Don Norman is a cognitive science professor widely known for his experiments in human-centered design and for coining the term 'user experience.'
He also has a great collection of essays that provide design advice across disciplines.
I would recommend his book "The Design of Everyday Things" to anyone who wants to learn about design-related concepts.
Here are the five most important lessons I took away from the book:
1. To look at the world from your user's point of view (empathy)
The author advocates for understanding what your users need, value, and want before designing anything.
If you can understand what users want and need, you will create a better design.
2. Reduce cognitive load
The author emphasizes reducing unnecessary information as much as possible.
Reduce, Reuse and Repurpose are the three main words that describe how to achieve this.
The idea is that you should provide your users with as much information as they need at any given moment, no more and no less.
This way, you increase their efficiency by reducing the effort required for them to accomplish tasks.
3. The use of 'affordances.'
The author explains the idea behind affordances and why it's different from both signifiers and constraints.
The idea behind the concept is that if you want people to know how to use particular objects intuitively, you should design things in a way that makes their functions clear.
4. The use of 'signifiers.'
Signifiers are ways to show users how to interact with objects in a certain way. For example, the 'traffic light buttons' used on touch-screen phones are signifiers.
The author explains the importance of designing these to be easy to use and fulfilling their function, or you can choose to leave them out altogether if they are not essential for the functioning of your object/product.
5. The use of 'constraints.'
The author explains that constraints are critical for good design and that these can be used as tools to improve your designs.
For example, you can design a situation where users cannot do certain things until they have done other things first.
There are different types of constraints such as Physical, Cultural, and Logical.
To make this easier to understand, he provides many examples from all kinds of products and objects, making it even more interesting.
If you want to learn more about the book, check out:
https://amzn.to/30B2q1C
And if you want to learn more about the author Donald Norman, check out his website:
https://jnd.org/
#productmanagement #design #people #empathy #ux #userexperience
