Written by: Donald Norman
Donald starts the book off talking about how he was wrong about being able to just design things so that they function well. He found that even if they function fantastically, if they are ugly people will not use them because there is no aesthetic appeal and we are turned off to everyday use. He describes three ways to now look at design; visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Visceral being visual stimulation, behavioral being the liking of the actual interaction, and reflective being the logic behind why you like it. He then rants about this for 4 chapters with various examples. For the last couple chapters of the book he talks about the advent of AI and what it means to be alive and how I, Robot could come to happen in the near future. Woot.
This, again, is a design book, and we are told stuff that we know now because Apple has made such a large impact on everyday design. People in computer science right now read about how we need to design things and think about why things are marketable and why certain products fail. It is a good read if you don't already follow current computer trends, or the evolution of the computer world over the last decade.
I agree that this book kind of told stuff that we already knew about. Obviously if something is going to make us happy then we are going to find a way to use the product. It also helps us understand why certain items don't sell even if they are a great product.
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