Book Reading #1: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Reaction to Chapter 1:
In this first chapter, Dr. Norman engages the reader with multiple examples, questions, and arguments. He helps the reader to understand his concepts by first defining his terms like “well-designed”, “poorly designed”, “natural design”, “affordance”, “conceptual models”, ”mental models”, “system image”,  “mapping”, “natural mapping”, and “feedback”. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about some of the examples that he mentioned because I could relate to them. For example, doors have always been an issue, and I have never understood why a vertical handle is ever put on the side of the door that is meant to be pushed. The key to removing this confusion in any product is visibility and natural mapping. So, now I know the reason why I am so confused when I try to pull a “push” door. I also enjoyed learning about conceptual models (13-16). I think one of the main reasons that devices are made poorly is that the designer assumes the user thinks like them when in fact, they do not causing two different conceptual models. I am hoping this will be further explored in the chapter, “Knowledge in the Head and in the World”.  An interesting point that Dr. Norman makes, is that if a design seems so complicated to the user, why they even buy it. This will only give good feedback to the designers (8). A huge part probably has to do with appearance and prestige value. Designers focus on these attributes while trying to add in cost, functionality, and maintainability, but losing sight of usability. This leads into “the paradox of technology”(29-30), which makes me wonder if designers know that this exists, and if they do – why do they continue to add functionality where it is not needed? The graph from http://yayeps.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/the-paradox-of-technology/ , to my understanding, portrays the paradox of technology. Overall, I enjoyed reading this chapter as it gives more reason and substance to the world in which we live, and I can now understand specific reasons as to why a product is frustrating. This will hopefully lead to a better thought process when buying products. 

Reaction to Chapter 2: The psychology of Everyday Actions

The first part of this chapter focuses on user’s thoughts and feelings when using a device. If this device is not designed well, the normal reaction is to blame themselves or to give up and assume they are not good at handling that particular device. Dr. Norman then explains the seven stages of actions. This raises questions meant to help implement the principles of good design mentioned in chapter one by bridging the gaps of execution and evaluation. At first, I thought he was saying that it was never the user’s fault but only the design. However, he then clarified that if an error can be made a user will make it. So, it is the developer’s job to minimize the possible amount of errors. These errors are executed because of a faulty theory that a person made. Dr. Norman uses physics and a thermostat to illustrate this. However, these examples did not have that great effect on me since my theory correlates with how it actually works. Though, I can see how it can be misunderstood. Whether a correct or incorrect theory, we use the idea to interact with the world. This interaction can be divided up into seven areas: forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the actions, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the state of the world, and evaluating the outcome.  This process was interesting to try and apply to my own life by picking an action and dividing it up into those seven stages. Overall, this chapter helped explain people’s reaction and thought process towards a bad design of everyday things and will change how I think when I encounter a device that seems to be especially tricky.

Reaction to Chapter 3: Knowledge in the Head and in the World

In this chapter, Dr. Norman focuses on how people remember something. He does this by comparing knowledge in the head with knowledge in the world. He understands that “precise behavior can emerge from imprecise [head] knowledge”(55) because there is knowledge in the world, great precision isn’t even required, and natural and social constraints are present. Poems and songs are examples of constraints that he uses. Our memory is created through arbitrary things(which is the hardest way to remember things), meaningful relationships, and explanation(which makes remembering easier). For most of the chapter, Dr. Norman dives into various aspects of memory and knowledge. However, I couldn’t tell how it related to design until the very last pages of the chapter. He recognizes when head knowledge for a certain product isn’t there, world knowledge is created through labels. Labels imply that natural mapping was not applied very well. Therefore, “wherever labels seem necessary, consider another design”(78). I’m assuming he will build on this chapter later in the book and will mention how the information about memory is important for how you applicably need to go about designing a product. In summary, I enjoyed learning about how our brain works and how to make myself better remember tasks and data, but it was currently hard to see how this was relevant to design.

Reaction to chapter 4: Knowing What to Do

Chapter four covers how people know how to interact with certain objects. The answer: constraints. There are physical, semantic, cultural, and logical constraints.  When explaining the differences between these, he goes back to the examples of doors, and all I can think of is, “more doors?!?!”. However, it was a good example for each one of these constraints. He continues on to another example of switches, which we have all had issues with one time or another. I thought his idea to have them horizontal was brilliant and should tried to be implemented more. When these examples focused on constraints and mapping, he wants to cover visibility and feedback through an example over airplane controls. He also touches on using sound for visibility, but concludes that there needs to be more research done to make sure it isn’t annoying or invasive. The constraints topic was interesting to note. It basically put common sense into words and categories. Other than that, I thought he just went into more details that the previous chapters touched on.

Reaction to Ch. 5: To Err is Human

This lovely chapter talked about all the lovely errors that us humans can make. This actually created a lot of humor for me at the beginning when Dr. Norman was writing about slips. The different types include capture, description, data-driven, associative activation, loss-of-activation, and mode errors. I actually made a description error when I went to leave my apartment. I had just stopped reading the book and was thinking about it when I put on one maroon flip flop, and then walked over to the other side of the room and put on my brown flip flop. I almost left my room before I realized what I did.  Reading the examples that he gave of each of these types of errors made me laugh and smile because I could relate to them. It was nice to know that other people made the exact same silly errors. Not only were the examples amusing, but they also were very efficient in explaining the different types of errors. Dr. Norman then begins to explain why our brain works like this and how we structure tasks. The topic of conscious and subconscious behavior was also included in this. With all the errors that are made, many are explained away, which could lead to disaster. I’m glad that he also incorporated social pressure as a factor in explaining away error. I agree that it is an important factor – one that we cannot truly understand since we can not remove ourselves from our present culture. With all this information, the import concepts to take away is that designers should deal with errors by making them easier to discover and to make correction possible. One way of designing this system is through forcing functions, which is a form of a physical constraint that can be divided into interlock, lockin, and lockout forces.

Reaction to Ch. 6: The Design Challenge

In this chapter, Dr. Norman focuses on how a design evolves over time. There are many different factors that work against normal evolutionary design. These factors can consist of complexity, a competitive market, time constraints, and the curse of individuality. I thought it was interesting that there is actually a faster and more efficient keyboard layout that has been produced. It is sad that this better model will never actually succeed in today’s world because the current keyboard is “good enough”. When designing these types of products, it is good for the designer to consider cost, ease of manufacture, attractiveness, functionality, and durability. The problem occurs when one of these factors dominates all the others. This can happen because the designer does not understand the perspective of the user. I liked how Dr. Norman put it this way: designers are experts with the device, and users are experts with the task. (156) In order to design for the user, every type of person has to be taken into account. This is possible through flexibility. Two aspects that designers have to watch out for are increased features, and worshiping complexity. What made me really sad was when he said that computers are an area “where all the major difficulties of design can be found in profusion” (177). Thankfully computers and programmers have come a long way since he first wrote this book. We can continue to disprove his statement by taking what we learn from this class and applying it to our future jobs.

Reaction to Ch. 7: User-Centered Design

This last chapter seemed to just be a conclusion of what the book had previously talked about. It tied all the main topics together and referenced many of the previously mentioned examples. It touched on knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head, design model and the user’s model and the system image, manuals, mental aids, simplifying tasks, bridging the gulfs of execution and evaluation, visibility, mapping, constraints, errors, and standardization. One new example that he used in this chapter was when he began to describe the “home of the future” (213). Probably the most amusing part was when he was talking about the information world of the future. He couldn’t understand how we would be able to sift through so much data, but look at Google – simple, easy to use, and yet contains billions of documents worth of information. I am taking a class right now that is evaluating how the Google machine works. It is really neat to understand how the complex background creates an easy to use interface for the users.

Reaction to the Book: The Design of Everyday Things

            Dr. Norman’s writing style was very relaxed and conversational making this book a relatively easy read. He uses the third person and many rhetorical questions to engage the reader to make them think. He explains the points of good design in a concise and clear way by using great examples and tying in each previous design factor with the new one that he is trying to explain.

The concepts provided in this book were very beneficial to learn. They will help me to create better products in the future and to evaluate the design of different types of products. Not only does Dr. Norman bring many good ideas to light, but he also supports each one of his claims with a couple of real world examples. Because of this, I will never look at a door the same way ever again. In the past, I could recognize design errors with some doors and could propose a solution, but I did not have a complete understanding of what I was witnessing. For example, I could not recognize that the blender was a bad design – I just assumed I could not use it correctly. Now with my better understanding of design, I can apply it to my everyday life and will hopefully be able to make life easier for myself and my surrounding friends. One other topic out of many that I learned about was how our memory works. These concepts will help me to study better in the future and help me to recognize if information is actually located in my short term memory or long term memory. This obviously also applies to design since you cannot expect the user to memorize the whole manual. There has to be knowledge in the outside world. This can be composed of lights, labels, or good mapping. Mapping is another concept that I had never thought of before. This natural mapping in combination with visibility and feedback make for a basic good design. Then constraints can be added along with flexibility and error control.

Throughout the book, it is amusing to read about the various examples that he uses because most of them are completely outdated. He referenced VCRs, tape projectors, type writers, and really old home phones. On the flip side, he presents multiple ideas for future technology, which has already been created like an iPhone or the search engine, Google. It is interesting to see how some complaints he made about a certain design have now been fixed. This makes me wonder if the improvement was caused by his book or just the normal evolution of certain products.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. At first I was really sad and confused that we had to read a book in a computer science class. However, it was a lot different than I was expecting it to be. It actually served a purpose unlike some English books that I have had to read in the past. I learned from it, it kept my attention, and hopefully I will be able to use this knowledge in the future.

Everyday Examples of Good Design:

Car Light:

This handy dandy car light is helpful as you’re driving down the street at night and need some light. It is easy enough to use that it can be turned on/off without looking plus, an error really can’t be made while using it because it is so simple. Let’s look at a more detailed explanation of why this light is such a good design.

Mapping and Visibility:

First of all, there is one action mapped to one possible result. You want to turn it on, you push it. You want to turn it off, you push it. Simple. How do you know how to push it? Well, there are slight indentations on the plastic which gives an affordance of pushing. These can also be discovered through touch if the user is unable to look for the light. It is also not too far back to make it uncomfortable to reach and provides visibility through the user’s peripheral vision.

Constraints:

There are obviously physical/logical constraints in regards to this design. It cannot be pulled, twisted, or have anything inserted in it. The design really only gives the user the option of pushing the button. It also is understood that if you push the left button, the left light will come on and if you push the right button the right light will come on. This is the beauty of constraints and simplicity.

Water Fountain:

Mapping and Visibility:

For this case, the fountain strategically places the “on button” near the same spot that a human would grab onto the device. This visibility is added by only having one object that the user can interact with. However, I would argue that this would not even be needed because the way that the “button” is angled affords pushing it. This action is directly mapped with having water come out of the fountain.

Constraints:

This device has physical and social constraints. First, there is no way to obtain a grasp that would allow the user to pull the lever. Also, most of us have grown up with water fountains in school since we were all really little and thus have been using them and seen other people using them for our whole life. This standardization helps immensely.

 

Call Elevator:

Mapping:

This specific design has one button for one action. If you want the elevator to come down to you so you can go up, press this button. This avoids any complexities that could occur. In some instances, you have an option of pushing a lower button or a higher button. In this case, the lower button is mapped to the desire to go down, and the higher button is mapped to the desire to go up. It is still simple and clean.

Visibility and feedback:

This design also is very visible because it is placed about the same height as you hand – the object of which you would perform the action. In addition to this, once you hit the button a light appears behind the button to let the user know that their action has been received so that people won’t repeatedly push the button. In addition to this great feedback, there is a display that has what floor the elevator is currently on. From this users can see which way the elevator is moving and can tell that their request is being executed. This is a great confirming factor.

Constraints:

Some constrains that help are physical constraints since only one action seems to be possible. This is displayed by the affordance of the button to be pushed. 

Help to Cross:
This device helps us with our day to day life and has been continuously modified to perform better and better by making it easier for the user. 
Mapping: 
In this specific example, like the previous ones, there is only one action for the user to perform and that action is mapped directly to one result. It is also designed in a way that the indention affords placing your finger there. Visibility and Feedback:

The product is great at giving feedback since it displays a light and makes a loud beep when it registers that the user pressed the button.
Constraints:
There are obviously physical constraints since it does not allow any other options.

Hole Puncher:
Mapping:
For this case, the handle creates a natural mapping because when you pull the handle down, you assume that the blade is also moving down to cut the paper. It is also an easy movement to duplicate. There is also a tray that holds all the unwanted pieces of paper. This is designed in a way that it affords pulling it out. This is the case because there is a lip in which you can grab onto.
Visibility:
With the clear plastic around it, the user can see what is actually going on inside the machine. This is really helpful to understand the model better and to confirm that it actually is working in the way that the user intended it.

Everyday Examples of Bad Design:

Washing Machine and Dryer:
Without fail, my roommates and I always seem to operate this device incorrectly because the dryer is started by pushing the knob whereas the washer is started by pulling the knob out. Thankfully the other functions work better.

Mapping and Visibility:
In this instance, there is no natural mapping as to whether you need to push or pull the knob. Therefore, you either have to guess or search for the tiny label in the bottom right hand corner. A better mapping would just be an on/off switch. However, if this isn't possible, the designer should at least be able to make the start command map to the same action - either both pull, or both push to start.
Feedback and Error Correction:
There is no feedback if it is pulled/pushed the wrong direction, but thankfully, the system gives immediate feedback when it does start. It also has error correction since you can “redo” the action that you performed by executing the opposite actions.
Overall, this system works well, but when you specifically look at the mechanism to start the washer and dryer bad design is encountered. This could definitely be improved to reduce the level of frustration that users have.

Blender:

Mapping:

This blender can be made to work, but it is not the easiest device to figure out. First of all, it has two actions mapped to each single button except for the crush ice button on the bottom. This creates a lot of confusion because you don’t know how to pick the desired action. For example, liquefy and chop are mapped to the same button. Now, there is a button to the right that says high and low. If you push it down and push the liquefy/chop button as well, I believe the blender is now set to liquefy. The other option is that the high/low button is not pressed but the liquefy/chop button is. This should mean that the blender is set to chop. This setup could not be discovered without the manual. What if a non-pressed high/low button actually means liquefy? – that won’t be good for your recipe. Also, I have no clue how to stop the blender from blending. I think you can just push any button half way and then it stops, but that is not clear at all. Overall, the mapping would have been a lot better if the designers added more buttons.

Feedback:

The errors created by the mapping above could have been avoided if the blender provided some sort of feedback. A light above liquefy or above chop would have been sufficient to display what speed the blender was running on. However, as it was, there was no notification to tell the user which speed was active; thus, making them guess by the different pitch that the blender made.

Constraints:

One other bad design feature is that there are no forcing functions. Many times in the manual, there was a warning that told the user not to hold down the “crush ice” button for too long because it might fry the motor. They instead told the user to periodically hold down the button in a sort of pulse pattern. What happens if the user pushed it and then started talking to a friend and forgot to stop it? Does the blender recognize that a particular mode has been on too long? Nope. It will continue to run and fry itself out. What would be really beneficial in this case would be to add a lockout device to stop the blender after a certain time or have the pulse function built into the “crush ice” method. 

Fan:
Mapping and Memory: 
You have three settings for one cord, which can be confusing. Does it go from high, medium, low or low, medium, high? Maybe there are only two settings. The point is you can’t tell until you experiment with it. This is not necessarily the best case scenario. I think a better design would be to replace the wall switch (which just turns the fan on) with some sort of dial or range that can map to the speed or setting of the fan. If the user wants to turn the light off while the fan is still on, they have to guess which one of the two cords map to that. Normally I always pick the wrong one and then have to reset the setting before I turn the lights off. Most fans try to differentiate the two by having different length cords, but this fan has them the exact same length. So, you cannot tell them apart except for a different style handle on the cords. Thus you have to contain all the information in your head. A better design would be to portray the information in the world.  This can be accomplished by having one shaped like a light bulb and the other one like a fan blade. I know this would definitely help me to keep them separate.

Earrings:
User Model vs. System Image:
This is not a common device that I would think of, but it made me realize that I had a different conceptual model compared to the system image. For some reason, I look at these clip on earrings and see that the one on the left has a bigger gap between the front and back. Therefore, I assumed that this means that it is loser and would not hurt as much. However, I also noticed that when you turn the screw clockwise, which is normally mapped to tightening something, the earring looked like the one on the left. So, was my first idea right or the second one? In actuality, the system model is more like the second idea. Even though the front and back are farther apart, there is a spring that causes more force as the back is forced away.

 Emergency Help:
For this object, I wouldn't think that it would be considered bad design. However, after I really looked at it, I noticed some changes that could be made to drastically improve it. 
Mapping:
First of all, the mapping is not all one for one. In order to start a call you would have to push 1 first. This fact is only known through reading the tiny read sentence on the top right. If I was in danger and needed to call someone, I don't think I would be calm enough to read and comprehend why the phone wasn't working.
Feedback:
However, there is good feedback with the light in the bottom left hand corner and of course the big blue on one the very top. However, I don't know if any of the buttons make a noise or if you could accurately read everything on it if it is dark outside. Therefore, lights behind the buttons would be very beneficial. It would also be good if these lights changed color once the button was pressed.
Usability:
One other factor that I thought of was to have larger size buttons to account for scared individuals who are apt to make a mistake.