Author: Donald A. Norman
_Donald A. Norman_
Reading time: 19 minutes
Synopsis
The Design of Everyday Things (2016) is a must-read for product designers and everyone who works with them. But it also offers ideas for anyone interested in design. It explains what makes good design. It also shows how people use design. It teaches why you should never blame the user for problems with a product. You should always blame the designer. It shows how to find and fix design mistakes. This helps to create better products than before.
What’s Inside for You: A New Look at the Objects Around You.
Are you reading this on your phone or laptop? After reading this, you will see these items in a new way. Most things around us, like these, are made through a complex design process. This process tries to combine how things look, how easy they are to use, and how we feel about them.
But what is good design? According to Donald Norman, good design is not just about looking good or having style. It is mostly about being easy to use and working well. The best technology and features are useless if people don’t know how to use them. So, every designer should focus on people when they create things. Every product should be as simple and clear as a door. You should easily see what it’s for and how it works.
These Blinks answer many questions about design and usability, such as:
- how to use Design Thinking to solve problems,
- why you are never „too stupid“ for your remote control, and
- why you cannot build an Ikea wardrobe from an Ikea bed.
Blink 1 – Without Good Design, Even the Best Technology is Useless.
Have you ever bought a new TV? You likely remember setting it up. You were excited to watch your first movie on the big screen. You got popcorn ready and got comfortable. You picked up the remote control. But two minutes later, you were stuck in some useless menus for color settings.
You are not alone with this experience. And you are not too stupid to use a remote control. Instead, designers and makers often fail to create good and easy-to-use remote controls. These mistakes happen because designers do not understand the people who use their products. Today’s remote controls can do many things. They can connect DVD players and Playstations. They can change satellite TV settings and browse the internet. And, of course, they can turn the TV on and change channels.
Designers think a remote must do all these things. So, they don’t set the right priorities. This leaves the user confused. But a good remote should be so easy to use that you immediately know which buttons to press.
One reason this rarely happens is that technology changes very fast today. More and more functions are put into one single device. Just look at all your phone can do today. It is still a phone. But it is also your calendar, MP3 player, camera, and a computer for mobile internet. Of course, it is hard to connect all these functions in a logical and simple way.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter how good or advanced technology is. If it is designed so complexly that we cannot use it, then it is completely pointless. Usability, or how easy it is to use, gives value to any technology.
Blink 2 – Good Design Explains Itself.
Good design is different from bad design. It’s not just about looking good. It’s mostly about explaining itself. For example, if you buy a new smartphone and always need to read the manual, it is badly designed. But with a good smartphone, you find out how to use it by yourself.
Products should be easy to use and easy to learn. If their basic functions are not clear, you are looking at bad design. This is true not only for smartphones or remote controls. It is true for all everyday things: lawnmowers, kitchen appliances, cars, bicycles, or doors.
Let’s take this simple example: a plain door. Everyone uses it. Everyone knows how it works. But there are indeed doors that are designed so badly that using them causes problems. Let’s say you are in a fancy business building. All rooms are separated by glass doors and walls. The architect wanted no handles on these fine modern glass doors. Instead, there are only small, hidden push buttons to open the doors. So, you stand confused in front of a huge glass wall. You don’t know which part is the door. Finally, you find the door and the button. Then you face the next problem: How do I open it? Pull or push? A clear design fail.
Good design means you can use things easily without thinking. If this is not the case, like with those simple doors, small hints are needed. For example, colored buttons or ‘Pull’ and ‘Push’ signs. And if an item is truly complex and a simple sign is not enough, then a manual or user guide can be added. But for everyday household items, it should not have to come to this.
Blink 3 – Good Design Considers Different Levels of Action.
To create successful products, we must think about how people behave. This is because people will use these products. Human actions have seven steps. The first four steps are about planning and doing: 1) a Goal, 2) Planning an action, 3) Specifying a clear series of actions, 4) Performing them. The last three steps are about checking the action: 5) Perceiving what happens, 6) Interpreting what was perceived, and finally 7) Comparing with the set goal.
Also, actions happen on three different levels of thinking: reflective, behavioral, and intuitive.
Reflective action is the highest level of processing information. It includes everything that needs us to think, like cooking a complex meal. Behavioral actions are based on skills we have learned. Specific situations start them, but they are less complex, like catching a ball. Intuitive behavior, on the other hand, needs no thinking at all. Breathing is an example of this.
Every design should consider the seven steps of action and the three levels of thinking. The goal is to make as much as possible happen intuitively or behaviorally. Let’s take a washing machine as an example. You want to wash a silk dress or nice trousers. You think about if the machine can wash them. Or if you should take the clothes to the dry cleaner instead. Then you decide which program to use. After washing, you check if the clothes are clean and not damaged.
Deciding that these delicate items can be machine washed happens at the reflective level. But the actual use of the washing machine should ideally happen at the other two levels. It should be very easy to choose a program for silk or delicate items. It should also be easy to see when the machine is finished. This way, anyone who has used a washing machine before will automatically press the right buttons. Hints could be pictures for wool, hot wash, and so on. Or a green light that blinks when the program is done and you can take out the laundry.
Finally, at the intuitive level, actions like pressing the buttons and opening the door happen. So, the buttons should be easy to press without much force. And the washing machine door should open easily.
Blink 4 – If Problems Happen When Using Your Product, Use Design Thinking to Find the Root of the Problem.
As a designer, if you see problems when people use a product, you should find the main reason. Do not blame the user. Only then can you truly fix the problem.
For example, in some airplanes, pilots often mixed up the speed control with the angle control during takeoff. This was human error, of course. But why did it happen so often? Because both controls looked almost the same. The cockpit design was changed so the controls looked very different. After that, this error almost never happened again. So, design can either cause human error or prevent it.
There is a method to help you find such reasons: Design Thinking. At Toyota, for example, it works like this: Whenever a problem comes up when using a product, the developers ask ‘Why?’ five times, just like a child.
For one car model, test drivers often reported that they didn’t know how to turn off the rear windshield wiper. Looking for the problem’s cause, the first ‘Why?’ showed this: The lever on the left of the steering wheel had too many functions. There were no clear instructions for the rear wiper. When the makers asked ‘Why?’ again, the answer was: ‘Because the switch for the rear wiper was mixed up with the front one.’ And the third ‘Why?’ revealed that the symbols for both wipers looked the same. This way, Toyota’s makers could keep working until they found the real cause. Then they could improve the design.
Blink 5 – Good Design Shows Users What It Is (Not) For.
Everything we use has something called constraints. These are natural limits. You cannot build a toothbrush from Lego. You cannot build a working radio from clay. For things more complex than Lego or clay, planned limits have an important job: They show the user how to use a product.
An example everyone knows is Ikea furniture. You can build it yourself at home. This is because the parts limit what you can do: Certain screws only fit into certain holes. Most parts only fit in one specific place. That’s why you never accidentally build a wardrobe from bed parts. These are physical constraints. A square bolt simply won’t fit into a round hole. Also, cultural rules help make building easier. For example, we always turn screws clockwise to tighten and counter-clockwise to loosen. If Ikea asked customers to do the opposite, that would be bad design.
Some constraints can also remind users of things they might otherwise forget. For example, when you close a document on your computer, it asks if you want to save it first. This is annoying if you just want to close it. But if you forgot to save, this small limit is very helpful.
So, constraints can help users use a product correctly. They are like a compass guiding them through many options. You should remember this when you design a product. Also when you want to fix a common user error.
Blink 6 – Good Design Talks to the User.
You bought a new smartphone. The first thing you want to do is set the alarm for tomorrow morning. So you go to the alarm and choose a time. How do you know it worked? How do you know you won’t oversleep tomorrow morning? There are two ways: You test it yourself by setting the alarm to ring in one minute. Or the phone tells you that the alarm is set. The second way is clearly better. Small feedback, like a little alarm clock icon on the screen, is key for good usability and successful design.
So, feedback helps users understand a product. Think about a smart room. This is a meeting room controlled from one place. It has lights, a projector, ventilation, a microphone, automatic blinds, and more. There is a main control panel to manage the room. If you want to turn on the spotlight, there is a button for it. If you press it, but the light does not come on, the control panel should tell you what went wrong. Did you press the wrong button? Is there no power? Or can you only turn on the spotlight when the blind is down?
Feedback is also important to tell the user the status of a product. User expectations must always be considered. For example, we expect to see a small red standby light when a device is off. And a green light when it is on. This simple feedback makes using technical products much easier for us. Imagine your home alarm system had no such light. You would never know if it was on or not. To check, you would have to break into your own house!
So, products can talk to their users with such feedback. This helps users use them correctly and easily.
Blink 7 – People Should Be at the Center of All Product Development.
New technologies are growing incredibly fast today. But design often lags behind. This often happens because designers get very excited about new technology. They forget who they are designing for: normal people, not experts.
To stop yourself, as a designer, from making the same mistake, you should follow Human-Centered Design (HCD). This approach puts the user’s needs and skills first, even during product development. This needs a good understanding of psychology and good observation skills. Users rarely know exactly what they need. So, they can rarely explain where product difficulties come from. Thus, a main rule of HCD is to find problems by doing many test runs and watching the test users.
Here’s how it works: First, decide what your product should do and how it might look. Then, create a first prototype. After that, start the following process: First, let test users use the prototype without any prior explanation. Watch closely to see where they face problems. Where do users behave differently than expected? How happy are they with the product? What wishes are not met? What does not work as planned?
With this feedback, you can then find out what difficulties still exist. You can also see how to improve the design. From this, you make a changed prototype. You then have it tested again. If the problems are fixed, you have your final design. If not, you must go through another round with a new prototype. Do this until the test users understand how to use the product. And until everyone can use all its functions easily and correctly.
Blink 8 – Design Alone Does Not Make a Finished Product.
Every designer must work with other departments. They also need to consider different needs in daily business. For a product to succeed, all departments must work together.
Look at the development of touchscreens, for example: Did you know they have been around since the 1980s? So why did they only become popular about ten years ago? One reason is that development, design, and marketing did not work together well before.
The designers of earlier touchscreens were right to focus on the user. They wanted to create the best user experience. But touchscreens that met their standards were too expensive to make for many people to buy. Marketing people, however, only focused on products that many people would buy. So, they promoted touchscreens that were cheaper but harder to use. It took years until both groups, with new technology, could offer a product that balanced price and ease of use.
As a designer, you must know that good teamwork between different departments is important. You must also expect that any product being developed will usually go over budget and behind schedule. Experience shows it always takes longer and is always more expensive than planned. It is simply impossible to plan for all possible problems in such a complex project: The factory in Spain goes on holiday. The lead designer gets sick. Suppliers have a shortage. An important email ends up in spam and gets deleted. All these things are normal.
Overall, when planning your design project, put the user first. Make sure different departments work well together. And always have enough extra time for unexpected problems. This way, nothing will stop a great result.
Summary
The main message of the book is:
When users use a product wrongly, designers often think users are too stupid. But in reality, the fault lies with the designers themselves. Good design focuses on the user. Well-designed products can be used easily and without a manual. It helps if the product gives the user clues and feedback. It should also help users with clear limits on how to use it.
Do you like what you are reading?
It is important to us that you enjoy these Blinks and learn a lot from them. Did we succeed? Please write to us at [email protected].
For Further Reading: Hooked by Nir Eyal
Hooked (2014) explains how products make us want to use them again and again. It shows how products use certain triggers to change our habits and behavior. With many examples, it links ideas from psychology and thinking to actual product design. It shows how anyone can create products that customers cannot stop using.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/the-design-of-everyday-things-de