“Design of Everyday Things” – A Victim of Poor Design

Reading Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman made me feel really frustrating. Not just because I was relating to all these everyday frustrations of fighting with everyday things Norman describes there. This only amplified the most frustrating part. Ironically, the book itself was poorly designed!

It is damn paperback. Paperback is a poor design for a book. It takes two hands to operate. I must hold tight to keep open, time to time press it. Yet just turn off your head, it closes or flips to another page. This design makes me fight with the book.

Everyone knows a better design for a book. I take a hard-cover. I put a book on a table, pull a nice strip, and it opens on the right page and remains open. I read it hands free. If anything, nice strip brings me back to my page again. I should have gotten DOED in hard cover. But I got mine in paperback.

It is an irony my book about better design is itself a victim of poor design. It is also a message. Always strive for the better design. But when economics enforces a compromise, don’t feel too bad about it. Donald Norman, the professor of human centric design, does it, too.