One thing that drives me crazy is modern microwaves. Many microwaves have confusing button layouts, very cryptic labels, and just overall inconsistent functionality across different brands. Like, some have dedicated buttons for specific foods like popcorn or pizza and bury basic functions like adjusting power levels. Worse, sometimes theres very little feedback if you press the wrong button, the microwave might beep, but it won’t tell you why. To improve this, designers could apply mapping and feedback more effectively. For example, a better approach would mean grouping related buttons together, and maybe place the most important buttons at the top, or make them significantly bigger.
In relation to the author and his principles of design, in the future, I could incorporate clearer feedback mechanisms for user actions in my projects. For instance, if a user hovers over an interactive element, I could add visual signifiers like small animations or color changes to show that the item is clickable. In addition to that, I would pay close attention to mapping, making sure that the user’s input feels directly connected to the system displayed. If I were creating a game where the user controls a character for example, I would make sure that the movements are mapped logically to the controls, such as using the arrow keys to move the character in the expected direction (up for up, down for down).