Sublime

Originally coined by the psychologist James J. Gibson, the concept of “affordances” was developed by the interface theorist and designer Donald Norman in his book The Design of Everyday Things.

Consider design by committee when quality, error mitigation, and stakeholder acceptance are primary factors. Consider design by dictator when an aggressive timeline is the primary factor. Favor

there wasn’t any understanding of technology combined with psychology. We were building technology for people, but the technologists didn’t understand people.”

The user-friendly world can be maddeningly silent in matters of whether what we’ve consumed is in fact actually good.

A thing is well designed if it adapts to the people who use it.

For example, new design features or elements that excite designers are often never used or even noticed by people who interact with the design. In many cases, such features and elements increase the design’s interaction costs by adding complexity to the system.

Don Norman’s book Emotional Design discusses research suggesting that attractive things work better than unattractive ones—

The insights from the seven stages of action lead us to seven fundamental principles of design: 1. Discoverability. It is possible to determine what actions are possible and the current state of the device. 2. Feedback. There is full and continuous information about the results of actions and the current state of the product or service. After an