Reflection on The Design of Everyday Things, Chapter 1
As a kid, I would agree with the author and say the thing that drives me crazy is the glass doors, that are not at all seen at all, and I kept bumping into them, nearly injuring myself. Another design that is not settled with me is the design of the bed legs. In my room at home, I keep hitting my toe with the bed leg every time I cross the bed. I feel like they are placed too much in the corner, and it is inconvenient for people, since designers didn’t think about how the object would exist in the living space and would not cause any difficulties in passing near it. I think the way to improve is to move the bed legs a bit closer, so there would be more space between the edge of the bed and floor, so when the foot is placed somewhere near, it doesn’t clash with the bed leg. Another thing I don’t really understand is why menu’s do not have photos of the dishes, cause it makes people spend more time on choosing the meal, and I guess this problem is easier to solve by just adding real pictures.
I think the way to introduce principles from the book to our IM projects and to the sphere fully is to create more signifiers, and consequently affordances in our designs. For me, right now my works mostly are appealing to my ideation and artistic thought, while they actually have to consider primarily communication between the user and the design. I think because of limits in my technical abilities, I am not able to consider the issues of affordable design for now. But the way to work on them in the future, is to introduce previews for the code, such as a small introduction about the project and what can you do with it, like lines “Press the key”. Moreover, I think to make the design more understandable for the user, is to create dynamic designs, which in some way will show how design works. And there are also simple things like buttons, keys, scales, that make design approachable. But, I agree with the author on a point that the more functions a design possesses and the more technological it gets, the more complex it becomes to maintain an affordable and easy flow design of a product.