I found the first chapter of the Design of Everyday things intriguing. I started off defending everyday objects that are not that simple to use because, in the end, it could be the designer prioritizing form over function. But the more I read, the more I agreed with the author’s point of view. This is also because no matter how great a design aesthetically looks, no matter the number of features it contains if people cannot understand it or find it too complicated they would just give up on using it.

However, I still don’t entirely agree on how every design needs to feel natural or help people quickly understand it, given the constraints designers have. Achieving equilibrium between form, function, and understandability is what I believe a designer should strive for. It’s like he said in the end, “one discipline argues that it must be usable and understandable, another that it must be attractive, yet another that it has to be affordable.” Therefore, his initial argument throughout the chapter was black and white while in real life there’s a lot of gray areas.