Book Review Assignment 1

Book overview: The design of everyday things

Before starting reading the book I came to know from one of my friend that it is the best book of HCI(Human computer Interaction) .As a masters degree student of HCI I got motivated to read the book carefully .It  is really compared as the  ‘Bible ‘ for HCI .From the beginning to the end I found it interesting every moment. It talks about designing from old times to some designs that are still on progress. The book is considered as designers first choice .

 The book was written by Don Norman who is known for solving various HCI issues in easy way .The main reason for writing the book was to influence the designer to give more importance on the user than just the outlook of the product.I had this semester ‘Design for all ‘ course ,where  I found this book so helpful  to understand certain complicated issues  with details explanation . I personally enjoyed reading the book and I suggest to all engineer, programmer, designer to read it must because it will open the eye of real designing and it will support a designer all the way .

The writer tried to explain examples from his personal life, his friends life or someone close to him.He tried to explain all in easy language which is understandable to all and tried to use Italic font for examples ,which is visible to the readers. The book contains some examples that are so outdated  and at the same time the writer mentioned some ideas  that are never seen in real  yet .Some examples are really important in our recent life too,like  the mapping of stove control. Norman include shared experiences of people running into doors, turning on the wrong light, throwing their shirt in the toilet, causing a nuclear meltdown, etc all due to bad designing .

Another important part of the book is creeping featurism. The visions that are requested by other users always bring new features. Some users are satisfied with few features and easy accessibility but others wants more factions and more features .

Norman gave an idea of good designs through some principles which are as follow: visibility, affordances, constraints, conceptual model, mapping and feedback. The principles are are useful and correct .Which will help the user through good design and will indicate what to do where to go all the time. Everyone has their own thinking we can’t get the idea of the designer who actually thought in a different way .Norman explained this things really well in his book. The book talks about the difficulties the designer face during designing a new product or software .This book is popular to the computer programmer and software designers because they must know the program  that are really most easy for the users.

So if someone try to make a new design of a product for others use , it's worthwhile to take a look at how to embed the knowledge of how to use it within the object itself. Norman tried to say it in many ways  how important is to think from users prospect. So the designer has to think of two types of knowledge one is real world another is what they have in their head. The designer should think more deeply and they should really find out the users needs and expectations .It is the users who best knows ,what will make them feel comfortable in use .The most interesting part was looking the everyday using things carefully and think of its use in more smooth and comfortable way . This is why we can see small children  now a days  playing games or learning in computer and i pad or using laptops even though they don’t have much skills about all this instruments . It indicates how well designed and easy is the operation of the product. This is an example of good designing but if someone doesn’t follow these principles then the design will be bad and  complex which will not be acceptable by the users .

There are  various constraintsin designing too . Constraints actually suggest what one should do.As for example - lego motorcycle shows how combination of different constraints leads to correct construction of the model without any instruction or assistance

‘To err is human’ Norman completely agree with this . One of the important part of the designing is human error. Human error is caused by inadequate designing,the user feels incompetence with it .

One part of the book exposes a constant battle between usability and aesthetics. Rarely designers are the end-users, and often clients are neither. According to Norman  the fault does not always lie with the designer, but the demands of the greater powers — employing companies, industries, end-users, hardships of universal adoption — listed under “Forces That Work Against Evolutionary Design” (page 142). Though his statement about the non-existing feeding back mechanism is outdated (internet review aggregators have taken care of that), many other constrictions (such as the force of habit thanks to which we are still using qwerty and not Dvorak layout of the keyboard) still hold true.

. There are some negative side as well about the book is that the book was written long time ago and things had been changed rapidly also the technology. So  some  examples and logics are so hard to understand for new generation .The book has not been updated for a long time. Another fact is that the book stops us to think independently about designing .In one part of the book it says not to take control but in some cases we need to take control of things during designing.

The book is really very helpful and I wish there was a revised version of the books  publishing  ,it could  be really updated for the new generation designer and could bring lots of new ideas. All in all the book is a guideline of designs  which is still easily recognized by everyone .