The seminal work on design philosophy. In just over 200 pages Don Norman details the psychological principles of design. The book was written in 1988, so the examples may be a little dated, but the principles remain the same.

• Visibility
• Feedback
• Affordances
• Natural Mappings
• Constraints

I feel like a switch has been turned. I’m constantly evaluating the design of various objects. I’ve always noticed poor design (everyone does, it’s annoying) but now I’m excited by fantastic design. When something is designed such that I can accomplish my task without breaking my train of thought, that’s great design. It should “win a prize.” Doors are of constant scrutiny after finishing this book. I cringe when confronted with a vertical handle that needs to be pushed or a horizontal bar with “PULL” on it. An amusing example: What’s Wrong with this Door << Not the User's Fault.

The book concentrates on physical objects (ie the ‘Norman Door’), but there is no reason the idea’s can’t translate to UX. The chapter on poor design and user error was especially interesting.

I point out that the design is faulty and that others make the same errors. Still, if the task appears simple or trivial, then people blame themselves

I encounter this all the time with technology. Poorly designed software can turn people off from computers completely. Developers have gotten quite a bit better at this over time. Microsoft Office 2007 and it’s ribbon menu was a bold redesign, which payed off well.

Great design flows without interruption. It is modeled with human interaction in mind, requiring no instructions or labels.

Wherever labels seem necessary, consider another design.

It’s a great point. By utilizing constraints, natural mappings, and visiblity a designer can communicate with the user. No instructions needed.

Sometimes designers utilize these principles incorrectly or by accident. Users are then communicated bad information and errors result.

When someone makes an error, there usually is good reason for it

A few other tidbits I found interesting:

Whenever the number of functions and required operations exceeds the number of controls, the design becomes arbitrary.

ie, the digital watch my Dad can never program.

And just how important design is:

Suppose that each everyday thing takes only a minute to learn; learning 20,00 of them occupies 20,000 minutes – 33 hours or about 8 forty hour work weeks.

How do people cope?

Part of the answer lies in the information available from the appearance of the objects and part comes from the ability of the designer to make the operation clear.

All things considered the book was a fantastic read. It delivers a foundation for my interest in UX. I’m looking forward to reading more of Norman’s work.

A solid read that attempts to dissect the success of design centric companies like Apple and Ikea. The authors emphasize ‘design as a process not an event‘ and the (somewhat clunky) idea of  ‘customer supply chain management’. The case study on Motorola was interesting. “Motorola doesn’t have a design culture. It has an engineering culture that tries to be a design culture.” I think quite a few companies fall into this category.

The book itself is well designed. Hard backed with large imprinted text on the front, it catches your attention (it caught mine in an airport bookstore while I was trying to catch a flight home). Though the stiff binding makes it difficult to read without both hands.

Fresh off my interviews with Microsoft this book was exactly what I needed to pique my interest in design. It changed the way I look at software development.

Enjoyable read,  though the blogosphere disputes some of Perkin’s stories as too good to be true.  Even if he took poetic license with certain details, it’s pretty evident that there’s a kernel of truth to his work. Either way, the historical accounts of US corporate involvement oversees is very well done. Perkins explains the modern method of empire as what he calls the  “Corporatocracy”.  Beginning with Kermit Roosevelt Jr. and the Shah of Iran all the way up to Haliburton in Iraq.

A great way to build software is to start out by solving your own problems. You’ll be the target audience and you’ll know what’s important and what’s not. That gives you a great head start on delivering a breakout product.

The key here is understanding that you’re not alone. If you’re having this problem, it’s likely hundreds of thousands of others are in the same boat. There’s your market. Wasn’t that easy?

Well, I’ve worried some about, you know, why write books…why are we teaching people to write books when presidents and senators do not read them, and generals do not read them.
And it’s been the university experience that taught me that there is a very good reason, that you catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and you poison their minds with…humanity, and however you want to poison their minds, it’s presumably to encourage them to make a better world.
- Kurt Vonnegut

I was always intrigued by Warren Buffet. He’s sat comfortable 2nd place on the Forbes 400 since anyone can remember and yet never had any of the celebrity scandal that surrounds so many of the mega-rich. This book, compiled in large part by his daughter in law, is a compilation of about a hundred of Warren Buffets principle aphorisms. Here are a few of my favorites:

“I made my first investment at age 11,
I was wasting my life up until then”

“Wall Street is the only place that people ride in a Rolls-Royce
to get advice from those who take the subway”

“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut”

“With enough inside information and a million dollars,
you can go broke in a year”

“My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror”

I enjoyed it even if it was a little on the melancholy side. I’m usually wary of books that are all the rage, my tastes usually differ from the crowd. Not this time. My favorite part was Hosseni’s depiction of childhood in Afghanistan. I got the feeling that he really enjoyed writing about it, infusing a lot of his own memories into the storyline. There’s nothing better than passionate, personal writing.

Afghanistan has come up a lot recently. I saw Charlie Wilson’s War the other night. The dialog was amazing. I wish my life were like that: a string of witty comments and outrageous situations… The next day Benazir Bhutto was killed and news of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan flooded the 24 hour cable news. All this pushed me to find my grandparents pictures of the country. Just before the Soviet invasion they drove from Islamabad to Kabol in a single afternoon.

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