Norman’s idea behind how design should be approached is compelling. Indeed, when designing a product, you need to create it with human behavior in mind because humans are going to be the consumers of your product. This might sound obvious, but in reality, engineers do not consider it. This becomes clear when you look at Norman’s examples in his book. Reading through them felt very validating; finally, someone understands the frustration that comes with bad design.
An example of something that frustrates me that Norman didn’t mention is air conditioning. Back at home, we have this AC controller embedded in the wall that has many buttons and symbols, and none of them make sense. There is no signifier to tell what each button does, and the symbols are vague and arbitrary. The only buttons I know how to use are the temperature and fan. So much of the extra effort by the engineers and the cost of the unusable buttons is wasted because of unclear design. The overall design could be improved if there were signifiers to dictate what each button does or streamlining the settings to make it more simple and clean.