Design of Everyday Things - Chapter 3

The team is reading Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday Things in the team’s book club.

Chapter 3 is about Knowledge in the Head and in the World.

For the purpose of the chapter, Knowledge comes in two forms:

• in the head, most prominently cultural forms
• in the world, where one can receive using their senses

I love how the author distinguishes knowledge in this manner. The knowledge would be in the user’s head - a pre-conditioned cultural aspect, or something they can interpret - such as a sign.

The constraints on these knowledge are there too!

One cannot just litter the world with knowledge - every time I see a “push” or “pull” sign on a door that has the wrong handle types just make want to give the building owner Design of Everyday Things.

At the same time, there’s only so much knowledge in the head a designer can expect a user to have.

Understanding this knowledge delineation helps in creating better design - do you expect the user interpret necessary information from the world or they have it in their head?