The Design of Everyday Things summary

Have you ever bought a new computer program and struggled to learn how it works, requiring you to constantly refer to the complicated instruction booklet? That’s a badly designed program.

Why?

Imagine you’re a product designer designing a new washing machine. Although it’s a common household appliance, your washing machine will need new features so it stands out from the competition. But for your users to be able to understand these new, unfamiliar features, you’ll have to take their psychology into consideration.

According to the author, users engage with a product on three different psychological levels.

Once you’ve discovered that people are having trouble using a product, how do you assess the main cause of the problem?

You need to find the problem’s root cause – because just as a Band-Aid is not effective for a knife wound, you can’t solve design errors by fixing superficial problems.

Have you ever bought a wardrobe from IKEA? Despite many people’s claims that they’re a nightmare to put together, they’re actually incredibly easy to erect. Their ease of use is partly because IKEA’s products are full of constraints: clues and limits that direct how to use the product.

So how do so-called constraints work?

Imagine you just got a new smartphone. You want to test the alarm, so you set the clock and wait. But how do you know the alarm is set? Usually, the phone will indicate it with a sign – for example, a little clock symbol in the top right corner. This tiny piece of feedback is a vital part of design.

Why?

Technology’s amazing evolution allows us to do things we never would have dreamed of twenty years ago. But despite technology’s progress, design often lags behind because, unfortunately, designers often forget the abilities and needs of the users.

That’s because, all too often, in an effort to make something radically new, designers forget who’ll actually be using the product in the end: people.

Great, human-centered design isn’t enough to make a successful product on its own. For a product to be profitable, designers needs to work with other business departments.

For example, let’s look at touch screens like those found on smart phones. Although they’ve been around since the 1980s, they only started being widely used by the end of the millenium. Why? Because before then, the desires of both marketing and designers didn’t coincide. 

The key message in this book:

Good design uses human psychology to create products adapted to users’ needs and desires. Human-centered design focuses on creating products for the users, and helps users learn how to use a product, avoid dangerous errors and bring users and technology closer together.