The design of everyday things
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
I finally got around to get this classic design book by Don Norman. I attended his presentation at the From Business to Buttons conference in Malmö in 2008. He’s an inspiring speaker, and I recognize his enthusiasm through the book pages as well. Even though the book was written way back in 1988 (my edition is from 2002), it’s still a relevant book today. It reveals the battle of man vs. machine in everyday life by great examples, explains why design-thinking matters, and gives us the mindset to help us prevent design mistakes in the future. The book stresses that when things don’t work the way you thought they were supposed to, it’s generally not your fault. Most times you can blame the unfriendly design instead. This is quite obvious (to me anyway), but it’s still nice to get a reminder with models and brilliant examples to back it up.