I totally agree with the author’s essential idea that it’s all about balancing competing priorities including usability, attractiveness, cost, reliability, manufacturability, marketability, and so on. I realized through reading that nowadays people care more about aesthetics rather than functionality, which undermines the usability of the product. Although aesthetics are quite important to attract a larger audience, I truly think that preserving usability is a must and should never be compromised. Otherwise, it would be bad if we, as producers, confuse users about how to use the product. As someone who likes minimalistic design, in my future projects in interactive media, I would like to keep the design simple and modern, while still being attractive to users. Muji is a great example. Its product designs are super simple, yet their usability is pretty good. Thus, I would like to balance usability and attractiveness like Muji does.
I also realized that what’s being discussed in this reading is quite similar to the software development life cycle I learned in my software engineering class. Back in the old days, communication between clients and producers was not prioritized. However, in modern days, we use the agile method, where communication among users, developers, and business people is the most important factor in increasing usability and satisfying users’ expectations. I drew a connection here with the reading in the sense that we put more emphasis on facilitating communication to better understand and design the product itself.
Something that drives me crazy is a washlet. As a Japanese person, I’m proud that so many foreigners are fond of it. But I don’t know how to use it even to this day. It has too many buttons, and sometimes there are buttons called “massage,” which I’m scared to press because I cannot imagine how a toilet would massage me while sitting. Also, there are multiple buttons to spray water, so I don’t know from which part of the toilet the water will spray. I’m just scared of getting wet and confused. I wish it could reduce the number of buttons for usability and add some simple text to explain what will happen when I press a certain button.