Something completely unrelated to the reading that drives me a little crazy is the automatic doors on campus that only work about half the time. Sometimes they slide open right away, other times Im standing there waving my arm around because the sensor did not pick me up, and there is zero indication why. No light nothing telling me if it’s just slow or actually broken. If I redesigned it, Id add a small light near the sensor that turns on when it detects motion, so at least you know whether it registered you or the whole thing is just dead. It is basically Norman’s feedback problem in physical form.
As for applying his principles to interactive media, I think the shift for me is realizing a lot of what I call “interactive” in my own work is really just affordance without signification. In a browser based project, technically anything can be clicked since a mouse works anywhere, but that does not mean the user knows what is clickable unless I signify it, through a hover state or cursor change or something. Feedback matters the same way it does with the campus doors, if someone triggers an action and nothing visibly changes for even a beat, they’ll assume it’s broken and click again, same standing and waving problem. The takeaway is that clever mechanics don’t matter if the signifiers and feedback don’t communicate clearly. The user just experiences confusion and assumes it’s their fault which now feels like a design failure on my end rather than a user failure on theirs.