Explore the Realm of User Experience Design with Norman Doors
In the world of design, creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces is paramount. Don Norman, a renowned design thinker, has outlined key principles in his book, *The Design of Everyday Things*, published in 1988 and revised in 2013. These principles aim to make products easy to understand and use by aligning design with human cognition and behavior.
At the heart of Norman's approach are two central concepts: affordances and signifiers. Affordances refer to the perceived and actual properties of an object that determine how it can be used, such as a button affording pressing or a handle affording pulling. Signifiers, on the other hand, are indicators or signals that highlight where an action should take place or how it should be performed, like labels, arrows, or visual cues. Together, affordances and signifiers guide users naturally to the correct interaction, aligning with their mental models and expectations.
The task-action model, another key concept in Norman's work, explains how people interact with many things, especially technology. It consists of four stages: goal, plan, action, and evaluation. Confidence, the level of certainty users feel about performing an action, is often inversely related to cognitive effort. This model helps us ask fundamental questions about user interactions, such as how users know their goal is attainable, find and perform an action, know they've taken appropriate action, and know when they've achieved their goal.
In practice, these principles can be seen in everyday objects and digital interfaces. For instance, the home page of a website or mobile app can be difficult to understand in terms of signifiers, but basic principles of interaction design from *The Design of Everyday Things* can still apply. In e-commerce sites, users often expect standard user interface components to be used in a way that they understand, reducing the need for cognitive processing.
However, not all designs are created equal. The Norman Door, a term used in the design world, describes a door with a faulty design that can cause confusion for users. Symmetry in door design, often used by designers and manufacturers, can lead to protruding handles on both sides of a door, even if they only open in one direction. Such design flaws can create unexpected surprises where users might expect certain goals to be attainable but find otherwise, such as trying to buy a bedside light on a furniture website.
In the revised edition of *DOET* (2013), Norman changed his mind about affordances, stating that they were more relevant to interaction with physical objects than today's technology. Nevertheless, the importance of recognition and consistency in user interfaces remains highlighted, as they involve much less cognitive effort. The concept of cognitive ease is inversely proportional to cognitive effort, reflecting the amount of thinking users have to do to match their goal to evidence in the interface.
In summary, Norman’s principles underscore that user-friendly design is about understanding users’ psychology and shaping products that clearly communicate their function through visible controls, natural mappings, and thoughtful cues like affordances and signifiers. This approach makes everyday objects and digital interfaces work seamlessly with human intuition, leading to satisfaction and ease of use.
- Understanding the principles of user research, as outlined by Don Norman in his book 'The Design of Everyday Things', can help UI and UX designers create interfaces that align with human cognition and behavior, reducing cognitive effort and increasing user satisfaction.
- In both physical objects and digital interfaces, affordances and signifiers play a crucial role in guiding users to the correct interaction, aligning with their mental models and expectations, and promoting a seamless user experience.
- As technology continues to evolve, the principles of interaction design, such as recognition and consistency, remain crucial for designing user-friendly interfaces, as they involve less cognitive effort and contribute to cognitive ease.
