The Design of Everyday Things - Book Review

This is a GREAT, BUT (slightly) irritating book.

Why Irritating?

The Author meanders from his core skill of "Design" and launches into sermons on other verticals, which gets boring. How to tackle it? SKIP those pages.

Why Great?

As I write this post, I'm staring at the AC remote control in my Hotel Room (I'm on a small holiday to Varanasi, India)

This is what I see

What the heck does "Kaimin" mean?

This book makes you realise that you are NOT alone in your daily frustration and bewilderment with the design of everyday things. 90% of product makers don't care, simply don't have consumer apathy, or, even worse, don't have a sense of aesthetics.

Interesting snippets from this book:

One goal is to turn readers into great observers of the absurd, of the poor design that gives rise to so many of the problems of modern life, especially of modern technology.

Good design is a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.

Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding. Discoverability: Is it possible to figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them? Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?

In England I visited a home with a fancy new Italian washer-dryer combination, with super-duper multisymbol controls, all to do everything anyone could imagine doing with the washing and drying of clothes. The husband (an engineering psychologist) said he refused to go near it. The wife (a physician) said she had simply memorized one setting and tried to ignore the rest. I asked to see the manual: it was just as confusing as the device. The whole purpose of the design is lost.

The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.

When people use something, they face two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where they try to figure out how it operates, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where they try to figure out what happened (Figure 2.1). The role of the designer is to help people bridge the two gulfs.

I predict that even in the twenty-second century, there will still be forms that require precise accurate (but arbitrary) formats for no reason except the laziness of the programming team.

A friend kindly let me borrow his car, an older, classic Saab. Just before I was about to leave, I found a note waiting for me: “I should have mentioned that to get the key out of the ignition, the car needs to be in reverse.” The car needs to be in reverse! If I hadn’t seen the note, I never could have figured that out. There was no visible cue in the car: the knowledge needed for this trick had to reside in the head. If the driver lacks that knowledge, the key stays in the ignition forever.

The psychologists Ray Nickerson and Marilyn Adams showed that people do not remember what common coins look like

I have seen nurses write down critical medical information about their patients on their hands because the critical information would disappear if the nurse was distracted for a moment by someone asking a question.

The electronic medical records systems automatically log out users when the system does not appear to be in use. Why the automatic logouts? To protect patient privacy. The cause may be well motivated, but the action poses severe challenges to nurses who are continually being interrupted in their work by physicians, co-workers, or patient requests.

Why does inelegant design persist for so long? This is called the legacy problem, and it will come up several times in this book. Too many devices use the existing standard—that is the legacy. If the symmetrical cylindrical battery were changed, there would also have to be a major change in a huge number of products.

Yes, these new faucets are beautiful. Sleek, elegant, prize-winning. Unusable.

The Japanese have long followed a procedure for getting at root causes that they call the “Five Whys,” originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and used by the Toyota Motor Company as part of the Toyota Production System for improving quality.

Today it is widely deployed. Basically, it means that when searching for the reason, even after you have found one, do not stop: ask why that was the case. And then ask why again. Keep asking until you have uncovered the true underlying causes. Does it take exactly five? No, but calling the procedure “Five Whys” emphasizes the need to keep going even after a reason has been found.

DON NORMAN’S LAW OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.

THE STIGMA PROBLEM ??“I don’t want to go into a care facility. I’d have to be around all those old people.” (Comment by a 95-year-old man.)

Would you use a walker, wheelchair, crutches, or a cane? Many people avoid these, even though they need them, because of the negative image they cast: the stigma.

The world of product design offers many examples of Stigler’s law. Products are thought to be the invention of the company that most successfully capitalized upon the idea, not the company that originated it.

A good, must-read book! Get it!

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