Download or read book The Design of Everyday Things written by Don Norman and published by Constellation. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time. In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behavior. Now fully expanded and updated, with a new introduction by the author, The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how—and why—some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.
Download or read book The Beauty of Everyday Things written by Soetsu Yanagi and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These objects are our constant companions in life. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be natural and simple, sturdy and safe - the aesthetic result of wholeheartedly fulfilling utilitarian needs. They should, in short, be things of beauty. In an age of feeble and ugly machine-made things, these essays call for us to deepen and transform our relationship with the objects that surround us. Inspired by the work of the simple, humble craftsmen Yanagi encountered during his lifelong travels through Japan and Korea, they are an earnest defence of modest, honest, handcrafted things - from traditional teacups to jars to cloth and paper. Objects like these exemplify the enduring appeal of simplicity and function: the beauty of everyday things.
Download or read book Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things written by Cy Tymony and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original, practical guide that offers readers “a chance to become real-life MacGyvers” with “sections on gimmicks, gadgets and survival techniques” (Publishers Weekly). Do you know how to generate battery power with simple household items? Or how to create your own home security system? Science-savvy author Cy Tymony does. And now you can learn how to create these things—and more than 40 other handy gadgets and gizmos—in Sneaky Uses For Everyday Things. More than a simple do-it-yourself guide, this quirky collection teaches you how to transform ordinary objects into the extraordinary just a few minutes. With more than 80 solutions and bonus applications at your disposal, you will be ready for almost any situation. Included are survival, security, self-defense, and silly applications that are just plain fun
Download or read book Stuff written by John C. Ryan and published by Seattle, Wash. : Northwest Environment Watch. This book was released on 1997 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume takes you to the places and people you touch every day. - BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Physics of Everyday Things written by James Kakalios and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physics professor, bestselling author, and dynamic storyteller James Kakalios reveals the mind-bending science behind the seemingly basic things that keep our daily lives running, from our smart phones and digital “clouds” to x-ray machines and hybrid vehicles. Most of us are clueless when it comes to the physics that makes our modern world so convenient. What’s the simple science behind motion sensors, touch screens, and toasters? How do we glide through tolls using an E-Z Pass, or find our way to new places using GPS? In The Physics of Everyday Things, James Kakalios takes us on an amazing journey into the subatomic marvels that underlie so much of what we use and take for granted. Breaking down the world of things into a single day, Kakalios engages our curiosity about how our refrigerators keep food cool, how a plane manages to remain airborne, and how our wrist fitness monitors keep track of our steps. Each explanation is coupled with a story revealing the interplay of the astonishing invisible forces that surround us. Through this “narrative physics,” The Physics of Everyday Things demonstrates that—far from the abstractions conjured by terms like the Higgs Boson, black holes, and gravity waves—sophisticated science is also quite practical. With his signature clarity and inventiveness, Kakalios ignites our imaginations and enthralls us with the principles that make up our lives.
Download or read book A History of Everyday Things written by Daniel Roche and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things which we regard as the everyday objects of consumption (and hence re-purchase), and essential to any decent, civilised lifestyle, have not always been so: in former times, everyday objects would have passed from one generation to another, without anyone dreaming of acquiring new ones. How, therefore, have people in the modern world become 'prisoners of objects', as Rousseau put it? The celebrated French cultural historian Daniel Roche answers this fundamental question using insights from economics, politics, demography and geography, as well as his own extensive historical knowledge. Professor Roche places familiar objects and commodities - houses, clothes, water - in their wider historical and anthropological contexts, and explores the origins of some of the daily furnishings of modern life. A History of Everyday Things is a pioneering essay that sheds light on the origins of the consumer society and its social and political repercussions, and thereby the birth of the modern world.
Download or read book Stories Behind Everyday Things written by Jane Polley and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents 300 articles containing little-known information about "things" that figure in everyday life, such as advertising, shoe polish, ketchup, pajamas, and zippers.
Download or read book How Artifacts Afford written by Jenny L. Davis and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective. Technological affordances mediate between the features of a technology and the outcomes of engagement with that technology. The concept of affordances, which migrated from psychology to design with Donald Norman's influential 1988 book, The Design of Everyday Things, offers a useful analytical tool in technology studies—but, Jenny Davis argues in How Artifacts Afford, it is in need of a conceptual update. Davis provides just such an update, introducing the mechanisms and conditions framework, which offers both a vocabulary and necessary critical perspective for affordance analyses. The mechanisms and conditions framework shifts the question from what objects afford to how objects afford, for whom, and under what circumstances. Davis shows that through this framework, analyses can account for the power and politics of technological artifacts. She situates the framework within a critical approach that views technology as materialized action. She explains how request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow are mechanisms of affordance, and shows how these mechanisms take shape through variable conditions—perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy. Putting the framework into action, Davis identifies existing methodological approaches that complement it, including critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), app feature analysis, and adversarial design. In today's rapidly changing sociotechnical landscape, the stakes of affordance analyses are high. Davis's mechanisms and conditions framework offers a timely theoretical reboot, providing tools for the crucial tasks of both analysis and design.
Download or read book The Origins of Everyday Things written by Ruth Binney and published by Reader's Digest Association. This book was released on 1999 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Origins of Everyday Things" traces the evolution of customs, manners, and commonplace objects through the twists and turns of time to uncover their history-making roots.
Download or read book The Secret of Everyday Things written by Jean-Henri Fabre and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Panati s Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody written by Charles Panati and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ecology of Everyday Things written by Mark Everard and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature is all around us, in the beautiful but also in the unappealing and functional, and from the awe-inspiring to the mundane. It is vital that we learn to see the agency of the natural world in all things that make our lives possible, comfortable and profitable. The Ecology of Everyday Things pulls back the veil of our familiarity on a range of ‘everyday things’ that surround us, and which we perhaps take too much for granted. This key into the magic world of the everyday can enable us to take better account of our common natural inheritance. Professor James Longhurst, Assistant Vice Chancellor, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) For many people, ecosystems may be a remote concept, yet we eat, drink, breathe and interface with them in every moment of our lives. In this engaging textbook, ecosystems scientist Dr. Mark Everard considers a diversity of ‘everyday things’, including fascinating facts about their ecological origins: from the tea we drink, to the things we wear, read and enjoy, to the ecology of communities and space flight, and the important roles played by germs and ‘unappealing creatures’ such as slugs and wasps. In today’s society, we are so umbilically connected to ecosystems that we fail to notice them, and this oversight blinds us to the unsustainability of everyday life and the industries and policy environment that supports it. The Ecology of Everyday Things takes the reader on an enlightening, fascinating voyage of discovery, all the while soundly rooted in robust science. It will stimulate awareness about how connected we all are to the natural world and its processes, and how important it is to learn to better treat our environment. Ideal for use in undergraduate- and school-level teaching, it will also interest, educate, engage and enthuse a wide range of less technical audiences.
Download or read book The Visual Dictionary of Everyday Things written by and published by DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley). This book was released on 1991 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text, exploded view photographs, and labels reveal everyday objects and their parts, including the telephone, camera, and bicycle.
Download or read book Wire written by Suzanne Slesin and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wire objects have worked their way into virtually every human activity. Since the eighteenth century, such occupations as housekeeping, cooking, gardening, fishing, and hunting were unthinkable without them. Shopkeepers fashioned wire into display racks, and children played with wire toys. Many pieces, such as fruit bowls, platters, and baskets of all kinds served both practical and decorative functions. With its vintage photographs, pages from early catalogs, old advertisements, and more than 300 evocative full-color photographs, Wire reveals why there is such a strong revival of interest in these pieces and demonstrates how they can be integrated into our homes today.
Download or read book Origin of Everyday Things written by Johnny Acton and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the origins of over 400 everyday items, arranged in alphabetical order.
Download or read book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People written by Susan Weinschenk and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WE DESIGN TO ELICIT RESPONSES from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With this book you’ll design more intuitive and engaging apps, software, websites and products that match the way people think, decide and behave. INCREASE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR PRODUCTS. Apply psychology and behavioral science to your designs. Here are some of the questions this book will answer: • What grabs and holds attention. • What makes memories stick? • What is more important, peripheral or central vision? • Can you predict the types of errors people will make? • What is the limit to someone’s social circle? • What line length for text is best? • Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.
Download or read book Bent Objects written by Terry Border and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trained as a photographer, Terry Border left the commercial world for story-telling. His complex vignettes are made of the simplest, everyday items: a jar of spices, a cigarette stub, a flower, a snack food. These sly photos range from whimsical scenes to sexy scenarios, the sad truths to the hilarious happenings in everyday life. In the tradition of bestselling humorous photography books like Chicks with Baggage, Play with Your Food, and Hello Cupcake!, this volume will surprise you with every viewing. A sunflower missing a petal becomes the tortured artist Van Gogh; an egg arrives to visit his mom only to discover roast chicken on the table; when confronted by a jar of peanut butter, peanuts hold a wake; and hot dogs leave behind their own brand of little presents. Marshmallows, wine corks, bread, soap, rocks, and tea bags—no common household item is safe from the twisted (wire) mind behind these uncommon creations!
