Book: The Design Of Everyday Things

 SUMMARY: 
     In The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman discusses the design of all sorts of products.  He repeats some of his ideas over and over but he is just trying to get a few key points across to the reader.  Right from the beginning of the book he mentions designs should contain natural mappings to what the product actually does.  His main example for this is a heating/AC unit .  Although you can set your AC to any temperature there is really only two modes it can be set to, ON or OFF.  If you increase the temperature more to get your house to heat up faster you actually aren't doing anything but wasting energy.  Norman claims this to be bad mapping from the designer.
    Another concept he talks about is there is information in the world and information in your head.  Letters on a keyboard are a perfect example of information being in the world.  He also talks about learned and taught helplessness.   These ideas just prove that designers should always design for error and try to avoid user helplessness.
DISCUSSION:
     Even thought this book was a bit repetitive at times I still found it to be useful for a computer engineering student.  Whether you are designing hardware or software one of the most important parts of the design is its ease of use.  This book gave a lot of different ways humans make errors when trying to use all sorts of products.  By realizing common errors discussed in this book it is easy for me to apply them to making software.  Themes such as correct mapping, information in the software, and feedback are very important in software design.  The designer is not the typical user and it is important to try and find anything in your design that may mislead users.  It is also important to realize that people will make errors when using your product so your design needs to lead the users who err back in the right direction.