Design as Communication by Don Norman

Based on this article, I could look back various Graphic User Interface practices that I’ve experienced and I’ve designed. Why some of the GUI was successful? Why others were not good? Did they provide good story? Did they provide the reason?
The most important thing is to view the design as communication of designer and user. However we cannot communicate verbally and directly, which makes designing single tiny icon or navigation element much more important. Ultimately the story and reason with the design.

Key sentences

“Sometimes this conversation is accidental, but in the hands of good designers, the communication is intentional.”

“Design is a conversation between designer and user, one that can go both ways, even though the designer is no longer present once the user enters the scene.”

“the real communication is between designer and person, where the technology is the medium. Once designs are thought of as shared communication and technologies as media, the entire design philosophy changes radically, but in a positive and constructive way.”

“The real role of the designer, I stated, was to make the appropriate set of affordances visible.”

“Once we start to view design as a form of communication between designer and the user, we see that perceived affordances become an important medium for that communication. Designed affordances play a very special role.”

“By making certain regions of the screen take on perceptible, distinctive appearances, the designer is communication the design intention. These are designed affordances, messages from designer to user, attracting attention to the set of desired possible actions.”

“Under this new view of design, designed affordances are communication devices, specifying the designer’s intentions to the audience.”

“… most digital systems fail when they fail to provide a story, when there is a poor conceptual model.”

“I have long maintained that the appropriate way to design a complex system is to develop a clear, coherent conceptual model (ideally the same as the designer’s conceptual model) and to design the system so that the user’s mental model would coincide.”

“In other words, what we need to provide to people is reasons, not just methods.”

“Although GUIs were a major step forward, they simply providing information about the set of possibilities, not about the reasoning.”

“Human beings are explanation machines. We are always trying to understand the world around us, and we make up stories to explain the occurrences we experience.”