Don Norman — The Design of Everyday Things
A door would seem to be about as simple a device as possible.
Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
[...] the designer must provide signals that naturally indicate where to push. These need not destroy the aesthetics. Put a vertical plate on the side to be pushed. Or make the supporting pillars visible. The vertical plate and supporting pillars are natural signals, naturally interpreted, making it easy to know just what to do: no labels needed.
Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.
When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications.
We were designing things for people, so we needed to understand both technology and people.
Feedback must be inmediate: even a delay of a tenth of a second can be disconcerting. If the day is too long, people often give up, going off to do other activities. This is annoying to the people, but it can also be wasteful of resources when the system spends considerable time and effort to satisfy the request, only to find that the intended recipient is no longer there.
Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.
A good conceptual model allows to predict the effects of our action.
The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology and the challenge for the designer.
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title: Don Norman — The Design of Everyday Things
date: 2026-07-15
tags: [cita, diseño, usabilidad, tecnología]
summary: Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
---
# Don Norman — *The Design of Everyday Things*
> A door would seem to be about as simple a device as possible.
> Two of the most important characteristics of good design are *discoverability* and *understanding*.
> [...] the designer must provide signals that naturally indicate where to push. These need not destroy the aesthetics. Put a vertical plate on the side to be pushed. Or make the supporting pillars visible. The vertical plate and supporting pillars are natural signals, naturally interpreted, making it easy to know just what to do: no labels needed.
> Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.
> When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications.
> We were designing things for people, so we needed to understand both technology and people.
> Feedback must be inmediate: even a delay of a tenth of a second can be disconcerting. If the day is too long, people often give up, going off to do other activities. This is annoying to the people, but it can also be wasteful of resources when the system spends considerable time and effort to satisfy the request, only to find that the intended recipient is no longer there.
> Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.
> A good conceptual model allows to predict the effects of our action.
> The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology and the challenge for the designer.