Any time you see signs or labels added to a device, it is an indication of bad design: a simple lock should not require instructions.
Danger awaits those who deliberately violate the frames of a culture.
Great designers produce pleasurable experiences.
Forcing functions are a form of physical constraint: situations in which the actions are constrained so that failure at one stage prevents the next step from happening. Starting a car has a forcing fu...
An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used.
One way of overcoming the fear of the new is to make it look like the old.
People invariably object and complain whenever a new approach is introduced into an existing array of products and systems. Conventions are violated: new learning is required. The merits of the new sy...
Perceived affordances help people figure out what actions are possible without the need for labels or instructions.
Once people find an explanation for an apparent anomaly, they tend to believe they can now discount it. But explanations are based on analogy with past experiences, experiences that may not apply to t...
Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous.
The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.
Knowledge in the world includes perceived affordances and signifiers, the mappings between the parts that appear to be controls or places to manipulate and the resulting actions, and the physical cons...
The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It is the emotional system that determines whether a situation is safe or threatening, whether something that is happening is good...
There are two different aspects to a reminder: the signal and the message. Just as in doing an action we can distinguish between knowing what can be done and knowing how to do it, in reminding we must...
With the passage of time, the psychology of people stays the same, but the tools and objects in the world change.
Why does inelegant design persist for so long? This is called the legacy problem, and it will come up several times in this book. Too many devices use the existing standard—that is the legacy. If the...
Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We
Market-driven pressures plus an engineering-driven company yield ever-increasing features, complexity, and confusion. But even companies that do intend to search for human needs are thwarted by the se...
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