Book Reading #18 - Design of Everyday Things

Author: Donald Norman
Chapter 6: The Design Challenge

Summary:

In this chapter, the author talks about challenges that a designer faces while designing a new product. Author talks about a method which he calls 'hill climbing' which is an iterative process of improving the design of the product. The author talks about why designers sometimes fail in coming up with an effective and efficient design. He says that the designers give priority to aesthetics and they themselves are not typical users.

Norman claims that every customer is unique and has unique expectations. This adds to the complexity of designing a product. Two mistakes that the designers make is to add too many features in to a single product and the other is to make the product too complex to understand.

Discussion:

Towards the end of the chapter Norman talks about design of computers and I think that was pretty interesting. It was fascinating to read that his ideas and claims 20 years ago are now a reality and companies are following his advice. Also the part where he mentions typewriters and faucets was very convincing.