The Design of Everyday Things

No matter how brilliant the product, if people cannot use it, it will receive poor reviews.

the poor design that gives rise to so many of the problems of modern life, especially of modern technology

Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.

When the engineers object, I ask whether they have ever made an error, perhaps turning on or off the wrong light, or the wrong stove burner. “Oh yes,” they say, “but those were errors.” That’s the point: even experts make errors. So we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make

machines are so logical, so orderly. If we didn’t have people, everything would work so much better. Yup, that’s how I used to think.

The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.

When done well, the results are brilliant, pleasurable products. When done badly, the products are unusable, leading to great frustration and irritation.

industrial design, interaction design, and experience design. None of the fields is well defined, but the focus of the efforts does vary, with industrial designers emphasizing form and material, interactive designers emphasizing understandability and usability, and experience designers emphasizing the emotional impact.

All artificial things are designed. Whether it is the layout of furniture in a room, the paths through a garden or forest, or the intricacies of an electronic device, some person or group of people had to decide upon the layout, operation, and mechanisms.

hey must communicate the correct message: What actions are possible? Where and how should they be done?