The Design of Everyday Things

Ranked #1 in Design, Ranked #1 in Product Designsee more rankings.

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable... more

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Design of Everyday Things from the world's leading experts.

Andrew Chen General Partner/Andreessen HorowitzRecommends this book

Marissa Mayer Former CEO/Yahoo!Recommends this book

Vinod Khosla Co-Founder/Sun MicrosystemRecommends this book

Vinod Khosla Co-Founder/Sun MicrosystemRecommends this book

Nir Eyal Author/HookedRecommends this book

Jeff Atwood Recommends this book

Ken Norton Recommends this book

Jakob Nielsen Recommends this book

Marius Ciuchete Paun eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help people figure out what actions are possible without the need for labels or instructions” The second one comes from “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It gives the following advice: "Get rid of half the... (Source)

Grey Baker I mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems ever since. (Source)

Kaci Lambe These three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)

Julia Enthoven For people interested in designing or building software products: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. Both books have informed my product sense and helped me make decisions about great UX. (Source)

Sunit Singh Recommends this book

Trevor Sumner If you design bad paths for your users no matter how obscure, they will find them. Keep the happy path simple and avoid complexity. This and many other great #design wisdoms in The Design of Everyday Things. Great book from @jnd1er. https://t.co/3CwSDubqFx (Source)

Jane Pyle Recommends this book


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