Week 4 – Reading Reflection

The reading, from the very start, drew me in with the example of the door. C2 of our campus has 2 doors on the sides (not the automatic doors in the very center) and I remember a friend who always pushed the wrong side of the door and so “nothing happened.” As a side note, she never figured it out (and rather gave up on using the doors) until she graduated last term.

It was interesting that design can have effect on people’s daily lives because I actually always thought designs are affected by human thoughts and behaviours. Looking at art and design as a way of showcasing how people think, I considered them as a one way thing, where people give inspiration to designs. For me, it was a very new way think that design has impact on people, and people give (or should give) feedback- impacting the design- and the (new) design impacting people, and on and on.

It does throw a question, however, in terms of how the feedbacks would be collected. I think normal users of designs still mostly focus on the aesthetics of designs more than the easy utility of it. (For instance, if something’s beautiful, we tend to think that its job is done as it is, even when it can be easier to use, or more effective serving its purpose.) So, I think the first step to being able to effectively gather feedback and provide some sort of guideline to designers would be the recognition of necessary standards of designs.

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