Design & UX

Design of Everyday Things

Name: The Design of Everyday Things
Author: Don Norman
ISBN: 0465050654

Foundational design principles: affordances, signifiers, feedback

Apply Don Norman's foundational design principles — affordances, signifiers, mapping, and feedback — to digital products. This skill equips your AI agent with a conceptual framework that makes interfaces intuitive and error-resistant.

The Design of Everyday Things

by Don Norman

View on Amazon →

Install this skill

npx skills add wondelai/skills/design-everyday-things

Key Concepts

What your agent learns

Affordances

Design elements that naturally suggest how they should be used — buttons look pressable, sliders look draggable.

Signifiers

Provide visual or auditory cues that communicate where and how to interact with an interface.

Natural Mapping

Arrange controls so their spatial layout corresponds to the layout of the things they affect.

Feedback Loops

Give immediate, informative feedback for every user action to confirm what happened.

Conceptual Models

Help users build accurate mental models of how the system works through clear design.

About the Author

Don Norman

Father of user-centered design, former VP at Apple

Don Norman is the father of user-centered design who coined the term "UX." He co-founded Nielsen Norman Group and served as VP of Apple's Advanced Technology Group.

View Book →

Example Prompts

Try these with the skill installed

Audit this interface for missing affordances and signifiers using design-everyday-things skill

Design review

Improve the feedback loops in my checkout process using design-everyday-things skill

UX improvement

Redesign these controls to use natural mapping using design-everyday-things skill

Interaction design

Help users build a correct mental model of our pricing tiers using design-everyday-things skill

Information design

Install Design of Everyday Things

Free, open-source, and ready in 30 seconds.