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Add to SafariWhen comparing The Design of Everyday Things vs Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, the Slant community recommends The Design of Everyday Things for most people. In the question“What are the best books for Developers?” The Design of Everyday Things is ranked 2nd while Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules is ranked 8th. 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
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Covers improving development schedules in detail
The author discusses how haste and unrealistic schedules will negatively impact a project. Causing the deadline to extend well past what it could have, had a realistic time frame been put in place initially.
Pro Focused on implementable lessons
Rather than discuss only the theory behind leadership, and author focuses on providing real examples and lessons that can be applied.
Pro Lists out "Best Practices" to summarize the lessons
This is a large book at 680 pages, so having the lessons summed up is quite beneficial. 27 "Best Practices" are discussed, including the pros and cons of them.
Cons
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.
Con Outdated methodologies
This book was published in 1996 and discusses methodologies that were popular at the time (such as the waterfall model).
