The Design on Everyday Things Ch-1 (My Notes On #1)

Chapter — 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things

Quote of The Chapter

“Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.”

Discoverability — Can the user figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them?

Understanding — What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean? Many products defy understanding simply because they have too many functions and controls.

General Notes

• Designers need to focus their attention on the cases where things go wrong, not just on when things work as planned. Actually, this is where the most satisfaction can arise: when something goes wrong but the machine highlights the problems, then the person understands the issues, takes the proper actions, and the problem is solved. When this happens smoothly, the collaboration of person and devices feels wonderful.
• HCD ( Human centered design ) : A design philosophy that means starting with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet.
  Avoid specifying the problem as long as possible but instead to iterate upon repeated approximations.
• Experience is critical, for it determines how fondly people remember their interactions. Cognition and emotion are tightly intertwined, which means that the designers must design with both in mind.

Fundamental Principles of INTERACTION:

1. Affordances: The relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of a human (or animal, or robot, or machine, i.e., any interacting agent) that determine just how the object could be used. Ex: A chair affords (”is for”) support and hence, affords sitting. Affordances exist even if they are not visible. For designers, their visibility is critical: visible affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Affordances represent the possibilities in the world of how an agent can interact with something.
2. Signifiers: Any perceivable indicator that communicates appropriate behavior to a person. They communicate how to use a design.
3. Mapping: The relationship between elements of two sets of things. The relationship between the controls and its results is easiest to learn wherever there is an understandable mapping between the controls, the actions, and the intended result.
4. Feedback: Communicating the result of an action. Feedback must be immediate and informative.
5. Conceptual Model: It is an explanation of how things work, usually high simplified. People create mental models of themselves, others, the environment, and the things with which they interact. These are conceptual models formed through experience, training, and instruction. These models serve as guides to help achieve our goals and in understanding the world. Different users may have different mental models based on 1) how they use a product and 2) their skill level.

System Image

• To form the appropriate conceptual model for the devices we interact with, we use the information from using similar things in the past, what was told to us in the sales literature, by salespeople and advertisements, by articles we may have read, by the product website and instruction manuals. The combined information available to us is called the system image.

The Paradox Of Technology

• As technological advances occur, it becomes difficult to learn a product that uses the technology. This is a paradox as technology is supposed to make tasks easier.

The Design Challenge

• The challenge is to make the teams of different disciplines (design, engineering, sales, support, etc.) collaborate with each other. To convince them to abandon their viewpoint and understand the viewpoint of other teams. There are various factors to making a good design: reliability, maintainability, attractiveness, price, features, ability to be manufactured in the existing plants, etc.