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The Design of Everyday Things ★
Don Norman
The book that taught a generation of designers to look at door handles and bus stops and ask whose fault it is when people get it wrong. Still the cleanest articulation of affordances and signifiers I have read.
- When you have trouble with things, whether figuring out whether to push or pull a door or the arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industries, it is not your fault.
- Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
I revisit the discoverability chapter every time I review a new screen. Most of the bad UI in the wild fails not because it is ugly but because it hides what is possible to do.
Norman is also the book to lend to a colleague from outside design who wants to understand what we mean when we say something "feels right." The vocabulary alone is worth the read.