Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place.
Complexity can be tamed, but it requires considerable effort to do it well. Decreasing the number of buttons and displays is not the solution. The solution is to understand the total system, to design...
Constraints are powerful clues, limiting the set of possible actions. The thoughtful use of constraints in design lets people readily determine the proper course of action, even in a novel situation.
Creeping featurism is the tendency to add to the number of features of a product, often extending the number beyond all reason. There is no way that a product can remain usable and understandable by t...
Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology. When done well, the results are brilliant, pleasurable products. Whe...
Don’t these so-called advances also cause us to lose valuable mental skills? Each technological advance that provides a mental aid also brings along critics who decry the loss of the human skill that...
During an incident, there are never clear clues. Many things are happening at once: workload is high, emotions and stress levels are high. Many things that are happening will turn out to be irrelevant...
Each culture has a set of allowable actions for social situations. Thus, in our own culture we know how to behave in a restaurant— even one we have never been to before. This is how we manage to cope...
Emotion interacts with cognition biochemically, bathing the brain with hormones, transmitted either through the bloodstream or through ducts in the brain, modifying the behavior of brain cells. Hormon...
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,
Good designers worry a lot about the physical feel of their products. Physical touch and feel can make a huge difference in your appreciation of their creations. Consider the delights of smooth, polis...
Herbert Read thought we would need a mystical theory to connect beauty and function. Well, it took one hundred years, but today we have that theory, one based in biology, neuroscience, and psychology,...
How does one discover unarticulated needs? Certainly not by asking, not by focus groups, not by surveys or questionnaires. Who would have thought to mention the need for cup holders in a car, or on a...
If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed. And if the system induces you to make the error, then it is really badly designed.
If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed.
In the absence of external information, people can let their imagination run free as long as the conceptual models they develop account for the facts as they perceive them.
It is only at the reflective level that consciousness and the highest levels of feeling, emotions, and cognition reside. It is only here that the full impact of both thought and emotions are experienc...
Make something too secure, and it becomes less secure.
More and more often the blame is attributed to human error. The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience...
Norman’s Law: The day the product team is announced, it is behind schedule and over its budget.
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