The Design of Everyday Things

“It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.”

Norman promotes HCD. Placing human needs and capabilities at the center of the design process ensures that machines adapt to humans, rather than the other way around. Norman first introduced this novel concept in a book he co-edited with Stephen W. Draper in 1986, using the term “user-centered design.”

“Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all.”

Fast, accurate feedback is critical to good design. Poor feedback, however, can be as detrimental as no feedback because it is distracting, uninformative, irritating, and anxiety-provoking.

“It doesn’t matter how good a product is if, in the end, nobody uses it.”

Norman has an expansive definition of success. For him, a design is successful if it is widely purchased, used, and enjoyed. A design that people do not purchase is a failure, no matter how clever the product may be.

“Things are designed to be used by people.”

Norman is an advocate of HCD. He urges designers to understand human psychology because people are the ones who use products. Without a deep understanding of people, products are apt to be faulty, difficult to understand, and difficult to use.

“Fail often, fail fast.”

Norman emphasizes the importance of failure in design, arguing that it is an essential part of the creative process. He recommends replacing the word “failure” with the notion of “learning experience.” Failure leads to learning. Designers who never fail are not trying hard enough.

“Don’t criticize unless you can do better.”

Norman urges designers not just to critique bad designs, but to strive to improve them. Good design is an interdisciplinary, iterative process that starts with understanding the root causes of failures.

“The most effective way of helping people remember is to make it unnecessary.”

This quote is about internal and external knowledge. Long-term memory is fragmentary and difficult to retrieve. Thus, designers must create products that either facilitate recall by creating meaningful structures, or by making memory unnecessary.

“Surprisingly in this era of screen-based devices, paper tools are still enormously popular and effective.”

This passage addresses the power of conventions. Conventions hinder change, allowing products to remain popular even after new technologies render them obsolete or less efficient.

“Technology does not make us smarter. People do not make technology smart.”

Norman argues that technology and people form a powerful partnership. People are strong where technology is weak, and vice versa. Without technology, humans become decidedly less capable. By the same token, technology is not “smart” because, Norman argues, machines are inflexible and lack the creativity and adaptability that humans have.

“Question everything.”

This quote describes the “Five Whys” approach to design. Determining the root causes of problems is critical to good design. This entails repeatedly asking questions, even obvious ones, until the true problem comes to light.

“The meanings of today may not be the meanings of the future.”

Designers use constraints to guide usage of their products. Key among these are semantic constraints, which rely on meaning to control possible actions. Semantic constraints can change over time, as evidenced by this quote.

“Sometimes clever people are too clever for our good.”

Standardization can reduce accidents. Designers who eschew standardization in favor of their own logic (i.e., being “too clever”) hinder the usability of their products. However, standardization can stifle innovation. Moreover, standardization requires widespread cooperation within industries and sometimes across governments.

“One way of overcoming the fear of the new is to make it look like the old.”

The term skeuomorphic describes incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role. Skeuomorphic designs not only appeal to traditionalists, but also to people who have certain disabilities. Individuals who are blind or have limited vision, for example, have lobbied to make electric cars sound like gasoline cars for safety reasons.

“When searching for the reason, even after you have found one, do not stop: ask why that was the case. And then ask why again. Keep asking until you have uncovered the true underlying causes.”

This passage underscores two key points: the importance of the “Five Whys” technique and the iterative aspect of HCD. Good design requires repeatedly asking questions to arrive at the root cause of a problem. This iterative technique allows designers to look beyond human error to discover the underlying issues behind failures.

“People do tend to blame themselves.”

Norman’s training in psychology informs virtually every aspect of his book. In this quote, he emphasizes the human tendency to internalize failure. His book shifts the blame for accidents away from actors and onto devices. Indeed, for Norman, human error results from bad design.

“Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior.”

This quote is about deliberate misuse. Humans are social beings. Thus, they sometimes do things they know are wrong or dangerous when pressured by others. HCD takes human behavior into account by creating products on the assumption that people err, both intentionally and unintentionally.

“Social pressures often make it difficult for people to admit to their own errors (or to report the errors of others).”

One of Norman’s most enabling recommendations is to destigmatize errors. Errors are both unavoidable and prime opportunities for learning. Encouraging employees to report errors can prevent mistakes from occurring in the future.

“A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.”

Norman stresses the importance of seeking root causes (or solving the correct problem). Through his research, teaching, and consulting work, he learned that people often solve the problem before them without first questioning whether it is the real issue.

“In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered.”

Norman argues that good design is an expansive, iterative process that requires observation, ideation, prototyping, testing, and repetition. Only through this circular process can designers “discover” the root causes of problems and the best ways to solve them.

“Designers understand what people really need. Marketing understands what people actually buy.”

Norman supports interdisciplinarity in design. Creating and selling a product requires myriad complementary skills, all of which are necessary for the product’s success. Here, he suggests that while designers focus on user needs, marketers understand what people think they want (and what they buy as a result). A good design process meets the priorities of both groups.

“When companies try to increase sales by matching every feature of their competitors, they end up hurting themselves.”

Norman warns readers against creeping featurism. Many companies try to improve sales by adding features to their products that mimic competitors’ offerings. Matching features, however, blur the line between companies and removes customers’ reasons for preferring one over the other.

“Original ideas are the easy part. Actually producing the idea as a successful product is what is hard.”

This quote addresses the design challenge—that is, producing a successful product from ideation to widespread adoption. Designers must collaborate across disciplines to create successful products, engaging with engineers, manufacturers, managers, marketers, and sales teams, among others. Norman argues that these challenges are precisely what make design a rewarding field.

“We have become dependent upon our technologies to navigate the world, to hold intelligent conversation, to write intelligently, and to remember.”

In contrast to some commentators, who argue that technology fosters dependence, Norman holds that people are much more capable with technology than they are without it. Technology complements human strengths, thereby enhancing human capabilities.