Reading Reflection – Week 5
One thing that annoys me is faulty elevator button designs such as the “Door Close” button that doesn’t work or when floors are numbered in a way that makes no sense. Some others make you swipe a keycard first before you press a floor, but you can’t tell that you’re meant to do that, so you just keep pressing the button and can’t figure out why it’s not working. The easy fix is more obvious signifiers, such as a little light or message that says, “Swipe card first.” This is Norman’s guideline that good design must make things obvious so users won’t need to guess. As for interactive media, I believe Norman’s principles can be applied there too.
For example, in VR, buttons and menus need to behave in intuitive ways—like grabbing objects in the same way you would in the real world instead of using awkward button presses. And feedback is crucial as well. If I tap at something within an application or a game, I expect to feel the effect of the tap in some way, with sound, graphical feedback, or vibration. Norman speaks quite extensively about human-centered design, and my favourites kinds of interactive experience are when things just naturally work the way you think you can do with them—they feel intuitive and do not require interrupting flow for working out what you are meant to be doing.