An untrained person seated in the cockpit of a modern get liner would be completely bewildered by the array of gauges and controls before him - but he would not be surprised or bothered by this because he recognizes that flying an airplane is a complicated task that he is unable to perform. However, when he struggles to operate a door, switches, water faucets, and other common everyday devices, he becomes quite upset.
There are few things quite so simple as a door. To open it, you can pull it or you can push it. And yet, this is often perplexing - and when you figure out the basic signs that indicate whether to pull or push, you will find they are used inconsistently. And sometimes, you will even encounter a door that slides. So fumbling with a door happens quite often: we push a door that is meant to be pulled or vice-versa. We solve the problem rather quickly and are not permanently obstructed, but it's annoying all the same. And it happens far more often than it should. The author pauses to mention he has used this analogy quite often, such that a poorly designed door is called a Norman Door- Google it.
The author refers to Jacques Carelman, who has developed an entire series of books called "D'objets Introuvables" (roughly, "Confusing Objects") that provides many examples of everyday things that are unworkable, ill-formed, ill-conceived, and thoroughly bad in every way. It's an entertaining read, but a sad reminder of how many badly designed objects frustrate and annoy us in our everyday lives.
He tells an anecdote about a friend getting trapped in a post office between two rows of glass doors. The visual effect of the architecture was quite elegant, and "probably won design awards," but made it unclear which side of the door would swing open. So after passing through the first set of doors, he pushed on the wrong side of a door (the side with the hinges) and assumed it was locked. He turned around and did the same thing, and then assumed that the door had locked behind him. He remained stuck there until someone else wandered through the doors and he was able to figure out what had gone wrong.
The two most important characteristics of good design are:
The glass doors in the anecdote above show a failure of discoverability: a glass pane with four metal squares at the corners does not enable the user to recognize how it can be used, or even to perceive by inspection how it might be used. Omitting a push-plate and concealing the hinges were deliberate design choices - and very bad ones, as they made it impossible to see how to operate the door, or even to recognize it was a door at all.
The more complex a device becomes, the more difficult it is for an individual to determine what to do merely by looking at it. We provide manuals or training courses to teak people to use complex devices like computers or airplanes. But the author suggests that many devices are made to be complex by including too many functions, controls, and unnecessary features. A washing machine shouldn't look like the control room of a spaceship, with a bewildering array of controls and displays, considering that most people will never use all of the settings and features the modern washing machine provides.
Another brief anecdote: a couple who purchased a state-of-the-art washer/dryer combination device were complexes by all the controls. The husband refused to go near it, and the wife had figured out one method of getting it to work and ignored everything else. These weren't stupid people - one was an engineer and the other a physician - they simply didn't want to devote the time to learning a complex device to perform the simple task of washing clothing.
Begin with the premise: all artificial things are designed.
That is not to say that they are designed well, or that much thought is put into them - but they are intentionally crafted and arranged by someone. And given that, then there are an enormous number of things that impact the daily lives of modern man that have been designed - and unless you're on a camping trip in the wilderness, chances are the number of "designed" objects in your environment far outnumber the ones that are truly natural.
In the best of cases, products should be designed to be easy to use, such that they do not become an obstruction or distraction, but can be used to accomplish the things we wish to do with a minimum of distraction. Sadly, this is not the case, and the stress and frustration of modern life largely arises from the fact that we live in a poorly designed world, full of awkward and difficult things - and this is the failure of their designers.
The design of everyday objects seems very mundane and unimportant - but given that they rob life of its pleasure, it is a very worthwhile undertaking. And that is the subject of this book, though it is likely too large a topic for a single book to address, hence the author plans to focus on three areas:
Design implies that an item is crafted in order to achieve a given objective. Thus far it has only been considered in terms of usability for a given purchase - but there is also the notion that a product can be designed to be attractive, or affordable, or efficient, or durable, or to deliver some other value. In some instances these qualities come into conflict with one another and may require a trade-off of one thing for another.
The hardest part of design is often to simply get people to agree on these goals - or to get a single person to be reasonable in setting them. A customer wants the product to be both high-quality and cheap, to have many functions but be easy to use, and so on. It is the designer who balances one desire against the other.
And even if you can find a way to satisfy the competing demands of the customer, there is then the demands of the organization that is producing the device. Aside of wanting it to be producible at a cost that enables them to make a profit, they may want it to be easy to service, easy to ship, etc.
The happy ending to all this conflict is that it can be done - and every product that is commercially successful is proof that it has been done. The task for designers in the competitive market is simply to do it better.