When comparing The Mythical Man-Month vs The Design of Everyday Things, the Slant community recommends The Design of Everyday Things for most people. In the question“What are the most influential books every programmer should read?” The Design of Everyday Things is ranked 3rd while The Mythical Man-Month is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose The Design of Everyday Things is:
This book isn't focused on recent trends or properties specific to a certain field, and thus applies to all design. It provides a broad view and allows focusing on the fundamental goals of the user experience, rather than being limited in scope.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Teaches you something counter-intuitive
(That you can't just add people to move faster.)
Pro Shows the value of focus and communication
Pro Transcendental principles
This book isn't focused on recent trends or properties specific to a certain field, and thus applies to all design. It provides a broad view and allows focusing on the fundamental goals of the user experience, rather than being limited in scope.
Pro Focused on the user
Whatever that's being designed, for whatever purpose, it always has the same goal of being used by someone. This book is focused on that interaction and on why users make mistakes. These principles still apply directly to web design, when design leads users to make mistakes, it will ultimately drive users away.
Cons
Con It's showing its age in the proposed solutions and methods
Software development community gathered enough knowledge to have a lot more productive methods.
Con Quite dated
Examples are quite old, as are the illustrations.
Con A lot to read
It's quite a long read, there is a lot of material to be covered, if you compare it to similar but more concise books, like The Non-Designer's Design Book.
Con Not specifically for web design
This book challenges the reader to think about the design of all objects, and their user-friendliness/usability. It is not specifically targeted towards web designers, but will help web designers think in a way that benefits users.