The faults in this book, though, lie with his constant barrage of examples that bore you to death. 1 or 2 examples for each idea would have been fine but he gives about 10. This work should be applied more to computers as well I think most of his examples were just for common every items, but it would be interesting to see it done for computers and software.
After reading the book I took a look at this Pentax camera and some of its functions and uses are pretty obscure. For one, to open the back of it and put film in you have to pull the circle on the left of the camera up until the back pops. There are no markings or indications for this, you just have to know. Also none of the knobs or numbers on it are labeled you just have to be able to recognize what the numbers stand for. Basically you have to be a professional camera person or have read the manual (if it even comes with one) to understand how to work it.
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I have actually tried to use the Pentax in that picture. I am not big into photography, so I do not have a good understanding of how to use these types of cameras. That said, I feel that I am a pretty smart person and assumed that I would be able to take a few good pictures without needed to take a night course at the local community college. This was a wrong assumption. To start I had no idea what all the settings did. It seems every dial has a dozen numbers on it with no information about what they mean. Then I looked through the camera and there was a needle jumping up and down, no idea what that was. Needless to say, these cameras are not well designed. I assume that there must be a better approach to these types of camera. I screen with a menu that could guide me to taking a good picture would have been nice. I think if I could have figured out how to take a few good pictures then I could have gotten good on my own, but that never happened. Of course, this guide would make the camera more expensive and would probably not please these camera's main audience, people that are serious about photography.
While I agree that he could have cut back on examples and still got the same point in the book across, I think you assessment that the book should do more with computers is based more on what you were expecting based on the class name than on the purpose of the book. It seemed that he was trying to publish a book that pointed out flaws in design in general more so than flaws in computer design. I think we had to read the book since it could be applied to computer human interaction more than the book being specifically about computers.
You're right about him only talking about common things, but the book is called The Design of everyday Things. However, the principles mentioned apply to the general design process. Camera designers could definitely benefit from reading this book. Even new DSLRs have all of their functions hidden.
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