The Design of Everyday Things — A bible for the designers.

The Design of Everyday Things, I believe this is one of the foundational books for the designers. The reason why I have decided to call that because it teaches and explains how design plays a bigger role in the success and failures of everyday objects and also, why the understanding of human psychology, behavior, and different cultures can help in designing better objects.

And why I do more believe in calling it a bible because it is not just another book which talks about design principles, UX laws, and visual design rather it is a book that gives a holistic view of the design in the everyday objects and explains how good design can bridge the communication gap between objects and people. Eventually, making it easier for people to understand how things work.

I find the best thing about the book is that the methods and concepts explained apply to any kind of object whether it is physical or digital, doesn’t matter. And as many numbers of times, you read the book, your perspective of good design just gets better and better. (I read it 3 times)

So, in this article, I am going to write and talk about the fundamental and foundational concepts explained in the book which makes this book a foundation for every designer and also, the holy bible. 😇

1. Fundamental principles of interaction

The book starts with the very basic and fundamental concepts of the interaction design principles between humans and objects. And these principles help people to understand objects and discover how to use everyday objects.

The book states, Understanding and discoverability are the two key characteristics of a well-designed object. Because when a product becomes self-understandable and self-discoverable, it becomes easy for people to try the product and use it to solve their problems.

In the book, Don Norman briefly describes the different principles of how we can design objects that are easy to understand and discover, and the principles are,

1. Affordances — This is the first step in the discovery of how a product can possibly be used. Affordances are kind of indicators that helps people to discover how to use the product. For example, scissors, everybody knows how to use the scissors, the two holes give us enough information about what to do with the product. Affordances are the relationship, not the properties of the objects.
2. Signifiers — Signifiers tells us where the possible action is. Alone affordances can not help, objects need to have good signifiers to tell the people where the action is and what is suppose to happen when you act on those actions. For example, in the case of scissors, we know we need to put our fingers in the holes, and when we move the two blades together, we know what can be done by that object.
3. Mapping — It defines the relationship between two sets of things. Mapping is an important concept in the design and layout of controls and displays. The actions provided by the object should always match and map with the outcomes of the actions. Good mapping of the actions and outcomes in the products can really help people to learn the functionalities quickly and easily whereas, at the same time, bad mapping can frustrate people as they can find it disturbing and difficult to understand what is happening.
4. Feedback — It is about communicating the results of the actions. Feedback can be of anything, it can be of a sense, sound, color, or anything, but it needs to be informative enough to communicate to the users what has happened. Even a delay in the feedback can ruin the whole experience of the product.
5. Constraints — Constraints are powerful clues, limiting the set of possible actions. The thoughtful use of constraints in design lets people readily determine the proper course of action.
6. Conceptual model — Every person in the world has a conceptual model of how things work, and when the design of everyday things does not match with the conceptual model people already have then they find it difficult to use the products, and sometimes they use the product in a different way. So, while designing the functions of the objects, we should always think about matching the design of the object with the conceptual models.

These are the fundamental interaction principles that should be incorporated into the design of products thoughtfully. And when these principles are right, it makes it easier for people to use everyday objects and achieve their everyday tasks.

2. How do people do things. The Seven stages of action

When we talk about the new products, we directly jump to the point where we start thinking of how the product’s design going to be, how it is going to work, and many more things, but while reading the book, I realized that design is a thing which comes later in the process of design of a product. Before thinking of the design of a product, understanding and knowing how do people use products and why do they use or prefer a certain product over other good products is really important. And this book helped me a lot with learning how people actually do things.

After giving the fundamental principles of interactions, Don Norman describes what goes into the mind of the people when they have a goal in the mind and what they do to achieve that goal. He talks about two concepts, Gulf of execution and Gulf of Evaluation, and the great product bridge the gap between them beautifully and efficiently.

Gulf of execution is where people try to figure out how to use the product, and Gulf of Evaluation is where they try to figure what state it is in and whether their actions got them to their goal. And a good designer bridges the gap between them.

Before both the gulfs, people have two things in their minds, first a goal and second how they are going to achieve that goal. And then comes into play the two gulfs.

Let me list down the actions under the two gulfs,

Gulf of Execution,

1. Plan — when they try to plan
2. Specify — an action sequence
3. Perform — Performing the action

Gulf of Evaluation,

1. Perceive — the state of the action.
2. Interpret — the perception of the outcome.
3. Compare — the outcome with the goal.

*All these happen in the mind of the people.

Each action in both the gulfs involves mental processing, and these can be defined as, visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

To be more clear,

Visceral — These are the quick reactions and emotions.

Behavioral — These are the patterns and behaviors people have developed in their minds.

Reflective — These are thoughtful reactions, emotions, and decisions.

Each action requires some sort of mental processing and actions to do. And it is really important for designers to consider the efforts of mental processing while designing the functions because people find it easier to opt for the products which makes it easier for them to do the task and achieve their goal.

3. Role of Knowledge and Memory in the design.

Every day we are confronted by numerous objects, devices, and services, each of which requires us to behave or act in some particular manner. Overall, we manage quite well.

We, humans, cannot learn and remember the complete knowledge of all the things, but still, we manage to do well in most of the things, we don’t need to specifically learn behaviors, we just learn by doing them and knowledge outside in the world makes it easy for us to learn and know how things can be done. For example, physical constraints, and natural mapping present in the world provide us good cues and hints about doing certain things.

As designers, we don’t know what our users are capable of or how genius they are, but considering a level of knowledge that our users might have can really direct us to design products with less complexity and easy functions. People mostly use products that are easy to use and require less knowledge and mental efforts.

Memory plays a role in designing products as it helps us in designing actions and functions which are easy to remember and reduces the cognitive load on the user’s mind. To design for the memory of users, the book describes the two types of memory, Short term memory, and Long term memory. Short term memory deals with quick information, which can be remembered for a shorter period of time, whereas long term memory is capable of remembering and storing the information for a longer period of time.

The book proposes that as designers, we should strive to design for the short term memory because the memory load is lighter and the interaction is faster. If a user has to recall from the long term memory, then it will increase the cognitive load and takes a longer time to make interactions.

For example, when designing products, we must always try to optimize the number of options and actions so that users don’t need to spend too much time thinking and making decisions.

We should always strive to build patterns that are easy to remember and quicker to perform.

4. Bad design is a human error.

How many times does it happen in a day when we blame ourselves for doing wrong actions? I believe many times, but do we really give a thought of why we were wrong or what caused the error. Maybe, No. We always blame ourselves. Which is a kind of wrong almost 99 percent of the time.

After reading this book, I realized that it is the bad design of the products which promotes users to do wrong actions and eventually makes mistakes. And this can be avoided. Errors do not happen intentionally, they happen when objects fail to provide necessary feedback and allow users to go with the wrong actions. The design needs to be careful; a single element or gap in the design of the products can promote users for wrong actions.

In the book, Don Norman explains, the error does not occur because of one action, but they occur from the sequence of multiple actions. Don Norman also explains what we can do to find the cause of errors. He explains the two methods, Root cause analysis, and the 5 Whys, I find it really great methods because they do not just focus on a single cause of the error, but they help us discover what were the different steps or sequence of actions which lead the people to the unwanted errors.

Root Cause analysis

Root cause analysis focuses on finding the root cause of the error. Generally, what happens is we stop once we found the top-level actions which went wrong but if we further investigate the problem, we find out that there were other root cause functions that went wrong and promoted users to do wrong actions.

5 Why method

The 5 Why methods is a similar kind of method to find out the root cause of the error, In this method, problem solvers generally ask multiple why’s to find out why the error happened until they reach to the root cause of the problem.

One important thing said by Don Norman is that we have a natural tendency to stop our investigation once we found the human errors. Blaming humans for the error is half-investigation, We need to find out the other half of why the blamed person did the thing he/she should not be doing and that will helps us to find out the real causes.

Don Norman classifies errors into two types,

1. Slips — happen when a person intends to do one action and ends up doing something else. For example, you poured coffee and put it in the fridge. Slips are results of the subconscious mind, they occur when there is something going in your subconscious mind and you are doing something else.
2. Mistakes — happen when the wrong goal is established or the wrong plan is formed. No matter, if the action is completed, the output will be always wrong. Mistakes happen when the situation is mistakenly interpreted thereby invoking the wrong plans or goals. Mistakes are the results of conscious deliberations.

Don norman not only explained what causes errors but also mentions that humans have no or less role in causing errors. However, it is the design of products which gives a space for the people to make errors. He provides us some key principles of how we can design for errors,

1. Put the necessary knowledge required to operate the technology in the world. Don’t falsely assume that everybody knows how to work with objects.
2. Use the power of natural and artificial constraints to create meaningful relationships and establish natural mappings.
3. Bridge the two gulfs. Make things visible, both for execution and evaluation. Provide necessary information while executing and feedback while evaluating.

5. How do you solve the right problem? Design Thinking can be way.

Never solve the problem you are asked to solve — This is a bit of a counterintuitive rule but if we follow the rule then it can really help us solve the right problems.

Generally what happens is that when someone gives us a problem to solve, we get excited to solve the problem and start finding and drawing creative and amazing solutions, but what if the problem you are asked to solve is not the real problem. It was just a symptom of the real problem, the actual problem was different. Then we go over and over again to draw different solutions.

So, Don Norman explicitly described in the book that before solving the problem you are asked to solve, always find the right problem to solve. And good designers never start by trying to solve the problem given to them; they start by trying to understand what the real issues are. Instead of directly jumping to the solutions, designers try to discover what are the real issues and problems.

A good example from the book opened my thinking about these statements, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” This examples clearly states that people want to buy a quarter-inch drill to create a hole in the wall, which means the actual goal is not to buy the drill, but to create a hole and if you investigate further, you will discover that people actually want a hole to put a nail in the wall to hang things and ultimately they want to make their room look amazing and beautiful. So, now we know that the actual goal or problem is different than the solution we are providing.

This example makes me think that the real problem was to make the room look good, but what we are providing is a product to create holes in the wall and hang things, but when working on the actual problem, we can a, could there ask the question, could there be another solution to make the room look good or could there be another solution than creating holes to hang things? Think about it.

So, we should always try to find the right solution for the right problems.

In the book, Don Norman explains two design processes to solve find and solve the actual problem.

1. Double Diamond Process — It is a diverge-converge pattern-based design method introduced by the British Design Council. This process consists of two phases, the first phase focuses on finding the right problem and the second phase focuses on finding the right solution. Briefly, the process is divided into four stages: “discover” and “define” — for divergence and convergence phases of finding the right problem, and “develop” and “deliver’ — for the divergence and convergence phases of finding the right solution. This repeated divergence and convergence process helps in properly determining the right problem to be solved and then the best way to solve it.
2. Human-Centered Process — Double diamond process describes two phases of design: finding the right problem and fulfilling the human needs. But, how are these actually done? This is where the human-centered process comes into play: it takes place within the double diamond process. The human-centered process involves four activities: Observation, idea generation, prototyping, and testing. All these activities are iterative in nature, and the best part of this process is that at each level, a human is at the core of each activity.

So, this book motivates us that no matter what process we use, or how we design things, our aim should always be to find the actual problem and work on designing the right solution.

6. Design in the world of business

The best thing about the book is that it ends with explaining the real outcomes of the good design. It was long before when the design was a term to quote the things beautiful or ugly, but now it has extended beyond that. Now it has become a business thing. The products which are designed well have a better position in the market that the product with bad designs. And today everyone agrees, good design yields good business revenues.

Generally, people have a belief that products with multiple features and good looking interfaces are great to use, but it is partially true. No matter how great your features are or how cool and aesthetically pleasing your product is, if it is harder to use and does not hold true on the fundamental principles of interactions, then it is just another product in the market.

Good design helps make the product easier to use. And today, everyone has started spending time and money on design to make their products user-friendly and provide good user experiences.

The book talks about a common disease called, Featuritis — a deadly temptation, continuously adding features to counter the request of different customers. And today, adding features in your product is one of the ways to be ahead of everyone else in the market and build better revenues, but it might not work well for too long, the new players with good design will replace the complexity you have built. Features are good when they are designed well and not adding any confusion to the customers.

This importance of design in the business of the company has motivated a large number of companies to focus on design not just as a process but an important recipe to generate higher revenues and providing the best experiences.

Conclusion

Design of everyday things, I think this is not just a book for the designers only, I believe it is a book for the people who wants to create the product for the people and dreams that their product should be used by everyone. This book not only describes the properties of the good design instead it also explains how people choose different products to perform their everyday tasks and how design plays an important role in making those decisions.

From this book, I have started focusing and learning about the psychology of people because the design of technology to fit human needs and capability is determined by the psychology of people. New technologies may come and change but the people and fundamental principles of interaction with everyday objects remain the same.

Period.

Thanks for reading.