1. 1. Top quotes and take-aways
  2. 2. 1 Psychopathology of Everyday Things
    1. 2.1. 2 of the most important characteristics of good design are:
    2. 2.2. Major areas of design
    3. 2.3. Human Centered Design
    4. 2.4. Fundamental principles of interaction
  3. 3. 2 Psychology of Everyday Actions
    1. 3.1. Gulfs of Execution and Evaluation
    2. 3.2. The 7 Stages of Action
      1. 3.2.1. Thinking is mostly unconscious
    3. 3.3. The 7 stages of Action and the 3 Levels of Processing
      1. 3.3.1. The 7 stages of Action: 7 Fundamental Design Principles
  4. 4. 3 Knowledge in the Head and in the World
    1. 4.1. Precise behaiour can emerge from imprecise knowledge for 4 reasons:
    2. 4.2. Knowldeges include
    3. 4.3. Quotes, mostly for Knowledge in the Head
    4. 4.4. Quotes, mostly knowledge in the World
  5. 5. 5 Human Error? No, Bad Design
    1. 5.1. Fing the root cause - the Five Whys
    2. 5.2. Deliberate Violations
    3. 5.3. Errors: slips and mistakes
      1. 5.3.1. Slips
        1. 5.3.1.1. Capture slips
        2. 5.3.1.2. Description-similarity slips
        3. 5.3.1.3. Memory-lapse slips
        4. 5.3.1.4. Mode error slips
      2. 5.3.2. Mistakes
        1. 5.3.2.1. Rule-based mistakes
        2. 5.3.2.2. Knowledge-based mistakes
      3. 5.3.3. Quotes about errors
      4. 5.3.4. Swiss cheese model
  6. 6. 6 Design Thinking - Human Centered Design
    1. 6.1. Double diamond
      1. 6.1.1. Design process divided ir 4 stages:
    2. 6.2. Iterative process od HCD
    3. 6.3. Desing vs Marketing: research
      1. 6.3.1. What the field wants to know
      2. 6.3.2. Observation methods
    4. 6.4. Idea generation rules
    5. 6.5. HCD quotes
    6. 6.6. Tasks vs Activities
    7. 6.7. Design in the Real World
  7. 7. 7 Design in the World of Business
    1. 7.0.1. Featuritis:
    2. 7.0.2. Reading vs listening
    3. 7.0.3. Innovation
    4. 7.0.4. Reliance on technology
  • 8. Further reads
    1. 8.1. Another review
    •

    Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

    ,

    Design for everyday things is a good starting point to your first steps in design. It is considered one of the classics of design and Don Norman (the author of the book) - one of the founders of UX design. I picked up this book in UX Design Collective guide. In the book I learned a lot of new concepts, ideas and design theory for the first time. It was quite well written, understandable and more than less enjoyable.

    Top quotes and take-aways

    Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value.

    People are flexible, versaile, and creative. Machines are rigid, precise and relatively ixed in their operations There is a mismatch between the two. one that can lead to enhanced capability if used properly.

    Everyone has her own favourite method, but they all are variants of the common theme:
    iterate through the 4 stages of observation, generation, prototyping, and testing.
    But even before this, there is one overriding principle: solve the right problem

    The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget. / Don Norman’s law of product development

    Design is successful only if the final product is successful - if people buy it, use it, and wnjoy it, thus spreading the word. A design that people do not purchase is a failed design, no matter how great the design team might consider it.

    1 Psychopathology of Everyday Things

    2 of the most important characteristics of good design are:

    • Discoverability: Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them?
    • Understanding: What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?

    Major areas of design

    they are not very strict, though…

    • Industrial design: professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize function, value, appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer.
    • Interaction design: how people interact with technology; enhance people’s understanding of what can be done, is happening, has just occured. Draws upon principles of psychology, design, art, emotion to ensure a positive experience.
    • Experience design: practice of designing products, processes, services, events, environments with a focus on quality and enjoyment of the total experience.

    Human Centered Design

    1. It’s a process/set of procedures that ensures that designs match the needs and capabilities of the people for whom they are intended.
    2. It’s a design phylosophy to start with a good understanding of people and their needs from observation.
    • It is compatible with all of the design fields mentioned before!

    Fundamental principles of interaction

    • Discoverability:
      • it is possible to determine what actions are possible and the current state of the device.
    • Affordances:
      • a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine how the object might possibly be used.
      • often used misleadingly, mostly like a signifier, because this term was introduced before the other.
      • the proper affordance exist to make the desired actions possible.
      • example: glass needs afforandces!
    • Signifiers:
      • the property of the object that signifies how it should be used.
      • effective use of signifiers ensures discoverability and that the feedback is well communicated and intelligible.
      • example: doors and door handles; sink with a push at the bottom
    • Mapping: the relationship between the elements of two sets of things
      • example: Suppose there are many lights in the ceiling of a classroom and a row of light switches on the wall at the front of the room. The mapping of switches to lights specifies which switch controls which light.
    • Feedback:
      • communicating the result of an action. Must be immediate and informative and not too much (distracting).
      • there is full and continuous information about the results of actions and the current state of the product/service. After an action has been executed, it is easy to determine the new state.
    • Conceptual models:
      • highly simplified explanation of how something work.
      • The design projects all the information needed to create a good conceptual model of the system, leading to understand and a feeling of control.
      • The conceptual model enhances both discoverability and evaluation of results.
      • example: refrigerator controls for cooling temperature (wrong model gives a wrong idea of what is going on), stove controls.
      • Mental models, as the name states, are the conceptual models in people’s minds that represent their understanding of how things work. (fridge example)
    • Constraints:
      • providing physical, logical, semantic and cultural constraints guides actions and eases interpretation

    2 Psychology of Everyday Actions

    Gulfs of Execution and Evaluation

    We bridge the Gulf of Exection through the use of signifiers, constraints, mappings, and a conceptual model.
    We bridge the Gulf of Evaluation through the use of feedback and a conceptual model.

    GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL
    🔽 Gulf of Exection
    ⏬ how do I work this? ⏫ what happened?]
    ⏬ what can I do? ⏫ is this what I wanted?
    🔼 Gulf of Evaluation
    WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD

    The 7 Stages of Action

    1. Goal (form a goal)
    2. Plan the action
    3. Specify an action sequence
    4. Perform the action sequence
    5. Perceive the state of the world
    6. Interpret the perception
    7. Compare the outcome with the goal
    GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL
    🔽 Bridge of Exection
    ⏬ plan ⏫ compare
    ⏬ specify ⏫ interpret
    ⏬ perform ⏫ perceive
    🔼 Bridge of Evaluation
    WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD

    Thinking is mostly unconscious

    Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value.

    The behavioural level, which is the home of interaction, is also the home of all expectation-based emotions, of hope and joy, frustration and anger.

    The 7 stages of Action and the 3 Levels of Processing

    The 7 stages of Action: 7 Fundamental Design Principles

    1. What do I want to accomplish?
    2. What are the alternative action sequences?
    3. What action can I do now?
    4. How do I do it?
    5. What happened?
    6. What does it mean?
    7. Is this okay? Have I accomplished my goal?
    What do I want to accomplish?
    🔽 Feedforward
    ⏬ what are the alternatives? ⏫ is this okay?
    ⏬ what can I do? ⏫ what does it mean?
    ⏬ how do I do it? ⏫ what happened?
    🔼 Feedback
    WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD WORLD

    Don’t criticize unless you can do better.

    3 Knowledge in the Head and in the World

    Precise behaiour can emerge from imprecise knowledge for 4 reasons:

    • knowledge is both in the head and in the world
    • great precision is not required
    • natural constraints exist in the world
    • knowledge of cultural constriants and conventions exists in the head

    Knowldeges include

    Knowledge in the World includes:

    • perceived affordances and signifiers,
    • the mappings between the parts that appear to be controls or places to manipulate and the resulting actions,
    • the physical constraints that limit what can be done.

    Knowledge in the Head includes:

    • conceptual models;
    • cultural, semantic, and logical constraints on behaviour;
    • an analogies between the current situation and previous experiences with other situations

    Quotes, mostly for Knowledge in the Head

    Descriptions need discriminate only among the choices in front of me, but what works for one purpose may not for another. (If have only 1 red notebook, and many blue, calling by “red” works well, when I get many red notebooks, it does not suffice anymore.)

    I suspect that short-term memory holds something akin to a pointer to an already encoded item in long-term memory, which means the memory capacity is the number of pointers it can keep. This would account for the fact that the length or complexity of the item has little impact - simply the number of items.

    To maximize efficiency of working memory it is best to present different information over different modalities: sight, sound, touch (haptics), hearing, spatial location, and gestures.

    Part of the power of a good conceptual model lies in its ability to provide meaning to things.

    There are 5 short-term memory slots. Each time a new item is added, it occupies a slot, knocking out whatever was there beforehand.

    Quotes, mostly knowledge in the World

    Activity-centered controls: many auditoriums in schools and companies have computer-based controls, with switches labeled with such phrases as “video”, “computer”, “full lights” and “lecture”

    Skeumorphic is the technical term for incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role. Skeumorphic designs are often comfortable for traditionalists.

    5 Human Error? No, Bad Design

    Fing the root cause - the Five Whys

    Basically, it emans that when searching for the reason, even after you have found one, do not stop: ask why that was the cause. And the ask why again. Keep asking until you have unciovered the true causes.

    Deliberate Violations

    • Routine violations occur when noncompliance is so frequent that it is ignored.
    • Situational violations occur when there are special cicumstances
      • example: going through a red light because no other cars wew visible and I was late

    Errors: slips and mistakes

    Errors have 2 major forms:

    • Slips occur when the goal is correct, but the actions are not done properly: the execution is flawed.
    • Mistakes occur when the goal or plan is wrong.
    Slips Mistakes
    Action-based Rule-based
    Memory-based Knowledge-based
    Memory-lapse

    Slips and mistakes can be further divided based upon their underlying causes. Memory lapses can lead to either slips or mistakes, depending upon whether the memory failure was at the highest level of cignition (mistakes) or at lower (subconscious) levels (slips).

    Although deliberate violations of procedures are clearly inappropriate behaviours that often lead to accidents, these are not considered as errors.

    Slips

    Capture slips
    • example: I was using a copying machine, and I was counting the pages. I found myself counting “1, 2, 3, …, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King.” I had been playing cards recently.
    • designers need to avoid procedures that have identical opening steps but the diverge.
    • The more experienced the workers, the more likely they are to fall prey to capture.
    • Whenever possiblem sequences should be designed to differ from the very start.
    Description-similarity slips
    • example: A former student reported that one day he came home from jogging, took off his sweaty shirt and rolled it up in a ball, intending to throw it in the laundry basket. Instead he threw it in the toilet. (It wasn’t a poor aim, they were in differet rooms.)
    • designers need to ensure that controls and displays for different purposes are significatly different from one another.
    Memory-lapse slips
    • example: making copies of a document, walking off with the copy, but leaving the original inside the machine.
    • example: forgtting a child. Leaving a child behind ar a rest stop during car trip; in the dressing room of a department store; new mother forgetting her one-month-old and having to go to the police for help in finding the baby.
    • To minimize memory-lapse errors:
      1. minimize the number of steps
      2. provide vivid reminders of steps that need to be completed
      • use the forcing function (superior)
    Mode error slips
    • designers must try to avoid modes, but if they are necessay, the equipment must make it obvious which mode is invoked.
    • designers must always compensate for interfering acivities.

    Mistakes

    The most serious mistakes occur when the situation is misdiagnosed.

    Rule-based mistakes
    • situation is mistakenly interpreted
    • the correct rule is invoked, but the rule is faulty
    • the correct rule is invoked, but the outcome is incorrectly evaluated

    Example:
    turning the oven termostat to its maximum to get to proper cooking temperature faster (false conceptual model).

    • designer should provide as much guidance as possible to ensure that the current state of things is displayed in a coherent and easily interpreted format - ideally graphical.
    • the design challenge is to present the information about the state of the system (a device, vehicle, plant, or activities being monitored) in a way that is easy to assimilate and interpret, as well as to provide alternative explanaions and interpretations. It is useful to question decisions, but impossible to do so if every action (or failure to act) requires close attention.

    This is a difficult problem with no obvious solution.

    Knowledge-based mistakes

    with knowledge-based behaviour, people are consciously problem solving. They are in an unknown situation and do not have any available skills or rules that apply directly.

    • the best solution to knowledge based situations is to be found un a good understanding of the situation, which in most cases also translates into an appropriate conceptual model.
    • designer should assume that people will be interrupted during ther activities and that they may need assistance in resuming their operations.

    Quotes about errors

    Checklists: It is always better to have 2 people do checklists together as a team: one to read the instruction, the other to execute it.

    Reporting error: Rather than stigmatize those who admit to error, we should thank those who do so and encourage the reporting. We need to make it easier to report errors, for the goal is not to punish, but to determine how it occured and change things so that it will not happen again.

    Detecting error: The difference between memory-lapse slips and mistakes is that, in slips a single component of a plan is skipped, whereas in mistakes the entire plan is forgotten.

    Designing for error: Understand the causes of error and design to minimize those causes.

    Multitasking: all evidence points to severe degradation of performance, increased errors, and a general lack of both quality and efficiency. Doing 2 tasks at once takes longer than the sum of the timesit would take to do each alone.

    Confirmationa d=and error messages: the request for confirmation seems like an irritant rather than an essential safety check because the person tends to focus upon the action than the object that is being acted upon.

    We should deal with error by embracing it, by seeking to understand the causes and ensuring they do not happen again. We need to assist rather than punish or scold.

    Swiss cheese model

    1. do not try to find “the” cause of an accident
    2. we can decrease accidents and make systems more resilient by designing them to have:
      1. extra precautions against error (more slices of cheese),
      2. less opportunities for slips, mistakes, or equipment failure (less holes),
      3. very different mechanism in the different subparts of the system (trying to esure that holes do not line up)

    Resilience engineering has the goal of designing systems, procedures, management, and the training of people so they are able to respond to problems as they arise. It strives to ensure that the design of all these things (equipment, procedures, communication both among workers and externally to management and public) are continually being assessed, tested and improved.

    Design priciples for dealing with error: People are flexible, versaile, and creative. Machines are rigid, precise and relatively ixed in their operations There is a mismatch between the two. one that can lead to enhanced capability if used properly.

    6 Design Thinking - Human Centered Design

    One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve.

    HCD is the process of ensuring that people’s needs are met, that the resulting product is understandable and usable, that it accomplishes the desired tasks, and that the experience of use is positive and enjoyable.

    Everyone has her own favourite method, but they all are variants of the common theme:
    iterate through the 4 stages of observation, generation, prototyping, and testing.
    But even before this, there is one overriding principle: solve the right problem

    Double diamond

    The 2 components of design:

    1. finding the right problem
    2. meeting human needs and capabilities -

    give rise to 2 phases of the design process:

    1. find the right problem,
    2. find the right solution.
      === /\ ===== /\ ===
      = / 11 \ * / 22 \ =
      = \ 11 / * \ 22 / =
      === \/ ===== \/ ===
      div|conv|div|conv

    Design process divided ir 4 stages:

    find the right problem:

    1. Discover (divergence)
    2. Define (convergence)

    find the right solution:

    1. Develop (divergence)
    2. Deliver (convergence)

    There is nothing like a firm deadline to get creative minds to reach convergence.

    Iterative process od HCD

    repeat the cycle with getting better result each time:

    1. Observation
    2. Ide generation (ideation)
    3. Prototyping
    4. Testing

    Term to check: applied ethnography

    Desing vs Marketing: research

    What the field wants to know

    Design: what people really need and how they actually will use the product or service under consideration.
    Marketing: what people will buy, which includes learning how they make their purchasing decisions.

    Observation methods

    Desing: qualitative observational methods by which they can study people in depth, unnderstanding how they do their activities and the environmental factors that come to play. These methods are very time consuming, so designers typically only examine small numbers of people, often numbering in the tens.
    Marketing: traditionally uses large-scale, quantitative studies, with heavy reliance on focus groups, surveys, and questionnaires. In marketing, it is not uncommon to converse with hundreds of people in focus groups, and to questions tens od thousands of people by means of questionnaires and surveys.

    Idea generation rules

    • Generate numerous ideas: it is dangerous to become fixated upon 1 or 2 ideas too early in the process.
    • Be creative without regard for constraints: avoid criticizing ideas, whether your own or others. Even crazy ideas, often obviously wrong, can contain creative insights that can later be extracted and put to good use in the final idea selection. Avoid premature dismissal od ideas.
    • Question everything: stupid questions are great. A stupid question asks about things so fundamental that everyone assumes the answer is onvious. But when the question is taken seriously, it often turns out to be profound: the obvious is not obvious at all. What we assume to be obvious is simply the way things have always been done, but now that it is questioned, we don’t actually know the reasons. Quite often the solution to problems is discovered through stupid questions, through questioning the obvious.

    HCD quotes

    Faking systems: The Wizard of Oz method can be used to mimic a huge powerful system long before it can be built. (everything is fake, it just looks real)

    Prototyping during the problem specification phase is done mainly to ensure that the problem is well understood.

    Iteration: Requirements made in the abstract aew invariably wrong. Requirements produced by asking people what they need are invariably wrong. Requirements are developed by atching people in their natural environment.

    Activity-centered design: Let the activity define the product and its structure. Let the conceptual model of the product be built around the conceptual model of the activity.

    Support the activities while being sensitive to human capabilities, and people will accept the design and learn whatever is necessary.

    Tasks vs Activities

    Be-goals are at the highest, most abstract level and govern a person’s being: they determine why people act, are fundamental and long lasting, and determine one’s self image.
    Do-goals determine the plans and actions to be performed for an activity. This is a far more practical level.
    Motor-goal specifies just how the actions are performed: this is more at the level of tasks and operations rather than activities.

    Design for individuals and the results may be wonderful for the particular people they were designed for, but a mismatch for others.

    Design for activities and the result will be usable by everyone. A major benefit is that if the design requirements are consistent with their activities, eople will tolerate complexity and the requirements to learn something new: as long as the complexity and the new things to be learned feel appropriate to the task, tjey will fee; natural and be viewed as reasonable.

    Design in the Real World

    The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget. / Don Norman’s law of product development

    The way to handle the time crunch that eliminates the ability to do good up-front design research is to separate that process from the product team: have design researchers always out in the field, always studying potential products and customers.

    The clash between disciplines can be resolved by multidisciplinary teams whose participants learn to understand and respect the requirements of one another

    Designers try hard to determine people’s real needs and to fulfill them, whereas marketing is concerned with determining what people will actually buy. Bith are important!

    Inclusive/Universal design means that everyone benefits. (design for special people)

    Life is complex, as are the tasks we encounter. Out tools must match the tasks. Complexity is good; it is confusion that is bad.

    Deliberately difficult design: Usually there is one difficult part, designed to keep unauthorized people from using the device; the rest of it should follow the normal principles of good design.

    Succesful design: design is successful only if the final product is successful - if people buy it, use it, and wnjoy it, thus spreading the word. A design that people do not purchase is a failed design, no matter how great the design team might consider it.

    7 Design in the World of Business

    Design principles will be relevant after 25 years, because the design of technology to fit human needs and capabilities is determined by the psychology of people.

    Stigler’s law: the names of famous people often get attached to ideas even though they had nothing yo do with them.

    Featuritis:

    Featuritis is an insidious disease with its main symptom being “creeping featurism”.

    Factors why it creeps into organisations:

    • Existing customers like the product, but express a wish formore features, more functions, more capabilities
    • A competitive company adds new features to its products, producing competitive pressures to match that offering, but to do even more in order to get ahead of the competition.
    • Customers are satisfied, but sales are declining because the market is saturated: everyone who wants the product already has it. Time to add wondeful enhancements that will cause people to want the new model to upgrade.

    Competition-driven design: when companies try to increase sales by mathcing every feature of their competitors. (They hurt themselves, because there is no longer any reason to prefer one over another.)

    It is best to concentrate in areas where my organisation is stronger and to strengthen them even more.

    Reading vs listening

    Reading is far faster and superior to listening.
    Reading can be done quickly, it is possible to read around 300 words per minute and to skim, jumping ahead and back, effectively acquiring information at rates in the thousands of words per minute.
    Listening is slow and serial, usually at around 60 words per minute, and although this rate can be doubled or tripled with speech compression technologies and training, it si still slower than reading and not easy to skim.

    Innovation

    Every modern innovation, especially the ones that significantly change lives, takes multiple decades to move from concepts to company success. A rule of thumb is 20 years from first demonstrations in research laboratories to commercial product and then 10-20 years from first commercial release to widespread adoption.

    legacy problem: the heavy momentum of legacy inhibits change (keyboards and their switches)

    Radical innovation changes lives and industries. Incremental innovation makes things better. We need both. Most design evolves through incremental innovation by means of continual testing and refinement, like the hill climbing method.

    Technology changes rapidly, people and culture change slowly.

    Reliance on technology

    Reliance on technology is a benefit to humanity. With technology, the brain gets neither better or worse. Instead, it is the tasks that changes. Human plus machine is more powerful than either human ir machine alone.

    Further reads

    The most comprehensive history of product design. Recommended if want to understand the historical foundations.
    Design: History, Theory, and Practice of Product Design (2005) by Bernhard Burdek

    A good introduction to design thinking
    Change by Design (2009) by Tim Brown

    Excellent introduction to design research
    Hidden in Plain Sight (2013) by Jan Chipchase and Simon Steinhardt

    Presents a powerful method of analyzing behaviour
    Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems (1998) by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt

    Another review

    Book summary and Notes by Elvis Chidera