Episode 3: The Design of Everyday Things, Part I

---

We’ve been reading The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman, learning to apply the principles of design to code and products, and see examples in everyday life.

Following initial reflections, we spoke about a number of topics:

• 06:23 Design in games
• 10:54 The need to design for actual, not abstract, users
• 21:57 Communities develop and evolve standards by accident
• 25:28 Community and team standards aren’t right or wrong, just optimizing in a situation for particular priorities
• 29:15 Are the book’s design processes less relevant when you can redesign the product after it’s been released?
• 33:59 Skeuomorphic design, slow changes, and iconography
• 39:02 New software tools imitate old software tools
• 42:24 Converting “knowledge in the head” into “knowledge in the world”
• 47:05 Design in the context of a codebase
• 51:17 Accidental affordances becoming strong signifiers, and how bad decisions tend to replicate themselves
• 55:28 Creating “knowledge in the world” purposefully… or accidentally
• 57:58 Being confused about accomplishing a technical task doesn’t mean you have to insult yourself or the tool
• 1:03:37 The role of design in coding tools

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the book as well. Join us on Slack and share with other Dev Empaths!