Number of words – 208

Signifiers can be deliberate and intentional, such as the sign push on a door, but they may also be accidental and unintentional, such as our use of the visible trail made by previous people walking through a field or over a snow-covered terrain to determine the best path. Or how we might use the presence or absence of people waiting at a train station to determine whether we have missed the train.

Consider a bookmark, a deliberately placed signifier of one’s place in reading a book. But the physical nature of books also makes a bookmark an accidental signifier, for its placement also indicates how much of the book remains. Most readers have learned to use this accidental signifier to aid in their enjoyment of the reading. With few pages left, we know the end is near. And if the reading is torturous, as in a school assignment, one can always console oneself by knowing there are “only a few more pages to get through.”

Electronic book readers do not have the physical structure of paper books, so unless the software designer deliberately provides a clue, they do not convey any signal about the amount of text remaining.

Excerpted from ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Don Norman