Udacity

Intro to the Design of Everyday Things

This course provides a summary of key concepts from the first two chapters of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It’s intended to be enjoyable and informative for anyone curious about design: everyday people, technical people, designers, and non-designers alike.
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Length Under 3 weeks
Effort Self-paced
Price Free
Subject Design, Computer Science
Level Beginner
Languages English
Video Transcripts English
About this course:

Everyone designs. Design occurs anytime you deliberately change an environment to make things better. When you decide what seat to take in an auditorium you’re designing your experience. When you rearrange the furniture in a room or draft an email, you’re designing.

What you'll learn

What you’ll learn:

  • Discover the various affordance you must account for when designing.

  • Learn about signifiers and how to improve the utility of your designs.

  • Use conceptual models to improve your designs.

  • Learn how to design something so your users can develop their own conceptual model.

  • Discover what you are allowed to do, using the Gulf of Evaluation.

  • Combine everything you have learned in this course to design the user interface for a Timebank.

  • Sketch a concept of your design.

  • Conduct user testing to improve upon your design.

Course syllabus

LESSON 1 Affordances and Signifiers LESSON 2 Conceptual Models and the System Image LESSON 3 Gulfs of Evaluation and Execution LESSON 4 Design the User Interface for a Timebank

Meet the instructors

Don Norman

Instructor


Kristian Simsarian

Instructor


Chelsey Glasson

Instructor