Title: Design of Everyday Things
Author: Donald Norman
Summary: In chapter 4 of The Design of Everyday things, Normand expands on his door example from the first chapter, and discusses the various constraints about designing. Using Physical, Semantic, Cultural, and Logical constraints, people are able to extrapolate information about a new item's purpose and function from appearance alone. Each of these constraints work together, physical constraints can dictate the orientation that something belongs in, while cultural constraints would make people naturally arrange stop-light bulbs in order of red, yellow, green. Normand ends the chapter with a discussion on visibility and feedback. Relevant parts of an object need to be easily visible, such as a handle on a cabinet door, and feedback needs to be given when a feature is activated.
Discussion: Once again, this was another interesting chapter from Normand. He seems particularly fond of the door example, so it was nice getting to see him expand on it in this chapter. As a fan of Lego, it was also fun to see it make it into an example in the book.
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