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I recently finished reading ‘The Design Of Everyday Things’ by Don Norman.
As someone not very well acquainted with design, it was extremely eye opening and described many strategies to improve the design of everyday things (weren’t expecting that were you).
In fact, it was only after reading it that I learnt that the book has been dubbed the ‘Bible of usability’.
To consolidate my knowledge and not forget what I read, I decided to compile a list of the most important learnings from the book.
Below is a list of rules that every designer should know, and has the potential to make you a much better designer.
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The problem with reading books is that I forget 95% of the content. To fix it, I'm using twitter. First, with every book I read, I'm annotating it with sticky notes. Then, I'm taking them out and organising them Finally, I'll write a thread about interesting points I found
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Quick Plug: You can check out the tweet thread this is based on at my twitter account, where I’ve begun to post threads of essential learnings quite often, I’d really appreciate a follow!
How we assume tasks are performed aren’t necessarily how they are performed by users
As someone designing a product, we usually make assumptions about how they will use it. The problem is, we have no idea about how people will use something until they actually use it.
Any assumption we make about how people we use a product cannot be confirmed until we see actual users use it.
Here’s an example of this from the book:
Don Norman explains how he was once asked to evaluate a new product a company was making.
While testing it, he realised that it was important to differentiate between the enter key and the return key on the keyboard of the device, noting that if the wrong key was pressed, all the data was lost.
He pointed the issue out to the designer, but the first response was “Why did you make that error? Didn’t you read the manual?”
Slightly flustered, Norman replied that the problem wasn’t that he didn’t understand the two keys, but rather that the similar functions and similar locations of the keys meant that he would often press it by mistake, and was sure other people would too.
Adamantly, the designer refused to admit any mistakes, and claimed that it was Norman’s fault that he made the mistake.
When Norman asked the employees whether they had ever made a mistake like that and lose their work, the general consensus was that they all did.
Therefore, when designing, we need make sure we design for the user, not for ourselves.
We need make sure we design for the user, not for ourselves.
Users don’t think ‘logically’
We’ve all heard the saying — it’s human to err, and yet, the products we design often don’t account for the fact that users will make mistakes.
For example, in the door shown below, there isn’t much indication of whether to push or to pull. But on closer inspection, we can see that the hinges face us, and therefore, the door needs to be pulled.
But almost no one will take the time to check which direction the hinge of a door is facing.
Unfortunately, a few users will eventually push the door by mistake, possibly more than just a few of them. To fix that, perhaps a sign could be put up, or the door could be made two way — there are many ways, each with their own benefits, to solve this.
Although hypothetical and trivial, this example can serve as an analogy as to deign with user’s mistakes in mind.
Users will always make mistakes, and it’s the job of a designer to accommodate these issues or improve the design to prevent them from happening.
Never solve the problem you are asked to solve
As a designer, you’ll probably be asked to solve many problems a user faces. Unfortunately, the problem you are asked to solve is very rarely the root cause of the issue.
A good example of this, is saying we can solve gun shootings by giving teachers guns (I wrote more extensively about this here). If you don’t think about it, it seems like an okay idea. Teachers with guns could potentially shoot down anyone attempting to shoot up a school and protect their students.
But when you really think about it, it is possible that arming more people with guns might increase the problem. What happens if a teacher leaves the gun in a place accessible by students? Which teachers have the right to have a gun? Solving the problem you are asked to solve very rarely works.
Instead of solving the problem you are asked to solve, you must first find the right problem, and only then can you move on to find the right solution. The right solution to the wrong problem is useless
To do this, use the Toyota five whys method. Ask why five times, or until you can no longer ask why, and you have found the root cause of the problem.
Take the example below:
If the CNC machine leaked oil, on first glance, one might think to replace its parts. But all replacing its parts will do is postpone the time till the next mishap.
Instead, by asking why five times, it is clear that the root cause of the problem is that cost, not quality is the supplier selection criteria, leading to products with sub par performance. To fix it, changing this would lead to the best results.
When mistakes are made, we should instead determine why the error happened, and then redesign the system to ensure something like it will never happen again.Use the Double Diamond model
Understand — Initially, you must understand the problem. To do this, you must diversify your ideas and acknowledge all possible root causes to the problem. This step could involve a lot of research and interviews to understand the problem as much as possible.
Define — Next you must find out what the exact problem is by a process of elimination and find out what the root cause is. Methods like Five Why’s, as mentioned above, can be used to solve this.
Explore — When you have understood exactly what the problem is, only then can you move on to solving it. To do so, you need ideas, so another phase of research must commence here.
You need to allow all possible solutions for the problem. If in a certain field, branch out to adjacent ones and you might find a solution that can be applied to your problem. It is with this connection of ideas over fields when true creativity happens.
Create — Finally, you need to create your design. To do this, the best solution must be materialised, its improvements measured, and redesigned in an iterative process until a good design is reached.
Forgoing the first two, or sometimes even three phases and move on straight to building is a mistake. Without solving the right problem, you aren’t helping anyone. Without researching extensively as to how to solve it, you won’t find creative solutions.
The seven things everyone using a product should be able to answer at every point
- What do I want to accomplish — What’s the goal? . A user should know what the next thing he wants to do is. In an app, this could be like finding out how many people read your latest post, or in a building, this could be going to a certain room.
- What are the actions possible — What to I do to reach that goal? If users want to check the stats on their stories, they should know how to get there, either by going to the story and then finding stats, or through their homepage. Similarly for someone wanting to go to a room in a building, they should know where to go. This could be by reading signs or finding a map.
- What do I do now — For the phone user, click on their profile, for the person finding a room, they need to find a map.
- How do I do it — The phone user needs the correct icons to guide him to his profile, the person finding a room needs to know where to find a map of the building.
- What happened — When the user taps the stats icon on his profile, he should navigate to his stats. Similarly, when the person finds his room, he should know that it was the one he was looking for. Although this sounds trivial, it is important to give feedback to the user once they complete an action, like a button press, or otherwise we stand the risk of confusing them.
- What does it mean — If he tapped the stats icon and the stats page showed up, it means he was successful and can continue. If the person found his room and saw that the room number is the one he was going to, he was successful
- Did I reach my goal — Tied in to the previous one, this ties it together. If they don’t reach their goal, it is an issue.
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6) Great designers aren't the ones who make things look pretty or make things that are cool. Great designers make great experiences. They make people feel good.
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Be sure to remember:
Great designers aren’t the ones who make things look pretty or make things that are cool. Great designers make great experiences. They make people feel good.
Thanks for reading,
Sarvasv
Want to chat? Find me on Twitter and Linkedin
Here’s some other posts I’ve written
Essential Learnings That No Designer Should Go Without was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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