Reading Norman’s The Psychology of Everyday Things made me notice how often bad designs are excused focusing on the supposed incompetence of the users. For instance, his discussion of Norman Doors was something I could absolutely relate because on multiple occasions, I personally have pushed the wrong side of a glass door only to feel clumsy and inobservant even though, as he points out, the real failure is in the design and not the user (me). That shift, blaming the design instead of the user, was oddly liberating. It reminded me that designs should communicate clearly and if I can’t figure out, the system image is broken. I started thinking about my own sketches for the weekly productions in p5: sometimes when I code and interaction, I get worried that people may not use it ‘the right way.’ But Norman’s text made me realize that I am responsible for building the right signifiers, the visual or behavioral cues that make the action discoverable.
Another part that stuck with me was Norman’s point that designers often create for how they wish people behave, and not how they realistically behave. This discrepancy, I realized, is the reason behind a lot of products failing to flourish as much as they were projected to. I found myself guilty of the same, to be frank; I oftentimes assume people will read the readme.md file or be patient enough to try different keys until something interesting happens. But in reality, users tend much more to attain instant feedback/gratification from an interactive device in this age of technology. It is far beyond ambitious to expect users to get a PhD on my product before they put their hands on that.
Norman’s framework of affordances, signifiers, mapping, and feedback gave me a checklist (literally like a cheat code) that I can use in my projects. I will ask myself upon drafting the project whether it:
- shows what’s possible through the interface
- maps actions to outcomes naturally
- provides a meaningful/satisfying feedback
I want to reimagine some of the (slightly) interactive sketches keeping Norman’s (very reasonable) propositions and later compare them with their counterparts to visualize the narrative I have already subscribed to.