The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Published 1988 · 102,197 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Arts & Culture, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Psychology
How hard is The Design of Everyday Things to read?
The Design of Everyday Things scores 35 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 60 out of 100
- Design and cognitive science terminology. Accessible.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Cognitive science principles applied to everyday objects.
- Information density: 75 out of 100
- Dense with concepts, examples, and design principles.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- Direct, thesis-driven exposition with examples.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Analytical. Everyday objects as case studies.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Wry frustration with bad design.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- Proposes clear design principles as solutions.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Thematically organized chapters with consistent framework.
How The Design of Everyday Things is regarded
The Design of Everyday Things holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.