I was expecting to really like this book, and I did at first, but the author must repeat the same concepts a dozen times. This entire book probably could have been condensed into a magazine article. It doesn't help that large parts of the book are laughably outdated at this point, or that I occasionally got a n  Future Shockn vibe. Maybe there's an updated version out there? I dunno. Still probably worth reading this if you're a designer.

Surprisingly funny at times, Don Norman's book is a staple. I appreciate his ability to share the hypothetical as well as the reality - that made this book very accessible and easy to apply. Walking away from reading this book with a new perspective of the world around me.

DNF... I despair of ever finishing this monumental work. It is really dry and tedious to read, if I'm being honest.

One of the most impactful non-fiction books I have read. After (and while) reading this book, I ponder over the minute designs and have mental debates over a lot of things I would have considered mundane prior to this. The amazing aspect of the book is how generic a lot of the ideas conveyed are. For example, I work in the domain of software development and when the author was describing how crucial feedback is to action, I could easily bucket a lot of design flaws and complaints we had faced owing to not incorporating this in our tools. The book also does a great job of highlighting how design flaws often accompany individual mistakes but often times the former gets overlooked. It opened up this whole blindspot that I used to have which was caused by the assumption that systems, setups, and designs are perfect. On a lighter note, I would blame myself less hereon when I am unable to operate simple gadgets and rather conveniently be able to shift it on the designer of the product.

A strong recommendation for everyone. Right from the first couple of chapters, I am sure one would find some common questions or troubles that we pondered for a moment or two but never delved into. My only additional suggestion would be to not rush through what's written but take a few moments to understand the essence and how an idea or concept discussed could apply to what you interact with or build.

DoeT isn't the world's best written book—Norman's style is too often kvetchy-casual, sounding more like a modern-day ranty blog post than a classic of academic design writing.

But that is only one way in which this book is ahead of its time. The observations and recommendations regarding usable design here hold to extremely well 25 years later; even though Norman's examples concern ancient phone systems and slide projectors, it all translates perfectly well to virtual touchscreen UIs of today. And when he makes predictions about the future, he's eerily prescient. Watch him describe smartphones, the World Wide Web, Nest thermostats, and Siri… in 1988. Not only does he correctly predict future technology, he's better aware of its problems than today's designers.

That alone excuses the book's stylistic shortcomings and proves its undeniable worth.

One goal is to turn readers into great observers of the absurd, of the poor design that gives rise to so many of the problems of modern life, especially of modern technology. It will also turn them into observers of the good, of the ways in which thoughtful designers have worked to make our lives easier and smoother.

This book is 50% what it says in the title, and 50% a 'design for undergrads 101' book.

The first half can be mind-blowing, as others here write - why do emergency doors look the way they do? Why are hotel sinks so weird (I could write novels on how weird hotel bathroom designs are, by now I just assume that hotel bathroom designers are robots who never use the bathroom). What is good design of 'everyday things'? What makes a bad design?

From there it becomes a 101 intro book, lots of concepts and definitions are introduced (affordances, anti-affordances, a simplified psychology that reminded me strongly of a simpler version of Thinking, Fast and Slow, many models with graphs on how humans interact with tools, different kinds of errors a human makes [mistakes vs. slips] etc. pp.), that part is less fun to read but is important if you're involved in design in any form (and that means software interfaces too!).

After that it becomes a bit bigger in outlook: how do you design a company, a company's workflows etc. to make good design possible? How does the author run his consulting (stuff like 'include stupid questions since they can question what's obvious')? It falls apart towards the end where it becomes a partial manifesto and gets a bit more heated, since the focus is lost, essentially a bunch of mini-essays that repeat some points.

Anyway, this isn't a standard recommendation to software engineers for nothing, it definitely makes you look at things in a different way, hopefully your things will become better, too.

P.S.: great point: if something doesn't do what you want it to do it's not your fault, it's the designer's fault. I wish more software engineers would stop sneering at their users, it's just childish (common acronym in IT: PEBCAK, Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard)

The Design of Everyday Things (DOET) is the story of doors, faucets and keyboards; it's the tale of rangetops and refrigerators. Donald Norman beckons the reader to look at the common objects they deal with every day in new and methodical ways. And he offers this central question; what makes an object well-designed as opposed to poorly-designed?
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But on the question of design DOET, itself an everyday object, rates poorly. Norman's discussion of individual items proves inconsistent and rarely systematic; sometimes he includes examples of both good and bad design (such as when he analyzes doors), but oftentimes he only mentions the bad (such as when he talks about office phone systems.) He rarely offers suggestions for superior designs and organizes everything by psychological concepts that often prove vague or arcane; section headings include 'Memory is Knowledge in the Head' and 'Using Sound for Visibility.'
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Even more fundamentally, explanatory pictures rarely occupy the same page as the text that references them, forcing the reader to page back and forth. That the typesetting for his book is so awkward feels especially glaring as that's the sort of basic design flaw DOET seeks to expose.
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To Norman's credit, he shows passion for the subject and writes engagingly when he isn't listing psychological vocabulary words. And the subject of design is fascinating; relevant to everyone, applicable to all areas of life and endlessly detailed. And Norman routinely finds interesting digressions; applying design principles to Legos or charting every plausible game of Tic-Tac-Toe.
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And I found myself agreeing with Norman's core philosophy. He argues that function should supersede features and usability is more important than aesthetics. He also takes the stance that if you can't figure out a gadget, it probably isn't your fault and he goes into detail about how common this sort of confusion is.
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Norman takes a decidedly pro-humanity outlook in a book all about objects; just one more irony. After all, DOET is a poorly-designed study of design regarding a mundane subject that fascinates.

Edited 2/19/2019

I have always been fascinated by the design of tiny things around me, that's how I stumbled across this book. Norman is a very renowned individual in the field of design. This book talks about design from a macro as well the micro-level.
It also talks about how human psychology works to use various objects from doors to stoves to various industrial equipment. It also put a lot of emphasis on design as the foundational element to any change.
One outstanding learning from the book has been to investigate mistakes and slips from humans from the perspective of design. It is highly unlikely when something does/did not seem to work as intended, the design would likely be at fault, rather than a human being. This thing can be interpolated into our life as well, every time we tend to not be able to do or achieve something, we tend to blame ourselves. But if we look closely at the design of the system that we have built, we will surely find some limitations there and we can work upon it to improve that system.

Question everything, look and observe your actions when you interact with a product or system. You will surely get some deep insights about the design of the same.

I'm glad I read this book, it formalized a lot of knowledge I had gathered through working as a software engineer, but never officially learned.

That being said, I found it to be a bit of a dry and repetitive reading experience. There definitely were some very interesting examples; for instance, I found reading about the different forms of human memory particularly compelling. However, overall I think the book could have been a lot shorter and more to the point.

I also would strongly discourage reading this book on an airplane, since there were many examples that focused on plane crashes, perhaps because these are some of the best studied design failures.

The philosophy is great but it feels over-explained at times. The part about doors and faucets is very good and relatable. Most other examples are severely outdated and take the fun out it.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

Machines are not people. They can’t communicate and understand the same way we do.
People are not machines. People are subjected to continual interruptions.  We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise, and we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs. 

When people interact with machines, things will not always go smoothly. This is to be expected.


The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.


AS TECHNOLOGIES CHANGE WILL PEOPLE STAY THE SAME?


"The next time you are in an elevator, try violating cultural norms and see how uncomfortable that makes you and the other people in the elevator. It doesn’t take much: Stand facing the rear. Or look directly at some of the passengers. In a bus or streetcar, give your seat to the next athletic-looking person you see (the act is especially effective if you are elderly, pregnant, or disabled)."


"The cabinet drawer slid open. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. I am so bad at mechanical things.” No, she had it backward. It is the mechanical thing that should be apologizing, perhaps saying, “I’m sorry. I am so bad with people.”


"When I used to work for the local government organization we HAD TO change our Passwords every three months. To ensure I could remember it, I used to write it on a Post-It note and stick it above my desk."


IN HINDSIGHT, EVENTS SEEM LOGICAL
The contrast in our understanding before and after an event can be dramatic. The psychologist Baruch Fischhoff has studied explanations given in hindsight, where events seem completely obvious and predictable after the fact but completely unpredictable beforehand. […]
Hindsight makes events seem obvious and predictable. Foresight is difficult.


It is relatively easy to design for the situation where everything goes well […] The tricky part is to design for when things go wrong.


Consider a conversation between two people. Are errors made? Yes, but they are not treated as such. If a person says something that is not understandable, we ask for clarification. If a person says something that we believe to be false, we question and debate. We don’t issue a warning signal. We don’t beep. We don’t give error messages. We ask for more information and engage in mutual dialogue to reach an understanding.


Safety shows itself only by the events that do not happen! 


Assume that every possible mishap will happen, so protect against them. Make actions reversible; make errors less costly. 


“I don’t want to go into a care facility. I’d have to be around all those old people.” (Comment by a 95-year-old man.)


NEEDLESS FEATURES, NEEDLESS MODELS: GOOD FOR BUSINESS, BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.
A business that makes and sells durable goods faces a problem: As soon as everyone who wants the product has it, then there is no need for more. Sales will cease. The company will go out of business.


In the 1920s, manufacturers deliberately planned ways of making their products become obsolete (although the practice had existed long before then). Products were built with a limited life span. Automobiles were designed to fall apart. A story tells of Henry Ford’s buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find the weak parts and make them stronger. Nope. Ford explained that he wanted to find the parts that were still in good shape. The company could save money if they redesigned these parts to fail at the same time as the others.


The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.


- Do not blame people when they fail to use your products properly.
- Take people’s difficulties as signifiers of where the product can be improved.
- Eliminate all error messages from electronic or computer systems. Instead, provide help and guidance.
- Make it possible to correct problems directly from help and guidance messages. Allow people to continue with their task: Don’t impede progress—help make it smooth and continuous. Never make people start over.
- Assume that what people have done is partially correct, so if it is inappropriate, provide the guidance that allows them to correct the problem and be on their way.
- Think positively, for yourself and for the people you interact with.

Excellent piece of non-fiction. This book is a prescribed textbook for a course on computer interface design that I'm doing.

Once I really started reading it, I almost couldn't put it down - it was so interesting that it almost read like fiction - none of the dry dust usually found in conventional textbooks.

Very well and humorously presented, and a must for engineers, designers, manufacturers and inventors everywhere!