The design of future things

Summary
The Design of Everyday Things discussed objects that we use in our day to day lives such as telephones and doors. The author discussed the flaws in many of these objects in addition to giving positive examples that showed good design. In his examples, the author pointed out how each object could be improved or how it was well thought out and made the use of it simpler. The overall design quality desired by the author was a simple yet effective device.

Discussion
This book explored some interesting views on things in everyday life. It did a good job of mixing in humor (showing comical examples of bad design) to keep the audience engaged. The author also mixed in some personal examples which made the reading interesting. While parts of this book entertained me, the vast majority of it was repetitive to the point of being frustrating. I feel like this book could have been trimmed in half and not lost much of its meaning or effectiveness. It felt as though I were reading a book for a child who needs things to be drilled into his head in order for him to retain any of it. While giving numerous examples improved the book, the author didn't need to explain each story immediately after when each example was making the same point. This annoyed me as I was reading and subsequently distracted me from the point the author was trying to make and actually made the book less effective.

Yes, i just copied and pasted my design of everyday things blog here. Why? because this book was pretty much the same. It was slightly less grueling because it was a little more up to date, but it still wasted much of our time talking about problems that have been solved already. The one positive thing I can say about this book is that it was at least shorter than his first, though its still about twice as long as it would take a normal person to get the same points across.