With the many recent advances in technology, it seems, there has followed a diminution of quality. Electronic books have several advantages over their print counterparts, for instance. But for the time being, they're hard to use and unattractive to boot. Computers, which are supposed to make our lives easier, are commonly sources of frustration and wasted time. Movies are wondrously chock-a-block with special effects--but someone forgot the story. And so on.

Donald Norman, a retired professor of cognitive science, is bothered to no end by the fact that grappling with unfriendly objects now takes up so many of our hours. Over the course of several books, of which The Psychology of Everyday Things was the first, he has railed against bad design. He scrutinizes a range of artifacts that are supposed to make our daily living a little easier, and he finds most of them wanting. Why, he asks, does a door need instructions that say "push" or "pull"? A well-designed object, he argues, is self-explanatory. But well-designed objects are increasingly rare, for the present culture places a higher value on aesthetics than utility, even with such items as cordless screwdrivers, dresser drawers, and kitchen cabinets. In their concern for creating "art," many designers don't seem to consider what people actually do with things. Such disregard, Norman suggests, leads to few objects being standardized: think of all the different kinds of unsynchronized clocks that lurk in microwave ovens, VCRs, coffee makers, and the like--and of all the different kinds of batteries needed to drive them. Why, he wonders, must we reset all those clocks whenever the power goes off? Some designer somewhere, he ventures, ought to develop a master clock that communicates with all other electric clocks in a home--one that, when reset, synchronizes its slave units.

You don't need to be especially interested in technological matters to enjoy Norman's arguments. The book's underlying question is aimed at a global audience: will the design of everyday things improve? If this entertaining and, yes, well-designed book changes even a few minds, perhaps it will. --Gregory McNamee

Customer Rating:
Summary: Vey fast delivery very prompt service
Comment: very nice delivery very fast response. One of the best sellers at amazon.
will do business any time with them.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Little Dated, but Still Insightful
Comment: Written by a Usability Guru, some of the examples are a little dated, but still valuable for today's usability issues. A good read and well written.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Designing stuff is harder than it looks
Comment: Norman has created an entertaining and enlightening treatise on the psychology of everyday objects. Why do some things work so well while others completely baffle? What distinguishes successful utility from frustration? How does one research and develop successful products? Most importantly, how does one avoid wasting time developing products that are doomed to fail? Many everyday objects are examined for their utility and user-friendliness. Norman uses three basic concepts, Affordances, Constraints, and Mappings to deconstruct everyday objects.
If you are designing Web sites, user interfaces for computer applications, writing manuals, or creating anything that will be used by a human being, this book will help you succeed. Norman encourages you to remove your creativity and ego from the process by affording you the objectivity to examine the goal from the point of view of the user. He shows you how social and cultural constraints can be used to enhance products.
An excellent book but you must understand that using Norman's advice requires no small amount of humility which makes it difficult to sell to established shops. For instance, I know a Web design team that uses the "don't make them think" mantra for many decisions. But they've been using it so long they think they know everything about the best Web interface design. Their prejudices get in the way of successfully developing half of their projects because they can no longer think like users and visitors. They might never be able to use Norman's advice because they'd see it as obvious and pedestrian.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book for everyone who is involved in user-oriented design
Comment: Even though some people think this is not useful in practice, I strongly believe this is a must read for anyone who designs an artifact for users. A very amusing and thoughtful book. Can even be used as a required reading in many courses such as UI design.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Ironic: Great Book - Bad Binding
Comment: Without question, a wonderful piece of work!
(I've given a dozen copies to students as inspiration.)
However, the publisher's stinginess in neither providing adequate interior margins (between pages) nor adequately accommodating for the thickness of the book by type placement on the page is a perfect illustration of the design failures under discussion.
The type has to be read curved & distorted over the waves of too thick pages rushing toward the spine. Oddly, more than adequate margins have been provided on the outer edges of each page - presumably for annotation. As such, the publisher might include a note in each succeeding edition suggesting how well this exemplifies the issue. That way there would be no need to fix the problem. I might even suggest the coinage of an near-eponymous term for this: "Normandizing".

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