Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

First, businesses discovered quality as a key competitive edge; next came service. Now, Donald A. Norman, former Director of the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of California, reveals how smart design is the new competitive frontier. The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book's first edition, originally titled The Psychology of Everyday Things (1988), integrated understanding human interactions with shaping better interactions through human-centered design. Norman (cofounder, Nielsen Norman Group; emer., Northwestern Univ.) covered a remarkable amount of psychology, and compellingly demonstrated how understanding people can/should guide design decisions, changing the vernacular of design to include visual affordances, feedback, mappings and mental models, stages of action, and slips and mistakes. Celebrated by students and professionals in many disciplines, it is a classic. The revised edition updates examples; the original work preceded the Web and mobile devices. It also expands and refines the treatment of psychology, analyzing how affordances are signified to people, how emotion impacts everything people do and experience, and how culture can modulate what is "natural" in design. Most notably, the revised edition articulates a broader view of design's goals and constraints. While the first edition focused on designing for ease of learning and interaction, the revised edition also emphasizes designing for experiences such as pleasure and enjoyment. Further, the first edition characterized technical trade-offs in design decisions, while the revised edition also considers budgets and schedules, and the pressures of competition and innovation. Even classics can be updated and improved. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. J. M. Carroll Pennsylvania State University