How “The Design of Everyday Things” Changed My Life
When I was a junior at UC Berkeley, I took a course called User Interface Design and Development (CS160/260a). The course is about the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. At the time, I had no idea how much this course would affect the rest of my academic journey and career. I was a Computer Science and Cognitive Science major, searching for a niche — something that I enjoyed at the intersection of the two majors. Then I started this class, and oh boy did my view of the world start to change…
One of our first readings was to read chapter one of The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. I read about affordances, conceptual models, and key principles of design such as visibility, mapping, and providing feedback to the user. This is going to sound nerdy but I soaked up every last word. I found it fascinating how Norman framed our interactions with everyday objects in ways I had never imagined. It also made me think about all the doors I encountered that day and whether they afforded a push or pull!
Naturally I continued reading, and I finished the book within a couple of days, which is surprising given the fact I was reading it for leisure in college!
Here are some key takeaways that I want to share:
- People tend to blame themselves for difficulties with technology when it’s really the design’s fault.
- Explanations make us happy. Everyone forms theories to explain what they have observed whether they are correct or not.
- There are three categories of how people use their memories and retrieve information: memory for arbitrary things, memory of meaningful relationships, and memory through explanation.
- Proper, natural mappings between the system and real world require no diagrams, no labels, and no instructions.
- Humans are not perfect. Allow them to error, and provide feedback and guidance.
- We must design with a special, specific type of person in mind because there is no such thing as the average person.
- When in doubt, standardize. People only need to learn it once, and then can use it effectively.
- Everyday tasks are challenging not because they are complex, but because they require learning arbitrary relationships, arbitrary mappings, and sometimes precision in execution. Good design uses constraints to empower people to do the right thing.
Without wanting to sound too dramatic, I do think that reading The Design of Everyday Things and taking CS160/260a changed my life. Both sparked my passion for user-centered design and user experience research, and I am forever grateful. After taking that course, I continued on as teaching assistant for CS160/260a my senior year, and as the head teaching assistant the first semester of my Master’s year. I enrolled in the 5th Year Master’s program at UC Berkeley, studying Computer Science with an emphasis in Human-Computer Interaction and co-authoring two user experience research papers, which you can read more about here and here. I’m currently a software engineer at Apple, working on Fitness technologies on Watch. My goal is to transition into a user experience research role, and I’m hoping to use Medium to share what I’ve learned about user research, and I would love it if you join me for the ride!
In the words of Donald Norman:
… enjoy yourself. Walk around the world examining the details of design. Take pride in the little things that help; think kindly of the person who so thoughtfully put them in. Realize that even details matter, that the designer may have had to fight to include something helpful. Give mental prizes to those who practice good design: send flowers. Jeer those who don’t: send weeds.
