Human-Centered Design by Don Norman

Designing is not as easy as many people may think. Don Norman starts his book “Design of Everyday Things” with numerous examples of how the design of a simple door can cause frustration and confusion from user’s perspective. Sometimes designers and engineers tend to create beautiful, but not that easy-to-use products. To solve this problem, we need to use Human-centered design approach, that has a person that uses a product in its core.

The human-centered design approach is a process that helps us create products for needs of a specific target audience in mind. Designers should understand people and create products to solve people’s problems the way they want. We need to think about the overall experience.

In his book, there are examples of concepts that are used in the human-centered design approach. For instance, “affordance” determines what is possible to do with a product. “Signifiers” shows where a specific action should be taken. “Mapping” solves controls problems. “Feedback” communicates if an action is in progress. “Conceptual model” helps users to understand how a product works.

The most important design challenge is to create not just a product with a good design for an end user, but also good for a company. It means that company will be able to manufacture it, service it, and deliver to customers. If a product is very expensive people may not buy it, and by the end of a day, it will not help solve people’s problems as it was supposed to. Great products satisfy all sides. It does not mean equal, but all sides.