The Design of Everyday Intelligence- Chpt. 1 Review

1) In Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things he touches on six crucial points of the design process. In my reading I identified the following factors of design: visibility, affordance, mapping, constraints, feedback, and the paradox of technology. Each of these component play a large role in the user’s ability to effectively, efficiently, and easily use a product.
Visibility seemed to be Norman’s top point in this chapter. He talks about the psychology of looking at a design. A good design is easily understood by its user; cues within the design lead its users to assume specific affordances (talked about later). “Natural signals” are an important piece in visibility, they are taken in subconsciously by the brain and naturally understood, making the product easy to use.
Next Norman comes to affordances, or what the user perceives as uses for a product. A good product has specific, limited, and easily identifiable affordances. When a product’s affordances are vague or varied it becomes more difficult to use.
Constraints are barriers within a product that limit certain actions by its users. By limiting unwanted actions a product is more easily used- its possible uses are cut down. Norman portrays the concept of constraint through the examples of scissors and a floppy disc. Scissors have holes which are affordances to place fingers in, but by constraining the size of the holes the scissors are more likely to be used properly- one finger in the small hole, multiple fingers in the large hole. With the floppy disc there are eight possible ways to insert the disc into the drive, but by using a special design that only allows one side to enter the drive the designers ensured that the disc would be used properly.
The overall concept created through affordances and constraints is mapping. Mapping is the way the user looks at a product and realize how it should be used. Based on the affordances and constraints of a product the user develops a mental image of how the product should work, or if it shouldn’t work for that matter. If a product is well mapped out then the consumer should be able to easily identify its intended purpose.
Lastly for the concepts of the actual design process is feedback. This idea is important in that in order for a consumer to use a product they must be aware of the their actions and the proceeding results. Feedback ties in directly with visuals in the sense that users want to have a visual cue for their actions. Without feedback users have no idea if their actions are creating the desired effects.
The paradox of technology is important in summing up the consequences of effectively mastering the previous five points of design. As a product becomes more advanced and has more functions it naturally becomes more difficult to use. This is a major problem that designers must overcome; they must be able to add features to a product while increasing the difficulty of use as little as possible. As mentioned by Norman, the paradox of technology often follows a “U shaped curve,” meaning that when a product is first developed it is usually finicky and difficult to use, but as the designers get a hold of things the product becomes more efficient. Still as the product becomes more efficient users demand more out of it. As users demand more designers must give them more; more means more to learn, organize, and describe. Each concept of design must be taken into consideration by the designer when further developing a product.
When creating a product, it is the goal of the design team to achieve harmony among all of these factors. Constraints must be set so that users can find desired affordance for a product. These affordances then lead to the proper mapping of the product. In the end, it all comes down to visual cues. Clear-cut visual cues are the users top aid when shaping an idea of how a product works. A well-made product is one that’s uses are easily visualized and understood.
2) One product that I struggle with is my graphing calculator. I feel that the visual design of the product makes it difficult to use. The fact that it is difficult to use goes along with the paradox of technology; there is just so much going on with the calculator that it seems nearly impossible to fully understand it. I would say that the main hold-up is the visual setup. Plain and simple, there are too many keys with too many functions. Even the simplest of actions can be made difficult by all the surrounding symbols, letters, and numbers. Still, the design is understandable; the calculator was designed to perform almost all possible mathematical functions, to fit in one’s pocket, and to compute problems much more easily than by hand, which it does exactly that.
3) The designers of the iPod did a very impressive job with using Norman’s concepts. They kept it simple and by doing so created a user-friendly, specific product. When a user first picks up an iPod there are a limited number of affordances, meaning it shouldn’t take long to figure out. The constraints were able to be kept to a minimum as the visual aids should be obvious to the user. These visual aids also make mapping the iPod very simple. The small number of affordances and clear visual aids make learning to use the iPod quite easy. Feedback is neatly given in the form of a clicking sound and highlighted words on the screen, ensuring that the user knows exactly what he is doing. Overall the iPod neatly works in the many points made by Norman, making it into the great product that it has become.
Despite these positive factors the iPod has also fallen victim to the paradox of technology. As Apple’s technology develops the iPod receives frequent upgrades and new gadgets. With these additions comes a larger learning curve when first using the product. As the paradox says, each advancement in technology leads to newer benefits, but along with those benefits comes an increase in the product’s complexity.