Book SummaryThe Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Design of Everyday Things

Every man-made object, environment, or program in our world is designed. From doorknobs to smartphone apps, design pervades our lives to the point that it often becomes completely invisible. When we struggle with one of these designs, we assume that our difficulties are our own fault, or that we’re just not smart enough to figure it out. But that blame is misplaced. More often than not, the true culprit in cases of “human error” is actually bad design.

In The Design of Everyday Things (originally released in 1988 under the title The Psychology of Everyday Things and revised in 2013), cognitive psychologist and engineer Don Norman explores the ways people understand and interact with the physical environment (this is sometimes referred to as “user experience”). In doing so, he makes all of us smarter consumers and helps designers create products that work with users, rather than against them.

Interacting With Objects

At its core, design is any human influence on the physical world. This applies to everything from ancient architectural marvels to the layout of clothes in your closet.

When we interact with design, we’re guided by the principles of discoverability and understanding. Discoverability refers to whether a user can figure out what an object is and how to use it without considerable effort. Discoverability answers the question, “How do I use this thing?” Understanding, in this context, refers to the user’s ability to make meaning out of the discoverable features of the object. Understanding answers the questions, “What is this, and why do I want to use it in the first place?”

Focusing on these factors is a hallmark of human-centered design, which is a design philosophy that flips the traditional design process on its head by focusing on human needs and behaviors first and designing products to fit those needs, rather than designing a product and hoping that users figure out how to use it.

How Do We Know How to Use an Object?

To design for human needs, we need to understand how people interact with design. There are six design principles that influence how we interact with an object: affordances, signifiers, mapping, feedback, models, and the system image.

Affordances are the finite number of ways in which a user can possibly interact with a given object. They answer the question, “What is this thing for?” For example, chairs typically have a flat surface, which we intuitively recognize as an indicator of support. In other words, the look of a chair suggests that it is for sitting on.

Signifiers are signals that draw the user’s attention to an affordance they may not have intuitively discovered, like a “click here” button on a website or a “push” sign on a door. For designers, signifiers are more important than affordances: The most sophisticated technology is pretty useless if a user can’t find the “on” button.

Mapping uses the position of two objects to communicate the relationship between them. For example, if you see a row of three lights and a panel of three switches, natural mapping would mean the position of the switch corresponds to the position of the light it controls. Mapping is not universal since culture can influence how we think about direction and spatial relationships.

Feedback is a sensory signal that alerts the user that what they’re doing to an object is having some effect. Feedback can tell us when something is working as expected, but more importantly, when it’s not working how we want. In a car, a dashboard alert light or the sound of squeaking brakes are both sources of feedback that let us know something is wrong.

Models (also called conceptual models or mental models) are mental images of an object and how it works based on affordances, signifiers, mapping, and feedback. Mental models stem from the universal instinct to organize information into cohesive stories. But these stories are not always accurate, and false mental models of a design can cause confusion.

• For example, many people have an inaccurate model of their home thermostat. They assume the thermostat controls a valve that opens a certain amount based on the setting, and that setting it higher will warm the room faster. In reality, most thermostats are a simple on/off switch, so setting a higher temperature has no effect on how fast the room warms up.

The System Image is the sum total of the information we have about an object, including both its physical properties and information from user manuals, product websites, or past experience. The system image is the only way designers can communicate their model of how something works to the user.

Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior

The way we think clearly influences how we interact with objects, but designers often underestimate the role of psychology in user interaction.

The Seven Stages of Action

When we interact with an object, we face two “gulfs” of understanding: the Gulf of Execution, (figuring out what an object does and how to use it) and the Gulf of Evaluation (evaluating results after using the object). To cross these gulfs, we use a seven stage action cycle. This action cycle happens unconsciously unless we’re interacting with an unfamiliar or confusing object. Each stage answers a particular question.

1. Goal: What result do I want to achieve?
2. Plan: What options do I have for achieving my goal?
3. Specify: Which of these options will I choose?
4. Perform: How do I execute my plan?
5. Perceive: What happened when I did that?
6. Interpret: What does that result mean?
7. Compare: Did I reach my goal?

Let’s use grocery shopping as an example to see the seven steps in action. In that case, they may look something like this:

1. Goal: I need to go grocery shopping.
2. Plan: Should I drive to the store or take the bus?
3. Specify: I think I’ll drive.
4. Perform: I’ll follow the usual route to the store instead of a...

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Introduction

Every man-made object, environment, or program in our world is designed. From doorknobs to smartphone apps, design pervades our lives to the point that it often becomes completely invisible. When we struggle with one of these designs, we assume that our difficulties are our own fault, or that we’re just not smart enough to figure it out. But that blame is misplaced. More often than not, the true culprit in cases of “human error” is actually bad design.

Traditionally, design is described in terms of form and function—how an object looks, and how it works. But this description totally ignores the question of how users interact with the design, and that oversight is a common reason why products fail. An object can be extremely useful and visually beautiful, but if the average...

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 1: How the Design of Physical Objects Shapes Our Lives

This chapter lays the foundation for the rest of the book by illustrating how the design of physical objects has a much bigger impact on our lives than most people assume. Poorly designed objects can cause frustration, time delays, and even injury.

What Does “Good Design” Look Like?

At its core, design is any human influence on the physical world. We tend to think of this in terms of buildings, fashion, or products, but design is much broader than just a few fields. Every object or environment that has been created or modified by humans is designed. This applies to everything from ancient architectural marvels to the layout of clothes in your closet.

As technology evolves, new fields of design pop up to focus on specific problems. User interaction is important in every subfield, but it’s most often talked about in industrial, interaction, and experience design.

• Industrial design focuses on the creation and development of physical objects, with a particular focus on function, aesthetics, and value.
• Interaction design focuses on the interface between user and object, usually in a digital context (think website design).
• Experience design focuses on the...

Shortform Exercise: Reexamine Everyday Objects

We typically don’t think about the design of things around us unless they present a problem. This exercise will help you think critically about items you use every day.

This chapter looks at how the design of common items like doors, chairs, and kitchen appliances can influence how we interact with them. Take a moment to look around your environment right now. Choose one object within arm’s reach. Imagine showing the object to a friend who had never seen anything like it before. Do you think they would be able to figure out what it does? Would they be able to use it correctly?

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 2.1: Conscious and Subconscious Processing

This chapter gives an overview of the conscious and subconscious mental processes that determine how we perceive, interpret, and respond to objects in our environment. Traditionally, studying human cognition, emotion, and behavior is the domain of psychologists, and many designers underestimate the importance of understanding human behavior. They assume that their experience with their own thoughts and emotions is more than enough to predict how other people will think and feel in a given situation. But because the bulk of human cognitive processing happens on an unconscious level, our own experiences of our conscious thoughts only show part of the picture.

Every designed object or system will ultimately be used by people. A product that is technically perfectly engineered but is confusing to use is ultimately a failure. In other words, understanding the thoughts and emotions that underlie our interactions with technology has important implications for design.

Evaluating Behavior With The Seven Stages of Action

When we interact with a new object, we have two problems to solve: “How do I use this?” and “Did that work?” Author Don Norman calls these “the gulf of...

Shortform Exercise: Break Down an Ordinary Action

The seven stages of action happen automatically for easy, routine tasks, but thinking through them consciously is a helpful tool for evaluating design. Let’s practice this now.

Assume that your goal for today was to sit down and read this summary (congratulations, you’ve already succeeded!). The next stages are plan and specify, which help us bridge the gulf of execution. (Remember, the plan stage is where we consider all possible options, and the specify stage is where we select one of those options to try.) List three ways you could have accomplished the goal of reading this summary. Which one did you act on?

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 2.2: Making Sense of Our Own Behavior

We know that behavior can be either event-driven or goal-driven, and that it can be broken down into seven stages of action. But what happens when something goes wrong? How do we explain what happened?

For designers, understanding the way users think about their interactions with technology is important for creating a positive user experience. It is not enough to know how something works on a technical level—we need to understand how the user thinks the object works, and how they explain what happened if something goes wrong, since these are important factors in determining how people respond to technology. For designers and non-designers alike, understanding the biases that shape our own stories helps us make sense of our encounters with bad design.

Causes of Behavior

To understand the way people think about their interactions with technology, we need to distinguish between a user’s overarching goal and the smaller subgoals and actions that lead up to it. Norman quotes Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt as an example, who said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” However, it’s unlikely that anyone...

Shortform Exercise: Do a Root Cause Analysis

Trace a small behavior backwards to find the big picture goal.

Imagine you’re in a library. You overhear someone ask the librarian where to find the science section. What is their immediate goal? What bigger goals might be driving that immediate goal? (Remember, the easiest way to determine this is to keep asking “why?” about each goal!)

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 3.1: The Mechanics of Memory

In this chapter, we’ll explore the interaction between “knowledge in the head” (memory) and “knowledge in the world” (design features). A significant chunk of the chapter is dedicated to an overview of different types of memory and how they function. This section isn’t overly technical, and as we’ll see, having a basic understanding of memory has important implications for design.

“Knowledge in the Head” vs. “Knowledge in the World”

Norman refers to any information stored solely in memory as “knowledge in the head." This applies to things like passwords on your computer (unless you’ve written them down) as well as knowing how to use a computer in the first place. Knowledge in the head can be either declarative or procedural.

• Declarative knowledge is knowledge of something (like knowing your address or the fact that red traffic lights mean stop). Anything that can be written as a fact is declarative knowledge, regardless of whether it’s true. You may know for a fact that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, and that knowledge might impact how you think about the technology of lightbulbs in general—the fact that Edison did not actually invent the lightbulb...

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 3.2: Memory and Design

The subjective way memories are encoded affects how we retrieve them later on. Details of an event that were especially meaningful to us might be remembered as much more important to the overall story than they were at the time. In fact, whether information is meaningful is one of the biggest factors influencing our ability to remember it.

Meaningful things are easy to remember. They don’t need to be meaningful to our personal lives, as long as they have a meaningful relationship to each other, or to something else we know. Meaning helps us connect the information to a bigger picture. Arbitrary, unrelated things are much more difficult to remember. This is why rote learning is so difficult to do—the information being learned has no underlying structure to provide meaning. Typically, we cope with this by imposing structure of our own.

For example, the order of letters in the alphabet is arbitrary information. There is no underlying meaning explaining why C comes after B, except that we collectively agree that it does. To make this arbitrary sequence easier to learn, we impose structure in the form of the alphabet song.

• Mnemonics are designed for this exact...

Shortform Exercise: Redesign Reminders

This chapter covers a lot of information, and it can be difficult to connect it to concrete situations in our daily lives. This exercise asks you to redesign an element of your daily life using your new understanding of memory.

Think of a time recently when you created a reminder to help you remember a task or appointment. This could be any type of reminder—an alert in a phone app, a note placed somewhere prominent, a loved one you asked to help you remember, or even a mental association between two situations. What did you need to remember, and what type of reminder did you use?

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 4: Guiding Behavior With Design

Building on the lessons of the previous chapters, we’ll now explore a new way to guide behavior with design: constraints. Constraints limit the ways users can interact with an object. They create affordances, but they also guide users on which affordances to focus on. There are four main types of constraints: physical, cultural, semantic, and logical.

Physical Constraints

Physical constraints are physical qualities of an object that limit the ways it can interact with users or other objects. The shape and size of a jar lid act as physical constraints that prevent it from being attached to the wrong jar; different-sized holes on some electrical outlets constrain the way plugs can be connected; the height of a doorknob constrains the type of people who can use the door.

Physical constraints can be deliberately designed to ensure an object is used correctly, but this doesn’t always result in increased usability. Cylindrical batteries are a common example: Although the shapes of each end of the battery are slightly different, that difference only constrains the electrical circuit, not the placement of the batteries. This is why most of us have experienced...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Physical Constraints

Physical constraints are so common in daily life that they can become invisible. This exercise will help you practice identifying physical constraints in everyday items.

Take a look at the physical device you’re using to read this summary (like a tablet, phone, or computer). Are there any parts that act as physical constraints? (Remember, physical constraints limit the ways you can physically interact with an object.)

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 5: Human Error

In this chapter, we’ll break down different types of errors that can happen when humans interact with technology. These errors can take the form of either “slips” or “mistakes," each of which can be broken down further into different categories. The first edition of this book, published in 1988, included many more categories of slips and mistakes, but here they have been pared down to only those most relevant to design. The chapter ends with recommendations for turning knowledge of human error into specific design guidelines.

The Error of “Human Error”

Industry professionals estimate that between 75 and 95 percent of industrial accidents are attributed to human error. But if we think of “error” as something that goes wrong in a particular system, how is it possible for the vast majority of events in that system to be considered “errors”? Error, by definition, should be the exception rather than the rule. In other words, what we think of as human errors are more likely outcomes of a system that has been unintentionally designed to create error, rather than prevent it.

If there’s an underlying cause of these accidents, why do we write them off as human error? One...

Shortform Exercise: Identify System Errors

This chapter discussed the ways that systems are often designed without human needs in mind. Let’s connect this to your own experience.

In your field of work, is there a common error that seems to happen over and over, either to you or to colleagues?

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 6: Design Thinking

“Design thinking” is the process of examining a situation to discover the root problem, exploring possible solutions to that problem, testing those solutions, and making improvements based on those tests. This process is iterative, which means it is repeated as many times as necessary, each time with slight improvements based on previous iterations.

Design thinking is an important part of the philosophy of human-centered design. This chapter describes two models for thinking about the process of design thinking and compares these approaches to the traditional design process. But these approaches represent the ideal, and they’re not always feasible in practice. The chapter ends with a discussion of the practical constraints that prevent designers from working through each step of the design thinking process in full.

(Shortform note: Chapters 6 and 7 are new to the 2013 edition.)

The Design Thinking Process

Design thinking has two phases: finding the right problem and finding the right solution. Each of the two phases has two steps. The entire process is often described using “the four D’s”: discover, define, develop, deliver.

The first step in the design process is...

Shortform Exercise: Observe the Right Users in the Right Settings

We know that observation is the first step of the design thinking process, but choosing the right users and settings can be difficult. Let’s practice this now.

Imagine you were asked to design a new type of computer keyboard. What types of people would you choose to observe? How would you choose?

The Design of Everyday Things Summary Chapter 7: Design in the Real World: Competition, Innovation, and Ethics

In an ideal world, every company would implement a human-centered design approach using a research-intensive, iterative design process. In the real world, this is far easier said than done. Producing well-designed products requires keeping the company afloat, which often translates to making concessions in the design process.

The Pressures of Business

To keep profit margins high, manufacturers typically focus on price, features, and quality (in that order), so a lengthy and expensive design process that drives up the ultimate price of the product isn't practical. Even with the perfect combination of those three factors, products (and companies) can still fail purely due to timing. Successful products capitalize on the zeitgeist (German for “spirit of the time”), hitting the market at just the right moment in the cultural and economic climate. On top of all that, businesses also need to identify and market to the “real” customers—not the end user, but the distributors who decide which products to sell in their stores. Each of these pressures has an important impact on the design of the final product.

“Featuritis”

Competitive pressures can create unexpected...

Shortform Exercise: Does Technology Make Us Smart?

The debate over whether technology makes us more or less intelligent rages on. This exercise will help you examine how technology affects your own life.

The author argues that technology makes us smart because it takes over menial jobs, giving us time and energy to devote to more involved tasks. Can you think of an example in your own life where technology has saved you time and allowed you to focus on other work?

Shortform Exercise: Consider Consumer Values

Think about the power you have as a consumer to influence design.

A product design is only successful if it attracts buyers. When you shop for durable goods like clothing or computers, what matters most to you? (For example: features, price, packaging, and so on.)

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on The Design of Everyday Things

Now that you’ve finished the summary, let’s figure out how to apply the lessons of the book to your own life.

This book covers a wide range of topics in both design and cognitive psychology. What information surprised you most? What are you still curious about?