User-centered Design
In his book The Design of Everyday Things, originally titled The Psychology of Everyday Things, Norman describes the psychology behind what he deems good and bad design, through case studies, and proposes design principles. He exalts the importance of design in our everyday lives, and the consequences of errors caused by bad design.
In the book, Norman uses the term "user-centered design" to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he deems secondary issues like aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, designing for error, explaining affordances and seven stages of action.
Other topics of the book include:
- The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
- The Psychology of Everyday Actions
- Knowledge in the Head and in the World
- Knowing What to Do
- To Err Is Human
- The Design Challenge
Read more about this topic: Donald Norman
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)