I’m going to start off by saying that I really quite liked this piece. Since middle school, I’ve always been an adamant believer in the concept: Attractive Things Work Better. In fact, I’d like to take it one step further by saying: Using beautiful things may even make the user more productive.

Most people believe that in a certain price range, the item with the best technical specifications and the most functions is the one with the best value. The aesthetic design, compatibility (with software and other accessories or products), and other less “tangible” qualities are often overlooked. In my opinion, these less concrete elements play just as important of a role as the tech specs in creating the best possible user experience, contributing significantly to its “value”, though in a less tangible way. As Norman stated in the second last paragraph, “good design means that beauty and usability are in balance”.

Take Apple as an example. Many Apple products such as the MacBook Pro or the iPhone do not have technical components that even come close to rivaling those employed by other products of other brands in the same price range. Yet, there are many (although still a minority) that choose to go with Apple’s products because of their soft qualities (i.e. sleek design, interconnectivity, aka Apple Ecosystem, etc). Throughout the years, Apple has stuck by its core values by putting as much emphasis on design and software as its hardware. Yes, they have been vehemently criticized because of the subpar specs, but they’ve also managed to garner a loyal customer base that appreciate the soft qualities of its products. Seeing how they’re currently still the world’s most profitable company, I’d say it worked out pretty well for Apple.

Interesting and informative piece. The section discussing the concept of human centered design resonated strongly with an important bit of advice Aaron gave us after the first assignment. That piece of advice was to always consider the audience/customer/user and all the possible ways they might use your product when designing the item because chances are, many of them might not read the manuals and use the item the way we thought they would when we created it. I agree that the best way to design/create something is to put the audience’s needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then design something to accommodate all of it.

Comment 1.

While reading this, I was reminded a lot of another class I have taken called “Wayfinding” with Professor Goffredo Puccetti. In this course, we walked around our university’s campus and looked at some aspects of the design that were confusing, or even potentially dangerous.

One of the most common problems on campus is that people walk on the grass instead of the pathway; this I think ties into what Don Norman was saying about Human Centered Design. People will want to walk the shortest distance possible to get to their destination, and so that should be taken into consideration when laying out pathways.

This concept specifically stood out to me because it is so prevalent where I live.

Comment 2.

This reading covered a lot of interesting/useful things a designer should keep in mind. From affordances and signifiers to the amount and delivery of feedback; these are all aspects that should be considered in designing lots of things, not just concrete objects.

I like specifically how he mentions things like furniture layout are a part of design, because this is not something people think of when they hear “design”.

This ties back to my Wayfinding class which focused on the ease of navigation and understandability of a space. This too, is design, as it is an umbrella that encompasses a plethora of practices.

I believe it’s pretty clear from my last blog post that I agree with the arguments presented in this article. Though he repeated many of the points that were mentioned in his book, the concentration on the cognitive aspects was interesting.

Towards the end, when he mentions the Japanese lunchboxes or bentos, the concept truly came together for me. As I am familiar with the concept of a bento box and it’s aesthetic values. Bento boxes are nutritiously balanced, extremely pleasing (aesthetically), delicious and the amount of food is also perfected. The example was able to very simply explain the harmony that must occur between all parts of a product.  Overall, I don’t have much more to say about this piece except that it was easily understandable.

There was a point in the reading where Norman talks about how a bookmark placed in a book can be a signifier. How it shows the amount of pages that are left until the end. How when a student places a bookmark they are confronted with the idea that there are ‘n’ number of pages left until it’s finally done. This was extremely relatable when reading his piece.

Although sometimes the piece seemed to drag on and Norman seemed to be repeating his point and explanation over and over again, his arguments are solid. In his conclusion about how a good design is the combination of various fields and the understanding of human nature made a lot of sense to me.

I’ve had many discussions with my brother about using Androids and how they are more ‘efficient’ and have higher capabilities. However, as a loyal iPhone user, I find the appeal of the phone not centered around its usability but also its aesthetics, simple to use and easy to understand interface, compatibility with other devices etc. . Perhaps it’s human to like simple and pleasing rather than ugly but efficient.

Also, I found it funny how he was describing a watch that had social media and smartphone like capabilities because all I kept thinking was: Apple Watch!!!

Perhaps “The Design of Everyday Things” takes a different turn after the first chapter, but none of what was written in this article seemed incongruent with what was written in the book. While “The Design” emphasizes the clear transmission of functions, it does not suggest to me that this would necessarily make things uglier. In fact, when he identifies that “[g]reat designers produce pleasurable experiences”, I could easily see aesthetics being implied in this. It is certainly true that the importance of emotion was not thoroughly analyzed and that there is a great deal of interesting and relevant information in the article, but if feels like a natural extension of the design philosophy previously mentioned. If the primary mechanism for determining the quality of a design is the response people give to it, then pretty things will obviously score higher than equally functional ugly things.

Unlike the previous readings, I don’t have much to say about this reading, as I found that it was almost exclusively new and comprehensible ideas to me. While my experiences with a number of designs differ from the authors, especially concerning the sink, his identification of the problem and proposed solution both seem feasible to me. However, that does bring me to the one questionable moment I found in his analysis. In his introduction of human centered design he mentions that part of the process is “to avoid specifying the problem as long as possible but instead to
iterate upon repeated approximations.” While this clearly works as a stopgap, throughout the rest of the chapter he is able to clearly identify what is wrong and what the solution could be for a number of bad designs. These solutions also all fit together in a consistent framework, and so it seems to me that with some development it should be possible to remove the iterations and allow the minimum requirements for a good design in any situation to be known before the object is ever made, much less used. There would almost certainly be multiple “correct” solutions, but this seems to me to be the point at which the engineers would get on board and the difficulty in communication between departments, as he identifies at the end, would lessen.