Name: The Psychology of Everyday Things
ISBN: 9780465050659

The Psychology of Everyday Things

book by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order to make the experience of using the object pleasurable. One of the main premises of the book is that although people are often keen to blame themselves when objects appear to malfunction, it is not the fault of the user but rather the lack of intuitive guidance that should be present in the design.

What Hacker News says

specialistJan 2026

DOET (neé Psychology of Everyday Things) deeply influenced me. Articulated things I had observed, experienced. Expanded my thinking.

I was using, teaching, and developing for AutoCAD at the time. Knew nothing about UI beyond my intuition. Just perplexed by how difficult it was for most to use.

Reflecting back, Norman's treatment of mental models and kinds of errors were the most impactful, evergreen design challenges I faced.

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LukeBMMNov 2022

Based in part off Gibson's work, there's also The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. First published as Psychology of Everyday Things in '88, it's arguable whether it counts as "older" but seems pretty timeless conceptually, even if the specific examples may become dated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

Edit: Oh, yeah. How about Tufte ('83 for Visual Display of Quantitative Information) and Albers (Interaction of Color in '63). I should think first, then post.

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sonofhansJul 2022

“The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman is excellent; he originally called it “The Psychology of Everyday Things,” but it kept getting misshelved. “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is also very good. Neither of these is a specialist’s tome.

“Mental Models” by Indi Young is good, one level deeper, mostly about humans. “About Face” by Alan Cooper is very thorough on the practitioner side, more of a college textbook, with lots of examples and pedagogy.

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arkitaipJul 2021

Don Norman explains this in the latest edition of The Psychology of Everyday Things (amazing book on product and design, btw). Sometimes, it can take centuries before tech goes from idea to everyday reality in the hands of ordinary people. For example, the videophone was depicted in a famous illustration as early as 1879 [0] but it's only in the past two decades that mobiles have made them somewhat ubiquitous.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonoscope#/media/File:Tel...

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ChrisMarshallNYMay 2021

Learn. That's what I did.

The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman).

For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things[0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things).

Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and usability.

The challenge (for me) is melding usability and aesthetics. In my experience, designing and implementing a truly usable software interface is hard. It's also highly iterative. A lot of "running things up the flagpole" stuff. I throw out a lot of code, and slaughter a lot of sacred cows.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

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vulcan01Dec 2020

This book is really good... (It used to be printed as "The Psychology of Everyday Things", if you're looking in your library).

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