8 ms·

New Course: The Design of Everyday Things

362 points by dpatru 13y ago

msvan 13y ago
It's interesting how many design links pop up here. I came here with a technical background and developed an interest for entrepreneurship reading HN, and I think that in the same way a design interest develops in those who are already sold on the idea of doing a startup. It'll be interesting to see what collective interest will develop here after design has become a core part of the "HN mentality".
_0nac 13y ago
In case the name doesn't ring a bell, The Design of Everyday Things is an extremely readable introduction to usability, and an absolute classic in its field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open.
- millerm 13y ago
  "You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open." Oh yes! It's one of those "WTF" moments and you want to find the company that designed that thing and send them the book. The book is really an eye opener.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  I think the reason "push to open" doors have a handle is that if they didn't have one people wouldn't try to push it.
  - PakG1 13y ago
    If you read the book, you'll see there are better ways to prompt someone to push a door open.
- adam12 13y ago
  Handles help when you want to close the door. I get your point though.
  - jkestner 13y ago
    In the book, he's talking about the entry doors in commercial buildings that swing closed. A la that classic Far Side cartoon.
  - hack_edu 13y ago
    Actually, the points are about push/pull doors and the choice of fixtures placed as affordances to suggest the appropriate action by the user.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      We know that. The GP is pointing out a secondary purpose that is often overlooked. Automatic door closers are subject to failure, and when they're inoperative then having a handle is a good thing. Commercial building owners also like handles because they can be chained shut easily if the tenant stops paying rent, even if the tenant has changed the locks. This is not to dispute the (great) value of the book, but to point out that there's often more than one use case.
- taeric 13y ago
  Of course, as soon as you have kids and you see them exploring all of the various "door like" things in their environment, you give up on odd pet peeves of door fixations and just get on with the expected. :) (Not sure why, but the amount of discussion "proper" door design gets is a major peeve of mine.)
  - Kliment 13y ago
    Proper door design makes a huge difference when a lot of people unfamiliar with said door need to use it in a short period of time and the cost of a delay can be congestion or even injury. Evacuation scenarios, rush hour traffic, black friday sales, that sort of thing. It doesn't make a huge difference to doors only a few people use a couple of times a day. That said, door design is a good example for many other things. To give you a particular one, a certain DVD player/recorder made by Panasonic has two large buttons on the upper corners of its front panel. One is the on/standby button and the other is the eject button. They placed the on/off button right next to the DVD tray, and literally everyone who has attempted to place a DVD in it has accidentally turned it off instead. Given it takes 20+ seconds to power cycle, this is extemely annoying, but of course not painful enough to ditch the whole thing as it otherwise works fine. You don't get used to it either, it's a jarring experience every time. Given neither switch is actually on the PCB and both are wired in, it would have been trivial to flip them around (and one of these days I will do so), but the designers didn't think of it.
    - taeric 13y ago
      In those scenarios, making the door open outwards trumps any handle design. More, it is the expectation for most of us. As for poorly designed power switches. I do not at all dispute the majority of the philosophy of this class. Even plan on taking the class, myself. I just find the door fixation obnoxious. As a counterpoint, I usually reach towards cars. Most are very similar to each other, yet as someone that used to have to rely on rentals, the first 2 minutes in any car are spent making sure I know how to do all of the basics. The myriad ways to control a windshield wiper, adjust the brightness of the inner lights, reset trip timers, etc, is quite impressive. Same for the radio and its highly varied functions.
- epo 13y ago
  A door handle is a universally recognised dual purpose control, and always works whichever way the door opens. A push plate does not do this. What are they supposed to do, remove them when doors become temporarily uni-directional? The fact that this even needs to be said is a sad comment on people's lack of imagination.
  - PakG1 13y ago
    Do you always use only one sort algorithm for all sorting scenarios?
maaaats 13y ago
It's so weird seeing prices on courses, coming from Europe. With that said, I've taken a course heavily based on this book. It is mandatory for all comp. sci. students at my Uni. Many didn't like it, being to "soft" when they wanted to hack, and complaining that "most of it is sooo obvious". And yes, it may be obvious when spelled out, but far too often overlooked and forgotten. I quite liked it.
- Zolomon 13y ago
  Which university did you study at?
  - maaaats 13y ago
    NTNU, Norway
- lhc- 13y ago
  My school (University of Dayton) also had a course which taught heavily from this book. I think the title was something like Ergonomics, and it was part of the Computer Science program. It would pretty enlightening, and I still have my copy somewhere at home.
millerm 13y ago
The "Design of Everyday Things" is probably one of the best books I have ever read on design. It's poignant for any designer of anything a human interacts with. Even though this book doesn't touch computer interaction it's completely relevant. Bonus: everyone you know who reads this book, or takes this course, will annoy you a little with the overuse of their wonderful new word "affordance". :-)
- jkestner 13y ago
  'Affordance' helps designers flesh out a professional vocabulary. Sounds a lot more technical than 'honest', 'humane' or 'civil', all of which I overuse. Speaking of civility, my touchstone design book is The Ice Palace That Melted Away, by Bill Stumpf (Aeron chair designer). The first chapter, on reflecting the wonder of flight in the experience, is the designer's answer to Louie CK.
  - millerm 13y ago
    I'm going to have check out that first chapter to understand your meaning. I am intrigued!
  - functional 13y ago
    Just for the sake of inane semantic pedantry, I have to ask: How do the words "honest", "humane" or "civil" correlate to "affordance" in this context? In the book, the term "affordance" refers to any kind of opportunity for a user to exert leverage on a designed object or system. So, a hair brush has a handle, and that handle is the point at which the object (the hair brush) affords any use by the user, because the person can grab the handle and orient the bristles when the dragging the brush through their hair. Hence the book's cover design, depicting the coffee pot with the misplaced handle, demonstrating a misplaced affordance, which results in the user getting burned when they try to pour hot coffee. The mouse is an affordance on a computer, because it's the device used for pointing. The keyboard is the affordance for typing. The video monitor is the affordance for observing output. The "submit" button on a web form in an HTML page is the affordance for sending data to the web server. When would you ever use the words "honest", "humane" or "civil" in place of "affordance"? Those are adjectives, but the word "affordance" is a noun.
kjhughes 13y ago
The quality of Udacity courses combined with an updated "Design of Everyday Things" plus Don Norman's direct involvement makes this course sound very attractive. The Udacity "Introduction to Computer Science" course by David Evans, by the way, is excellent. It is the one that I chose for by sons to take online this summer. I liked the balance it provided between pragmatic programming (Python exercises completed and evaluated in-browser) and CS fundamentals (BNF introduced in first lesson, for example). This new design course may have to be next on their list.
- psbp 13y ago
  I haven't checked Udacity in a long while and it's amazing the breadth of coursework that they offer for free. It's a much better format, and more convenient, than coursera too.
- michaelrbock 13y ago
  I totally agree -- the quality of Udacity courses is the best of any of the online learning options (paid or free). Every time a non-CS friend asks me where to start learning to code online I point them to Udacity's CS 101 (over Codecademy or Coursera).
lovskogen 13y ago
Don Norman has just released a new version of this book – seems like a smart move to do a course.
- 1337biz 13y ago
  Good point - could become a new promotional or paid tool for authors. I could see this working fairly well for the Gladwells and Krugmans.
- cj 13y ago
  Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) made a similar move with his course on Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon
- Kronopath 13y ago
  And it's about time for a new version too. I've been reading through the older version of it (2002) and was talking to family about some of the anachronisms of the book - such as Norman remarking at how much easier videotapes are to use compared to film reels, and ending off by saying "but it doesn't matter, because soon there will be no film, only videotapes". I remarked that many examples in this book would be incomprehensible to 20-year-olds ten years from now, who've never dealt with technologies like a VCR or the button-covered phones of the 80s and 90s. All in all, though, highly recommended.
lnanek2 13y ago
Don't bother trying to sign up, after they get you to make an account they tell you: > The Design of Everyday Things > We’re still making this course but we'll let you know when it's ready! Pretty annoying it gave me the option of Google/Facebook login, then made me fill out information anyway. The whole reason I picked Google to login is because I don't want to fill out a registration form for site number 1000.
- mcormier 13y ago
  Quite ironic when you consider the Design. I wouldn't worry, the fact that you realized this was a poor design means you don't really need to take the course. Just read up on "affordances" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordances) and start complaining about doors that have handles that look like you should pull them but actually have to be pushed, for the rest of your life. It's a life long course.
- markdown 13y ago
  So you're telling people they shouldn't sign up because the course isn't available right this instant? FYI, it says right there on the page: > Design of Everyday Things will consist of four courses that are tentatively scheduled to start in Fall 2013. > If you're interested in enrolling, please click the orange “Add to My Courses” button on this page and we'll be in touch as more details are available.
- crummy 13y ago
  I clicked Google login, and then it autopopulated my name and email (I assume from my Google data).
mathattack 13y ago
I used to give this book away to all my employees who were involved in GUI design. It is great about respecting and understanding your users, even if on the surface it's about door handles. I wonder how this will play into Udacity, as I view it more as a platform for short quizes and testing via code. This is more a book on conceptual understanding.
jfb 13y ago
It will be interesting to see how the course is designed, given that nobody has yet to really figure out the design and pedagogy of online teaching. It'd probably be worth checking this out.
ThomPete 13y ago
I don't understand why you would want to take a course with that book. What on earth do people expect to get out of that they can't get from reading the book? Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but it's popular because it's easy to understand, not because it necessarily contains actionably insights or complex issues that require a course to unveil.
- Aldo_MX 13y ago
  From the preface of the 2013 edition of the book: http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.html http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.h... "When I started, I assumed that the basic principles were still true, so all I needed to do was update the examples. But in the end, I rewrote everything." "When I wrote the original book I was an academic researcher. Today, I have been an industry executive (Apple, HP, and some startups), a consultant to numerous companies, and a board member of companies. I had to include my learnings from these experiences." "Finally, one important component of the original edition was its brevity. The book could be read quickly as a basic, general introduction. I kept that feature unchanged. I tried to delete as much as I added to keep the total size about the same. The book is meant to be an introduction: advanced discussions of the topics, as well as a large number of important, but more advanced, topics have been left out to maintain the compactness." Although these portions were taken from the new book I expect to gain even more insight from this course.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    I fail to see how that would happen, but each to his own :)
    - sp332 13y ago
      When you're just writing, it's hard to tell where the audience will get confused, or grasp a concept quickly and you can move on (or risk boring them). If a lecturer can interact with an audience, he's more likely to be clear.
swamp40 13y ago
Another great quote from the book: The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology. The paradox of technology should never be used as an excuse for poor design. ~ The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
drcube 13y ago
I've never read this book but of course now I have to. I'll suggest reading Henry Petroski's stuff, too. "The Evolution of Useful Things", "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance", and "To Engineer is Human" all make the case that the design of things around us are shaped less by insight and more by evolution, incrementally building on the mistakes of the past. If "The Design of Everyday Things" is half as interesting as Petroski's books, I can't wait to read it.
sc00ter 13y ago
Wonderful book, but if Norman is updating it, I really hope he drops the 'POET' backronym. It was contrived and awkward, and it's repeated inclusion felt seemed more like a slight to the publisher who changed the name from Psychology Of Everyday Things to its more approachable name.
krmmalik 13y ago
Has anyone had any luck signing into the udacity course on their ipad using either facebook or google login? My attempts keep resulting in a blank white screen.
cgag 13y ago
It's strangely hard to do, but I'll go ahead and admit I found the first couple chapters incredibly dull and put this book down.

362 points by dpatru 13y ago

msvan 13y ago

It's interesting how many design links pop up here. I came here with a technical background and developed an interest for entrepreneurship reading HN, and I think that in the same way a design interest develops in those who are already sold on the idea of doing a startup. It'll be interesting to see what collective interest will develop here after design has become a core part of the "HN mentality".

_0nac 13y ago

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, The Design of Everyday Things is an extremely readable introduction to usability, and an absolute classic in its field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open.

millerm 13y ago
"You'll never look a door the same way again... particularly if it has a handle but still expects to be pushed open." Oh yes! It's one of those "WTF" moments and you want to find the company that designed that thing and send them the book. The book is really an eye opener.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I think the reason "push to open" doors have a handle is that if they didn't have one people wouldn't try to push it.
- PakG1 13y ago
  If you read the book, you'll see there are better ways to prompt someone to push a door open.
adam12 13y ago
Handles help when you want to close the door. I get your point though.
- jkestner 13y ago
  In the book, he's talking about the entry doors in commercial buildings that swing closed. A la that classic Far Side cartoon.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  Actually, the points are about push/pull doors and the choice of fixtures placed as affordances to suggest the appropriate action by the user.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    We know that. The GP is pointing out a secondary purpose that is often overlooked. Automatic door closers are subject to failure, and when they're inoperative then having a handle is a good thing. Commercial building owners also like handles because they can be chained shut easily if the tenant stops paying rent, even if the tenant has changed the locks. This is not to dispute the (great) value of the book, but to point out that there's often more than one use case.
taeric 13y ago
Of course, as soon as you have kids and you see them exploring all of the various "door like" things in their environment, you give up on odd pet peeves of door fixations and just get on with the expected. :) (Not sure why, but the amount of discussion "proper" door design gets is a major peeve of mine.)
- Kliment 13y ago
  Proper door design makes a huge difference when a lot of people unfamiliar with said door need to use it in a short period of time and the cost of a delay can be congestion or even injury. Evacuation scenarios, rush hour traffic, black friday sales, that sort of thing. It doesn't make a huge difference to doors only a few people use a couple of times a day. That said, door design is a good example for many other things. To give you a particular one, a certain DVD player/recorder made by Panasonic has two large buttons on the upper corners of its front panel. One is the on/standby button and the other is the eject button. They placed the on/off button right next to the DVD tray, and literally everyone who has attempted to place a DVD in it has accidentally turned it off instead. Given it takes 20+ seconds to power cycle, this is extemely annoying, but of course not painful enough to ditch the whole thing as it otherwise works fine. You don't get used to it either, it's a jarring experience every time. Given neither switch is actually on the PCB and both are wired in, it would have been trivial to flip them around (and one of these days I will do so), but the designers didn't think of it.
  - taeric 13y ago
    In those scenarios, making the door open outwards trumps any handle design. More, it is the expectation for most of us. As for poorly designed power switches. I do not at all dispute the majority of the philosophy of this class. Even plan on taking the class, myself. I just find the door fixation obnoxious. As a counterpoint, I usually reach towards cars. Most are very similar to each other, yet as someone that used to have to rely on rentals, the first 2 minutes in any car are spent making sure I know how to do all of the basics. The myriad ways to control a windshield wiper, adjust the brightness of the inner lights, reset trip timers, etc, is quite impressive. Same for the radio and its highly varied functions.
epo 13y ago
A door handle is a universally recognised dual purpose control, and always works whichever way the door opens. A push plate does not do this. What are they supposed to do, remove them when doors become temporarily uni-directional? The fact that this even needs to be said is a sad comment on people's lack of imagination.
- PakG1 13y ago
  Do you always use only one sort algorithm for all sorting scenarios?

maaaats 13y ago

It's so weird seeing prices on courses, coming from Europe. With that said, I've taken a course heavily based on this book. It is mandatory for all comp. sci. students at my Uni. Many didn't like it, being to "soft" when they wanted to hack, and complaining that "most of it is sooo obvious". And yes, it may be obvious when spelled out, but far too often overlooked and forgotten. I quite liked it.

Zolomon 13y ago
Which university did you study at?
- maaaats 13y ago
  NTNU, Norway
lhc- 13y ago
My school (University of Dayton) also had a course which taught heavily from this book. I think the title was something like Ergonomics, and it was part of the Computer Science program. It would pretty enlightening, and I still have my copy somewhere at home.

millerm 13y ago

The "Design of Everyday Things" is probably one of the best books I have ever read on design. It's poignant for any designer of anything a human interacts with. Even though this book doesn't touch computer interaction it's completely relevant. Bonus: everyone you know who reads this book, or takes this course, will annoy you a little with the overuse of their wonderful new word "affordance". :-)

jkestner 13y ago
'Affordance' helps designers flesh out a professional vocabulary. Sounds a lot more technical than 'honest', 'humane' or 'civil', all of which I overuse. Speaking of civility, my touchstone design book is The Ice Palace That Melted Away, by Bill Stumpf (Aeron chair designer). The first chapter, on reflecting the wonder of flight in the experience, is the designer's answer to Louie CK.
- millerm 13y ago
  I'm going to have check out that first chapter to understand your meaning. I am intrigued!
- functional 13y ago
  Just for the sake of inane semantic pedantry, I have to ask: How do the words "honest", "humane" or "civil" correlate to "affordance" in this context? In the book, the term "affordance" refers to any kind of opportunity for a user to exert leverage on a designed object or system. So, a hair brush has a handle, and that handle is the point at which the object (the hair brush) affords any use by the user, because the person can grab the handle and orient the bristles when the dragging the brush through their hair. Hence the book's cover design, depicting the coffee pot with the misplaced handle, demonstrating a misplaced affordance, which results in the user getting burned when they try to pour hot coffee. The mouse is an affordance on a computer, because it's the device used for pointing. The keyboard is the affordance for typing. The video monitor is the affordance for observing output. The "submit" button on a web form in an HTML page is the affordance for sending data to the web server. When would you ever use the words "honest", "humane" or "civil" in place of "affordance"? Those are adjectives, but the word "affordance" is a noun.

kjhughes 13y ago

The quality of Udacity courses combined with an updated "Design of Everyday Things" plus Don Norman's direct involvement makes this course sound very attractive. The Udacity "Introduction to Computer Science" course by David Evans, by the way, is excellent. It is the one that I chose for by sons to take online this summer. I liked the balance it provided between pragmatic programming (Python exercises completed and evaluated in-browser) and CS fundamentals (BNF introduced in first lesson, for example). This new design course may have to be next on their list.

psbp 13y ago
I haven't checked Udacity in a long while and it's amazing the breadth of coursework that they offer for free. It's a much better format, and more convenient, than coursera too.
michaelrbock 13y ago
I totally agree -- the quality of Udacity courses is the best of any of the online learning options (paid or free). Every time a non-CS friend asks me where to start learning to code online I point them to Udacity's CS 101 (over Codecademy or Coursera).

lovskogen 13y ago

Don Norman has just released a new version of this book – seems like a smart move to do a course.

1337biz 13y ago
Good point - could become a new promotional or paid tool for authors. I could see this working fairly well for the Gladwells and Krugmans.
cj 13y ago
Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) made a similar move with his course on Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon https://www.coursera.org/course/behavioralecon
Kronopath 13y ago
And it's about time for a new version too. I've been reading through the older version of it (2002) and was talking to family about some of the anachronisms of the book - such as Norman remarking at how much easier videotapes are to use compared to film reels, and ending off by saying "but it doesn't matter, because soon there will be no film, only videotapes". I remarked that many examples in this book would be incomprehensible to 20-year-olds ten years from now, who've never dealt with technologies like a VCR or the button-covered phones of the 80s and 90s. All in all, though, highly recommended.

lnanek2 13y ago

Don't bother trying to sign up, after they get you to make an account they tell you: > The Design of Everyday Things > We’re still making this course but we'll let you know when it's ready! Pretty annoying it gave me the option of Google/Facebook login, then made me fill out information anyway. The whole reason I picked Google to login is because I don't want to fill out a registration form for site number 1000.

mcormier 13y ago
Quite ironic when you consider the Design. I wouldn't worry, the fact that you realized this was a poor design means you don't really need to take the course. Just read up on "affordances" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordances) and start complaining about doors that have handles that look like you should pull them but actually have to be pushed, for the rest of your life. It's a life long course.
markdown 13y ago
So you're telling people they shouldn't sign up because the course isn't available right this instant? FYI, it says right there on the page: > Design of Everyday Things will consist of four courses that are tentatively scheduled to start in Fall 2013. > If you're interested in enrolling, please click the orange “Add to My Courses” button on this page and we'll be in touch as more details are available.
crummy 13y ago
I clicked Google login, and then it autopopulated my name and email (I assume from my Google data).

mathattack 13y ago

I used to give this book away to all my employees who were involved in GUI design. It is great about respecting and understanding your users, even if on the surface it's about door handles. I wonder how this will play into Udacity, as I view it more as a platform for short quizes and testing via code. This is more a book on conceptual understanding.

jfb 13y ago

It will be interesting to see how the course is designed, given that nobody has yet to really figure out the design and pedagogy of online teaching. It'd probably be worth checking this out.

ThomPete 13y ago

I don't understand why you would want to take a course with that book. What on earth do people expect to get out of that they can't get from reading the book? Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but it's popular because it's easy to understand, not because it necessarily contains actionably insights or complex issues that require a course to unveil.

Aldo_MX 13y ago
From the preface of the 2013 edition of the book: http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.html http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.h... "When I started, I assumed that the basic principles were still true, so all I needed to do was update the examples. But in the end, I rewrote everything." "When I wrote the original book I was an academic researcher. Today, I have been an industry executive (Apple, HP, and some startups), a consultant to numerous companies, and a board member of companies. I had to include my learnings from these experiences." "Finally, one important component of the original edition was its brevity. The book could be read quickly as a basic, general introduction. I kept that feature unchanged. I tried to delete as much as I added to keep the total size about the same. The book is meant to be an introduction: advanced discussions of the topics, as well as a large number of important, but more advanced, topics have been left out to maintain the compactness." Although these portions were taken from the new book I expect to gain even more insight from this course.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  I fail to see how that would happen, but each to his own :)
  - sp332 13y ago
    When you're just writing, it's hard to tell where the audience will get confused, or grasp a concept quickly and you can move on (or risk boring them). If a lecturer can interact with an audience, he's more likely to be clear.

swamp40 13y ago

Another great quote from the book: The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology. The paradox of technology should never be used as an excuse for poor design. ~ The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

drcube 13y ago

I've never read this book but of course now I have to. I'll suggest reading Henry Petroski's stuff, too. "The Evolution of Useful Things", "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance", and "To Engineer is Human" all make the case that the design of things around us are shaped less by insight and more by evolution, incrementally building on the mistakes of the past. If "The Design of Everyday Things" is half as interesting as Petroski's books, I can't wait to read it.

sc00ter 13y ago

Wonderful book, but if Norman is updating it, I really hope he drops the 'POET' backronym. It was contrived and awkward, and it's repeated inclusion felt seemed more like a slight to the publisher who changed the name from Psychology Of Everyday Things to its more approachable name.

krmmalik 13y ago

Has anyone had any luck signing into the udacity course on their ipad using either facebook or google login? My attempts keep resulting in a blank white screen.

cgag 13y ago

It's strangely hard to do, but I'll go ahead and admit I found the first couple chapters incredibly dull and put this book down.