Psychology of Everyday Things
Ratings119
Average rating4.1
Was my first proper read of a non-fiction book, teaches a lot of design and how humans interface with objects. At the end Norman says you can read chapters of a non-fictional book like this in any order, which pissed me off at the time.
There's some good stuff in there but overall it's much drier than I expected. I reads quite like a textbook in many sections.
It's amazing how well a book written in the year I was born holds up to this day. I read the second edition in which some things are updated and it sure feels like the author is trying to predict the future to stay relevant. But I don't think he has to.
Anyway, great book, everyone who makes stuff should read it.
Good information but extremely dry and the desgin of the book was suprisingly bad given the subject matter. The last 1/4 is just extra information tacked on, and on many pages you need to flip, sometimes multiple times, to see a referenced image. There's also a frustrating lack of specifics throughout.
There is a reason this is the bible of design. It should be read and re-read forever because of the common sense that is blatant on the pages, yet is still defied today in the design world.
This book was originally published as The Psychology, rather than Design, of Everyday Things. It's pretty heavy on the psychology side, and I was hoping for more on the design side.
Where the author does talk about design principles, it does a good job of abstracting the details into principles, and it does a good job of stripping away the things that don't matter. It's just not really the book I thought and hoped it would be.
A mind blowing book, made me realize a lot of things and opened my eyes on a lot of everyday details. Plus, Donal A. Norman is really easy to read. This improved edition is much longer than the original but as much as interesting, even more regarding our last technology evolutions. A must read :)
When they say this book will change the way you see the world, they're not exaggerating.
After hearing about this one for well over a decade, I decided to give it a shot. If I had read this one when it came out, it might have hit much closer to the target. As it stands now, I's mostly a refresher of things already heard. Now – I wouldn't be surprised if wherever I heard them from were originally from this book, as it is a design classic.
After hearing about this one for well over a decade, I decided to give it a shot. If I had read this one when it came out, it might have hit much closer to the target. As it stands now, I's mostly a refresher of things already heard. Now – I wouldn't be surprised if wherever I heard them from were originally from this book, as it is a design classic.
It was interesting reading the dated references to hypertext and electronic appointment books because I read the majority of this book on my iPhone! I can talk to my phone and tell it to make appointments, set reminders, and record my favorite shows. Even since the 2002 revision, it's amazing to see how much technology has advanced. There are plenty of examples of bad design even as time marches on, but as another reviewer mentioned, it's going to be hard for me to go throughout life and not think about the way things are designed now.
This was written in a decade before authors learned how to write stimulating non-fiction.