The Design of Everyday Things

Donald A Norman

Rating 3/5

The Design of Everyday Things is an extremely well written treatise on the importance of design in our lives. That the author has striven hard to revise the book recently (and ended up ‘rewriting it’ as he puts it) due to the massive change in the domain and scope of design, is remarkable.

This should serve as a great read if you are looking to get a sneak peek at a trained mind look at design, but a sneak peek is all it can promise. Perhaps, it is unfair of me since it never promised to, I would have loved to see even more specific design problems being tackled from scratch in the book — giving the reader an insight into the design process that the author talks repeatedly about.

Though he does well in picking some appreciable examples from well known situations, they are mostly critiques or paeans to the way some design has been made out to be. Also, the book ends up getting a little repetitive in between and flounders in its efforts to hold attention towards the end.