Creative Reading Response:
I think one recurring answer for me on the topic of “difficult tech/design” would be Notion. I’ve repeatedly given myself and Notion a “second-try”, which really went on to be more than two tries, just so I can get on the “trend” and make use of all the great, highly productive, convenient, and efficient functions that it’s known for. However, it’s exactly its variety of functions that trips me over and frustrates me immensely. Whenever I’m trying to customize my pages, it’s just confusing, then I turn to templates which work for a while but then becomes confusing again when I wish to edit some features to better suit my habits and lifestyle. The “advanced” functions also made me feel “inferior” in the sense that even if I watch tutorials and follow other people in making my own templates, I just can’t seem to “figure it out” and make the experience less like untangling a yarn ball, while the other people, who are the reason I wish to use Notion, just seem like they’ve got it all figured out and under control. Talking about control, that’s also something I find really important in my experience with Notion. Oftentimes, when I’m exploring or setting up pages and links, they just suddenly become messy and “wrongly organized” and hard to “undo”, which makes me feel very “powerless” and frustrated. However I do think it could be improved, or perhaps some products are just not meant for everyone, which brings me to my opinion on what the text mentioned about how consumers shouldn’t accommodate products but rather products should accommodate consumers.
While I totally agree with this point, I also see the difficulty in juggling an advanced variety of features in the product and consumer experience. I think it’s almost like calculators, you need a certain level of “knowledge” to know how to use it and make it to the full use, like me and Notion: yes, you can stop with the basics of 1+1 but once you know there’s tools for graphs and derivatives, you just can’t help but to want more from the product and end up struggling with it. Or perhaps I‘m wrong and that Notion could in fact be better in accommodating consumers like me but who am I to say that when people are doing just fine with it. Or perhaps it’s the “peer pressure” getting to me and that people don’t actually find the experience that enjoyable but I wouldn’t know and frankly, I’m just fine without Notion.
Exploring this opinion really made me reflect on myself both personally and academically: am I too comfortable with what’s already in the “market” and am I lacking opinions in the way I see popular designs and tools? Perhaps that’s what I should learn: to have a stronger opinion, and believe that things could always be better even if they’re widely accepted, just like the unreasonable doors.
Overall, I find the text very interesting, and very closely tied to our previous reading on what’s interactive. Both made me realize the importance of “experience” and that a good design should be enjoyable. Looking back, many of the products mentioned in the text have given me a difficult time yet I never really thought about the way it could be better and in fact, what factor is lacking. I really enjoy the idea of signifiers and affordance in the way that it ties to the human mind’s “modelling”. For instance, when he mentioned the sliding doors and how the door handle in fact gave a signal of push or pull but instead worked as a slide. This made me think of how it could’ve been better so the signifier is natural and leads to discovering the affordance, and I thought perhaps it should’ve made a vertical dent where people can place their fingers to grasp and slide the door, which was a thought that surprised me and made me feel good. 🙂