Designing for i18n and Culture - Books on Design
By Annamaria Szvoboda, 2021
Books:
#1: Susan M. Weinschenk: 100 Thing Every Designer Needs To Know About People
#2: Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things
#3: Don Norman: Emotional Design
View Points
I read and reviewed the above-mentioned books following these guidelines while working on the presentation:
A brief summary of the main points in each book. How are the books similar? Where do they diverge?
How can I apply the concepts in these books to my professional life, specifically in localization and internationalization?
What concepts were new? What did I learn from each of the books and how will that help you moving forward?
Were there any concepts or ideas that I disagreed with or that did not resonate with me?
Overview of book #1
Today most people use digital interfaces on a daily basis. This book focuses on the creation of an intuitive interface design with the help of neuroscience discoveries.
The way human beings perceive, feel, and respond to the world around them leads us to reconsider the way we design our interfaces whether it’s a website, software, an application, a device, or a product.
The book is divided into chapters and these chapters are also into smaller micro chapters (which I personally found too many, too short, and too general). The subject the author is focusing on is how people see, read, remember, feel, think, focus attention, and how they get motivated from the point of view of design. The aim is to have the audience - the people - benefit from the design. And this design is going to be strongly impacted by how much the designer knows the audience.
Overview of book #2
In Everyday Design Norman explains how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order to make the experience of using the object pleasurable. Norman’s focus is Human-Centered Design. Since things are designed and used by humans, great care and attention must be given to making sure the design serves human needs and capabilities. Simply put design things to accommodate humans, not the other way around. A good portion of the book is spent on specific ways to address these concerns: how to deal with short-term memory and distraction, how to circumvent faulty mental models, and how to deal with physical constraints.
Overview of book #3
I chose to read Norman’s Emotional Design as my third book and I found that it’s a nice continuation of his first book. I would even add, the topics and perspectives were more interesting to me than in the first. The main approach of this book is - I thought - is that as opposed to just talking about the brain as the main perceptor and device for observation, he divides the brain itself into three major areas of functioning parts:
The visual brain or the automatic or prewired layer of the brain called the visceral level
The behavioral brain or behavioral level
And the contemplative part of the brain, that is, the reflective level.
Meeting Points and Differences
In the 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, Susan Weinschenk comes from the viewpoint that we “see” with our brains because it interprets the things we see around us. Interestingly enough, Don Norman touches upon this subject in the Design of Everyday Things book when talks about perception. He mentions J.J. Gibson, an eminent psychologist who created an “ecological” approach to perception. His argument is that the world contains clues and that people simply pick up these clues through direct perception and observation. The author argues with him stating that nothing can be direct because the brain has to process the information arriving at the sense organs to put together a coherent interpretation. Gibson, on the other hand, believes that the picked-up information, or as he calls it, “information pickup” is picked up by all of our sensory apparatus - sight, smell, touch, and sound - to determine our perceptions without the need for internal processing or cognition.
I think here lies the most significant similarity in these two authors’ viewpoints.
Weinschenk’s approach is what people see or think it’s formulated and put together in the visual cortex of our brains, for example, the different shapes and colors, or even letter fonts.
She, on the other hand, does not deny the existence of cues that she also calls “affordances” after James Gibson. Affordances are action possibilities in the environment. When affordances were introduced in the design world, people loved the idea but it was somewhat difficult to understand. Affordances, after Gibson, are important information conveyed by the physical objects to tell people how to interact with them. Norman describes affordances as strong cues that help people figure out what actions are possible without the need for labels or instructions. Norman takes the idea somewhat further than Weinschenk and studies things from more depth than her in general. He makes a clear distinction between affordances and signifiers. He defines affordances as things that determine what action is possible while signifiers communicate where the action should take place. The role of the signifier is good communication of the purpose structure and operation of the device to the people who use it.
I found Norman's books slightly more interesting and detailed than Weinschenk’s. I felt that in certain areas she is too general and jumps from one topic to the other to cover as much as possible but without a certain depth. Norman really goes deep and explains design and human relationships quite well in both of his books.
Compared to Norman’s divisions of the brain in the Emotional Design, Weinschenk also talks about the three brains or levels but calls them slightly different, nevertheless, the main concept is the same:
The visceral level is responsible and is concerned about food, survival, and reproduction, that is, this is our ancient brain that developed first. The behavioral brain is the emotional brain that is concerned about feelings, group emotions, impressions, judgments, etc. And the newest brain is the reflective part that analyzes, creates concepts, and reflects on things. You can also find a similar approach in some Eastern spiritual studies where they call these three levels moving-instinctive brain, emotional brain, and intellectual brain. Norman points out that these three levels work in correlation and it’s not like one is doing everything and the others are not doing anything. Rather, they interact with each other. The visceral brain sees, feels, senses, hears the environment, passes a judgment to the behavioral brain, and through neurotransmitters releases information to the reflective level.
This is the part I found that it’s a continuation of the earlier mentioned Gibson theory of direct perception vs. interpretation. For example, if we are in a bad mood, we start feeling anxious and the neurotransmitters focus on the topic. The neurotransmitters can affect and bias the brain to focus upon a problem and avoid distraction. On the opposite, when we are in a positive state, our brain processes information differently, the muscles relax, and the brain sees opportunities rather than danger. Later Norman talks about behavioral design where functions come first. This is another parallel line with Weinschenk’s book which also emphasizes the need of designing for people’s needs. In Everyday Design Norman points out that there are three different mental images of any object: the designer’s mental image, the user’s mental image, and the way the product works. Ideally, the first two need to be identical. Feedback plays a major role therefore and both authors don’t fail to emphasize this.
There are many more wonderful things to be told about all three books, however in Susan Weinschenk’s another book, 100 Things Presenters Need To Know (that I also read in parts by mistake:)), she points out that a good presentation is not too long and leaves the audience engaged. Therefore, I feel like I am going to follow her suggestion and stop my review here.
Takeaways
Takeaway
When we create any design, for example, a website, it’s good to remember that people won’t necessarily see what we see or how we see things, but what they want to see based on their expectations, previous experiences, background, knowledge, familiarity with the subject matter and other elements. Susan Weinschenk gives a very practical approach through her pages on how to persuade people to see things in a certain way that is the closest to how we want them to see them. Weinschenk also explains how to use affordances when creating a website.
Takeaway
What role do the knowledge about the three brains and neurotransmitters all play in the design? First, someone who is more relaxed is more creative and can solve problems better. Therefore, the designer wants to make sure that all the information required to do a task is readily available. As we can see, for a good design we need creativity and focus at the same time.
Takeaway
Designers often make the mistake of focusing on new features, innovations, testing them on each other but they forget their customers’ needs. And the real design challenge is to discover real needs that even people who need them cannot yet articulate.
Conclusion
The main point of the three books is to say that there is no excuse not to design usable products that everyone can use and that bad design is a frequent cause of errors, often unfairly blamed on users rather than on designers. I believe we should start looking at our products and rather than designing for ourselves, we should focus on other people if we want to sell our products.
“Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of the appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use.” (Don Norman: The Design of Everyday Things)
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