BYOMSPM

Below is a summary of Chapter 4 of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman along with a few critical thoughts I had in response to some key quotes. Enjoy.

Chapter 4

Today, class, we will be discussing things that designers can do to reduce the mental load that it takes for users to use a product. Namely, we will be discussing constraints, discoverability, and feedback.

In The Design of Everyday Things, Norman first lays out four kinds of constraints that can help to guide people’s actions:

1. Physical constraints – limiting what is physically possible
2. Cultural constraints – being limited to culturally permissible possibilities
3. Semantic constraints – relying on the meaning of a situation or product to guide potential actions
4. Logical constraints – possibilities limited by logical reasoning

Norman then explains that signifiers of such constraints and affordances in everyday objects are key to enabling people to use them properly.

“…modern automobiles are excellent examples of design. The handles are often recessed receptacles that simultaneously indicate the place and mode of action.”

The Design of Everyday Things, p. 133

He adds that the inside handles of cars, on the other hand, are often not great examples of good design. Immediately I thought of the design of the exterior and interior door handles on Teslas, which are great examples of designs that do not effectively signal to new users their affordances and controls (based on various personal experiences). But Tesla is not necessarily constrained by money or resources, so I started to wonder if this “poor” design might have actually been intentional. My best guess is that they purposefully made the door handles difficult for new users to interpret to make the cars seem exclusive and to allow Tesla owners or seasoned users to pridefully explain to new users how to operate the handles. Maybe I’m being pessimistic, but I don’t think this is an instance of Tesla attempting to define a new, better way to do door handles (which Norman explains is a necessary part of innovation). I say this because I don’t think there’s anything about these door handles that is significantly better than the existing design that would motivate other designers to switch over — in fact I think they’re less usable, even when you know how to use them. At the end of the day, I think they just wanted to make a statement.

Then, when moving past the car door handle example into a long description about the omnipresence of incomprehensible rows of identical light switches in buildings (which I can relate to, as I recently made handwritten labels for the light switches in my house to distinguish them), Norman tries to reconcile why confusing designs are so prevalent:

“Whose fault is this? Probably nobody’s.”

The Design of Everyday Things, p. 136

The prevalence of bad design is a complex issue. In the book he cites that coordination of the various parties involved in the design of separate parts of a single product is a key factor that limits the quality of design. I would add that it’s generally more expensive up front to achieve great designs, and it’s not always obvious whether there will be any financial (or other) payoff to that investment. It reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday about the architectural design of new housing developments around the US and complaints I’ve heard architect friends express about the houses’ low aesthetic quality. The first point to consider is that affordability and high quality design are usually at odds, and the companies creating the housing developments across the country must have repeatedly calculated that the chosen combinations of price and quality are the optimal money-making balance. In other words, capitalism, at least in this case of new housing in the current market, doesn’t seem to favor high quality design. But another consideration is that in many areas of the country there is a shortage of affordable housing, and mass producing large quantities of homes that are often more reasonably priced than existing, surrounding homes is a great way to address this issue. In other words, it seems that there might in fact be instances when there are valid arguments to sacrifice great design.

That said, if you’re going to aim for great design, Norman outlines some strategies to get there:

“A usable design starts with careful observations of how the tasks being supported are actually performed, followed by a design process that results in a good fit to the actual ways the tasks get performed. The technical name for the method is task analysis. The name for the entire process is human-centered design (HCD).”

The Design of Everyday Things, p. 137

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been using an app or operating a product and thought to myself “did the designers of this even ever watch anyone actually use this product live??” From small details to entire feature misalignments, it’s astonishing how many designs could be improved if only the designers carefully observed users using the products. That said, this might be another instance of an ideal design practice that is limited by restrictions on resources. Sigh. A girl can dream.

The chapter then discusses the changing nature of conventions:

“If a new way of doing things is only slightly better than the old, it is better to be consistent. But if there is to be a change, everybody has to change.”

The Design of Everyday Things, p. 149

This is something that I don’t think happens according to these guidelines very often because it takes immense coordination. One annoying example that comes to mind is phone chargers. Another is hotel key cards. Norman also describes the inconsistencies of water faucets. Later, he mentions the term skeuomorphic, which describes “incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role” (Norman). This immediately made me think of driverless cars keeping the general layout and many of the features of human-operated cars (eg. windows) to help riders feel more at ease and make the transition to new technology seem less daunting. I don’t keep up with everything going on with driverless cars, but even with those design choices I think there remains a significant amount of resistance to adopting the new technology.

We’ll end with a fun fact from the book: electric vehicles are now legally required to make artificial noise that emulates the sound of gas-powered cars because without it they’d be so quiet that anyone who relies on sound to detect the presence of a moving vehicle wouldn’t be able to.

Thanks for reading.

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Works Cited

Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. MIT Press, 2013.