Reading the first page of chapter one, I almost thought I was doing a reading on wayfinding–essentially the study of how we navigate our environment. Afterall, the push-pull dilemma of a door is pretty much universal regardless of what background and culture you come from. However, this chapter would continue to prove much more broad and discuss real world UX beyond putting handles on one-way push doors.
Norman comes from a background in engineering, so naturally interacting with machinery is something he has a vast perspective on. Let’s talk about where Norman says “When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications.” In Crawford’s reading last week, he compared interaction to having a conversation, which I agree with for the most part. However, I do find it interesting that when a machine fails on us we understand the burden of successful “communication” is undoubtedly on us. This takes me away from the conversation analogy as there is always realistically no one solely at fault for a misunderstanding between two humans.
One of my favorite points of the reading is that we should strive for human-centered design(HCD). As Norman says, “Good design starts with an understanding of psychology and technology.” Realistically, how can there be design without a greater understanding of human cognition? For example, we all know what an arrow has a side it’s pointing at– the way its edges align to a sharp point naturally makes our brain look at the sharp point and what follows it.
That transitions nicely to how this applies to us interactive media majors. When it comes to applying Norman’s principles of design to interactive media, I believe we need to not only invite both like-minded and nonlike-minded friends to test our projects, but consider all their perspectives equally. As Norman says, “Engineers are trained to think logically. As a result, they come to believe that all people must think this way, and they design their machines accordingly.” We ideally should engage those who aren’t also “engineers.”
As for something that drives me crazy and how it could be improved, I really want to rework certain parts of highline pathing. There are certain areas especially near the staircases down to the ground floor that have such poor pathing. You would need to either walk over the grass or detour by a good 5 meters just to follow the intended path rather than your desired path. This semester they even added a bush on the grass area to block you from cutting through the grass– talk about remedial design…
