As with the Mythical Man-Month, the book The Design of Everyday Things by David A. Norman is one I should have read ten years ago. While the word "design" in its title may mislead you into thinking this is about trendy designs of futuristic objects, its original word was "psychology", which implies that this is more about our day-to-day interactions with tools and objects.
Apart from a few references, this is not about computers, but then everything that is said about everyday objects do apply to computers, actually to the nth degree. The book is a summary of many research studies about human-tool interaction, covering topics such as mappings, constraints, memory, errors, what causes bad design and so on. It culminates in a summary chapter about user-centered design, and a few uncannily spot on predictions from the late 80s about the future on computing.
Its holisctic view of user-centered design is what makes it such a popular and important book. While some of the examples do ramble on a bit, the lessons to learn from them are so simple and clear it shocks me that others could call themselves user-interface designer without closely following the rules presented in this book. Actually, many of those "rules" are re-discovered so often that it gives some weight to their quality.
It has a great list of references, but sadly too few relate to pedagogy. For better or worse, most user-interfaces are made for simple challenge-responses rather than expecting the user to understand what's happening. Yet, for software design, the link between code design and conceptual mapping is of great importance for any software more powerful than simple widgets, hence how lessons from pedagogy can help software designers make powerful tools that remain simple to understand.
Published on August 5, 2012 at 19:26 EDT
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