The Design of Everyday Things, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
While reading the text, so many real-life examples of me having trouble with the designs of the things came to my mind. Just taking the example of our campus, the heavy automatic doors in the entrance of the buildings, which open to one side only, or the design of the grass in front of the D2, which makes people bypass them instead of walking straight (although some people just step on the grass instead of bypassing it), or the lighting in the huge study rooms which turn off by itself if no movement is detected under some unlogically built detectors. By providing these examples, I am suggesting that I support the author’s position about the abundance of user-unfriendly everyday things.
I would like to extend the author’s idea by claiming that the difficulty of understanding the design isn’t the only issue. The main issue is having a continuous uncomfortable experience while using the devices because of poor design. Once you understand how things work, it becomes easier to manage. However, if the thing is itself unfriendly, the difficulties with the utilization of the object continue. For instance, taking the same example of the study rooms, it might be hard in the beginning to understand how to open the door. For those who don’t know, the button on the wall (separated from the door) should be pressed in order to open the door. However, by doing the same thing over and over again, this aspect becomes like a habit so the people intuitively start pressing the button before opening the door. However, the issue of lamps turning off when the movement isn’t detected continues to make the uncomfortable experience in study rooms. Usually, the detectors of movements are placed at the entrance, so the lights will be turned on when the people enter. However, no one sits in front of the entrance door. Because of the lack of detectors on top of the chairs or putting them in random spots, the light turns off being unable to recognize that someone is really sitting in the room. This is the reason for terminating my presence in the study rooms.
This reading really gave a feeling of satisfaction as if the author really raised the voice of all the users. As the author mentioned, the design of the objects should rely on common knowledge rather than logical explanations as people are the way they are, not the way the engineers expect them to be. Here raises the question of the range of the common knowledge. To what extent we can simplify things to common knowledge without sacrificing the functionality of things? For instance, is it better to have many functionalities in the washing machine with detailed instructions to them or is it better to limit the washing machine design to several buttons with the most obvious functions, so the instructions paper is not needed?