![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Books about design
Feb. 21st, 2010 05:52 pmI just finished reading an essay about design by Paul Graham. The essay was OK - it had a few useful bits of information in it, but mostly it reminded me that I've managed to collect several very good books on the topic.
In approximate order of exposure:
* Edward Tufte's work (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, among others): These books basically do what the title says - they show you ways to display quantitative information visually, and how design choices affect comprehension. The difference between a clear, readable, honest and immediately useful graph and one obscured by tiny bad design choices is really vivid when you see them side by side. This point was driven home in Bio lab, where we got a full page front and back checklist which we were required to complete point by point for every graph in our reports. The importance of consistency and clarity in writeups or graphs from these lessons has helped me more with the working world than most classes I've taken.
The biggest difficulty with these books is that they tend to follow the model of "good example, bad example", without a specific description of what makes each good and bad. A little more explicit explanation would go a long way.
* A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander: I think I accidentally convinced an architect I was flirting with him because of my fanatical enthusiasm for this book. It basically consists of 250 specific ideas or patterns about architecture and design, ranging from the mega (how towns should be distributed) to the micro (the right size for window trim). This book resonates with me on at least two levels. Many of the individual patterns, especially at the house or room scale, give me terminology - something to point at and say "This! This is why I like this so much". Many nooks and crannies I'm particularly fond of happen to embody one of the specific patterns laid out. The second level is my awe at the overall structure. It isn't just a dictionary, a pile of architectural terms stuck all together. They're beautifully cross-referenced, and really fit together as a cohesive whole. It's a pity the website is a bit of a jumbled mess - this book cries out for something like the web, where you can follow dozens of branching paths and see how they all fit together.
As far as negatives go, this books is in some ways very rooted in what I'd guess is 1970s California. A few of the patterns clearly don't work in places with large amounts of regular snow, though others are excellent fits. The 1970s bit shows up more in ideas about how work home and school should relate to each other, which I don't think holds together as well as the rest.
That said - there's a reason I try to shove this book on anyone who will hold still. It's not only fascinating as theory, it's changed how I look at both spaces and social interactions. It's where I've derived many ideas about how much environments affect how people interact.
* The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman: This book focuses on physical objects, from doors to stoves to overhead projectors, and how their basic shape and design encodes assumptions about how they work. When your assumptions don't match, you're more likely to make a mistake. Norman's point is that it's the designer's responsibility to make objects that encourage correct use, and discourage mistakes. In the process, he talks about typical failure modes, which basically boil down to the types of mistakes humans are particularly good at making. The case studies and examples are fascinating.
Not sure this book has many obvious downsides. It's solid and practical, and the examples are fascinating. For some reason, I have a harder time applying lessons from this than from the others. Am guessing this has more to do with the type of things I'm thinking about making than anything.
----
As a bonus, I also picked up a small but interesting picture book about design - it's not in the same class as the ones above, but worth a look.
* Thoughtless Acts? by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO: This book is a bit smaller than a paperback. Each chapter consists of nothing but full-page images illustrating some theme. In the back, there's a sentence or so about each picture, but it's good to first go through without and absorb what you see. The chapter themes are reacting, responding, co-opting, exploiting, adapting, conforming and signaling. They show how people respond to typically un-thought-through aspects of the objects around them. Most are very small, like balancing a coffee cup on the car while you unlock it, or the temptation to walk along a line, rather than next to it.
In approximate order of exposure:
* Edward Tufte's work (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, among others): These books basically do what the title says - they show you ways to display quantitative information visually, and how design choices affect comprehension. The difference between a clear, readable, honest and immediately useful graph and one obscured by tiny bad design choices is really vivid when you see them side by side. This point was driven home in Bio lab, where we got a full page front and back checklist which we were required to complete point by point for every graph in our reports. The importance of consistency and clarity in writeups or graphs from these lessons has helped me more with the working world than most classes I've taken.
The biggest difficulty with these books is that they tend to follow the model of "good example, bad example", without a specific description of what makes each good and bad. A little more explicit explanation would go a long way.
* A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander: I think I accidentally convinced an architect I was flirting with him because of my fanatical enthusiasm for this book. It basically consists of 250 specific ideas or patterns about architecture and design, ranging from the mega (how towns should be distributed) to the micro (the right size for window trim). This book resonates with me on at least two levels. Many of the individual patterns, especially at the house or room scale, give me terminology - something to point at and say "This! This is why I like this so much". Many nooks and crannies I'm particularly fond of happen to embody one of the specific patterns laid out. The second level is my awe at the overall structure. It isn't just a dictionary, a pile of architectural terms stuck all together. They're beautifully cross-referenced, and really fit together as a cohesive whole. It's a pity the website is a bit of a jumbled mess - this book cries out for something like the web, where you can follow dozens of branching paths and see how they all fit together.
As far as negatives go, this books is in some ways very rooted in what I'd guess is 1970s California. A few of the patterns clearly don't work in places with large amounts of regular snow, though others are excellent fits. The 1970s bit shows up more in ideas about how work home and school should relate to each other, which I don't think holds together as well as the rest.
That said - there's a reason I try to shove this book on anyone who will hold still. It's not only fascinating as theory, it's changed how I look at both spaces and social interactions. It's where I've derived many ideas about how much environments affect how people interact.
* The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman: This book focuses on physical objects, from doors to stoves to overhead projectors, and how their basic shape and design encodes assumptions about how they work. When your assumptions don't match, you're more likely to make a mistake. Norman's point is that it's the designer's responsibility to make objects that encourage correct use, and discourage mistakes. In the process, he talks about typical failure modes, which basically boil down to the types of mistakes humans are particularly good at making. The case studies and examples are fascinating.
Not sure this book has many obvious downsides. It's solid and practical, and the examples are fascinating. For some reason, I have a harder time applying lessons from this than from the others. Am guessing this has more to do with the type of things I'm thinking about making than anything.
----
As a bonus, I also picked up a small but interesting picture book about design - it's not in the same class as the ones above, but worth a look.
* Thoughtless Acts? by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO: This book is a bit smaller than a paperback. Each chapter consists of nothing but full-page images illustrating some theme. In the back, there's a sentence or so about each picture, but it's good to first go through without and absorb what you see. The chapter themes are reacting, responding, co-opting, exploiting, adapting, conforming and signaling. They show how people respond to typically un-thought-through aspects of the objects around them. Most are very small, like balancing a coffee cup on the car while you unlock it, or the temptation to walk along a line, rather than next to it.
