as natural design and expand on it throughout this book.

Applying the core ideas of psychology — Affordances, signifiers, The technology paradox, mappings, feedback, and conceptual model [mental model] — leads to discoverability

Affordance: Affordances are the properties of a thing that determine just how it could possibly be used. Glass is for seeing through and for breaking. Wood is used for solidity, opacity, support, or carving. Flat, porous, smooth surfaces are for writing on. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking.

Mappings: Mapping is a technical term meaning the relationship between two things, in this case between the controls and their movements and the results in the world. To control an array of lights, arrange the controls in the same pattern as the lights. Other natural mappings follow from the principles of perception and allow for the natural patterning of controls and feedback..

The technology paradox: Technology has been changing and innovating over time to make our lives easier. Devices are becoming more complex as a result of their abundance of possibilities. Designing products with the same technology that makes life easier by including additional features in each one is the key difficulty.

Feedback: Designers must clearly convey the outcomes of their work. When an action is taken, feedback must be timely and helpful. Delayed feedback might be unsettling and cause users to give up or fail. Users may become irritated and annoyed by receiving too much input. Prioritizing feedback is also necessary. Poor input can be more distracting, uninformative, and frequently annoying and anxiety-inducing than no feedback at all.

Signifiers: Users can utilize signifiers to assist them understand what features a product has and how to use them. When a product’s affordances are difficult to understand, they are used. Signals are signifiers. Signs and labels that instruct users what to do are examples of signifiers.

Models of concepts: Consider the rather strange bicycle illustrated in figure 1.7. You know it won’t work because you form a conceptual model of the device and mentally simulate its operation. You can do the simulation because the parts are visible and the implications clear. Other clues to how things work come from their visible structure — in particular from affordances, constraints, and mappings. Consider a pair of scissors: even if you have never seen or used them before, you can see that the number of possible actions is limited. The holes are clearly there to put something into, and the only logical things that will fit are fingers. The holes are affordances: they allow the the fingers to be inserted. The sizes of the holes provide constraints to limit the possible fingers: the big hole suggests several fingers, the small hole only one. The mapping between holes and fingers — the set of possible operations —

CHAPTER 2

Customers experience two gaps (obstacles) between the desired result (goal) and the potential outcomes when utilizing an item or service (what actions to perform). It is the designer’s responsibility to help people bridge these two gaps. With the help of feedback and a solid conceptual model, the Gulf of Evaluation may be traversed.

The human brain processes information at three different levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Visceral

For designers, visceral reaction is about fast perception. This is unrelated to the usage, effectiveness, or clarity of the product. All that matters is what is attractive and repulsive. Great designers use their visual sense to elicit these feelings. Quick and unconscious responses are known as visceral reactions.

Behavioral

Reflection is where learned skills are located and activated when the correct conditions arise. The most crucial aspect of the behavioral level for designers is the relationship between every action and an expectation. Feedback is necessary to manage expectations, and great design provides it.

Reflective

Reflection is a long, in-depth, and cerebral process. It usually happens after the event. Contemplation is the driving force behind our recommendations for a product, encouraging others to use it or perhaps to avoid it. Understanding emerges at the point where the reflective and behavioral levels intersect.