I would like to discuss about the theme “the everyday” for the first assignment. I chose the book “The Design of Everyday Things” of Donald Norman for the source. This book contains a lot of examples good & bad design of everyday-used, common things; hence that showing up some resolutions for issues from those designs and trying to make those better. “Complex things may require explanation, but simple things should not. When simple things need pictures, labels, or instructions, the design has failed. A psychology of causality is also at work as we use everyday things.” (Paragraph 4, page 9, Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things)
For example, the door, yes it is a very common everyday-used thing. “Consider the door. There is not much you can do to a door: you can open it or shut it. A door poses only two essential questions: In which direction does it move? On which side should one work it? The answers should be given by the design, without any need for words or symbols, certainly with-out any need for trial and error.” (Paragraph 2, page 3, Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things). In this picture, the hardware on the door affords no operations except pushing or pulling (different design of the horizontal and vertical bars). Also the size and the position are being considered whether the grasp is used to push or pull.
It would be interesting when it comes to a pair of scissors. Have you ever think that how did I know to use a pair of scissors? “Consider a pair of scissors: even if you have never seen or used them before, you can see that the number of possible actions is limited. The holes are clearly there to put something into, and the only logical things that will fit are fingers. The holes are affordances: they allow the fingers to be inserted. The sizes of the holes provide constraints to limit the possible fingers: the big hole suggests several fingers, the small hole only one.” (Paragraph 4, page 12, Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things) Even if you failed on putting the fingers in, the scissors still works.
For a bad design example, “consider the digital watch, one with two to four push buttons on the front or side. What are those push buttons for? How would you set the time? There is no way to tell—no evident relationship between the operating controls and the functions, no constraints, no apparent mappings.” (Paragraph 2, page 13, Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things)
There are lots of analyses on how good or bad designs on tons of common things we are using every day. Through all of analyses, the book also discusses about how could we improve those design to fit best on human purposes and utilities.
References:
Donald Norman (February 1, 1990). The Design of Everyday Things. Paperback.
Picture: retrieved from the book : The Design of Everyday Things, page 10, Chapter 1.
