The Design of Everyday Things
I’m embarrassed it’s taken me this long to (a) start reading this book and (b) finish it. It’s been on my radar for several years and it was only earlier this year that I got off my butt to read it. Once I started it, it would continually get pushed to the back burner by work or other reading (fiction, mostly,) so it took something like four months to work through. In hindsight this is the sort of book I should have just locked myself in a room for a weekend to read maybe a decade ago. It’s really that good, especially since I’m supposed to help advocate for the user as part of my day-to-day existence. The book is basic, but still iinsightful and helps to clarifies many concepts that float around in the world of usable design but might not be fully understood, even by people bandying the concepts around. Want to know what the jackass down the hall is really taking about when he vaguely goes on about “affordances?” This book is for you 🙂
Highly recommended.
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By Matt McVickar 2007/10/08 - 01:07
Isn’t that book awesome? It’s worth re-reading. Multiple times. The best part of that book is that now, every time you push a door the wrong way or can’t figure out your microwave, you’ll stop blaming yourself and instead think about how poorly designed it is. Have you started doing that yet? It’s fun. I also noticed that you start to feel a little more sympathy toward your less technologically-inclined friends. 🙂
By rob 2007/10/08 - 09:01
I’m definitely doing the door thing. Not only will I pause now when a door is confusing, simply because it’s confusing, but I’ll take a second to recognize why and do a little redesign in my head 🙂