Monday, September 27, 2010
Plant Trees !
I am also worried about environment. I am also concerned about trees. A small illustration from my side:
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Old v/s New
In his book, ‘Design Everyday Things’, Don Norman has talked about certain principles of good design. Two of several are ‘Visibility’ and ‘Feedback’. It says that in any product, controls should be visible and should provide feedback after being operated. All new designs are coming up with these features and are thus becoming easy to use.
But there are some cases, in which old design used to have these features already but new design, on the contrary, does not have.
When we park our cars, we lock all the doors. In earlier models, lock button was located adjacent to windows. Hence, it was easily visible even when the person is out of the car. Also, proper feedback is given by them. If it was up, car was unlocked and if it was down, car was locked.
In today’s car, this lever has gone under the window, along with other door opening lever. Thus, visibility has reduced to zero from outside of the car. Feedback also becomes irrelevant as the control itself is not apparent. Now, the person has to check all the doors manually, one by one, to be assured whether the car is completely locked or not.
A check which could be performed by just one glance in old designs has changed into a complete task in new designs. And we say, new designs leads to betterment !
But there are some cases, in which old design used to have these features already but new design, on the contrary, does not have.
When we park our cars, we lock all the doors. In earlier models, lock button was located adjacent to windows. Hence, it was easily visible even when the person is out of the car. Also, proper feedback is given by them. If it was up, car was unlocked and if it was down, car was locked.
In today’s car, this lever has gone under the window, along with other door opening lever. Thus, visibility has reduced to zero from outside of the car. Feedback also becomes irrelevant as the control itself is not apparent. Now, the person has to check all the doors manually, one by one, to be assured whether the car is completely locked or not.
A check which could be performed by just one glance in old designs has changed into a complete task in new designs. And we say, new designs leads to betterment !
Unaddressed problems
I am sure; each one of you must have encountered problems in operating switches in some place or the other. It’s always a challenge to work out which switch belong to what. In fact, it’s a problem faced by everyone whenever s/he go to a new place or the same place after a long time and in some extreme cases repeatedly. I can recall my experiences right from my childhood to this date, how it used to become a herculean task to identify all switches in a house and their controls. More than quarter century has passed but the problem has persisted.
Switches have covered a long way of evolution. But, this evolution seems to be lopsided only towards aesthetics i.e. ornamentation and technology i.e. how to make them shock proof, etc. But, usability is something which has been ignored again and again. It’s surprising that even being an omnipotent problem, no designer ever tried to derive any solution for this.
Users have their own way of reducing their memory load. Some uses permanent markers to write ‘T, F, L, etc’ on switch panel or some uses suitcases’ stickers to denote the connections. So, ‘answer’ is to simply make information visible and comprehensible. But, the vital ‘question’ is: who, designer or user, needs to do this job?
Switches have covered a long way of evolution. But, this evolution seems to be lopsided only towards aesthetics i.e. ornamentation and technology i.e. how to make them shock proof, etc. But, usability is something which has been ignored again and again. It’s surprising that even being an omnipotent problem, no designer ever tried to derive any solution for this.
Users have their own way of reducing their memory load. Some uses permanent markers to write ‘T, F, L, etc’ on switch panel or some uses suitcases’ stickers to denote the connections. So, ‘answer’ is to simply make information visible and comprehensible. But, the vital ‘question’ is: who, designer or user, needs to do this job?
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