Conceptual Models

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Lecture on 9/22/2008

slides

Readings

Discussion Questions

Discussions

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Contents


Stuart Bottom 22:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I am completely convinced of the universal validity of Norman's view on natural mapping (for example, on why the automobile is easier to use than the telephone system). At this point I still think there are too many possible alternate causes for the discrepancy he has experienced in his use of each. For example, the challenge with the telephone is that the designers were trying to add a complex set of new features, essentially creating a brand-new system (whereas it could be argued the basic features in a car had not changed much [at the time of writing] for the last 20 years). Also, the author had a representative from the dealer explain the operation of the car to him right before he drove away - in contrast, I saw no indication that corresponding individualized training was provided for the telephone system. The operations in question, too, are different. Driving a car is a mechanical operation; talking to someone hundreds of miles away is an electric and thus very ethereal (and difficult to understand) operation at its core. Finally, telephone designers are restricted by space: an automobile has plenty of space in which to hold its myraid controls, whereas we are trained by convention to think that telephones must be small, so a telephone with many controls (one for each function) would instead seem cluttered and overly "complicated" to us.

I say all this to make the point that the automobile is "naturally" (read: we are trained by convention to see it as) easier to operate than the telephone. It is difficult to make comparisons of apples to oranges: the basic operation of an auto has not really changed for 70 years, while the telephone has gone through many iterations, with functions some of us still don't understand ourselves.

We are trained by our environment to adopt various conventions for things, and those things that are more standard or commonplace are what get locked into our brains first. The controls for operating a car are a relatively universal standard, and have been so for the past few decades. In contrast, there is no universal interface for the telephone - a lack of standardization - which in turn is the real problem, not that the mappings on most current telephone systems are not "natural." The solution to the telephone problem is that because electrically-based tasks are far more flexible in their interface design than mechanical ones (it is mechanically awkward to use a joystick to control a car), a "natural" mapping for telephone operation must be established - because it doesn't currently exist. There are mappings that seem more "natural" to us, because on a subconscious level they more closely replicate existing conventions (in other systems). It is these mappings we should pay attention to - for example, it would be very odd for the next new automobiles to use joysticks and pushbuttons for control instead of steering wheels and pedals - because that would go against the convention of the last 70 years. Going back to my earlier point, it is harder by nature to establish conventions for electrical devices because there are so many more possibilities for the interface design - electrical controls are easy to place anywhere - and the pace of technological development is so high. That is why the author found the auto easier to use than the telephone system - because no "natural mapping" (read: convention) yet exists for its interface - it is harder to establish a convention in the first place.

It is the discrepancy between "natural" and "conventional" that I take issue with - I don't think it is necessarily "natural" that I turn a knob to increase loudness on my speakers instead of pushing up on a lever. Rather, it is conventional - more speakers typically use volume knobs instead of volume levers, or sliders like on a mixing board. If things had begun the other way around, perhaps today we would be arguing against the use of volume knobs because they "just aren't natural." I would argue instead that "conventional mapping" is the term we should use. The millions of designers who have gone before us have, for various reasons, incorporated conventions into the interfaces for everyday objects - and these conventions are ones we would be well-advised to observe. To emphasize, the human desire for feedback (as in turning the wheel of a car and watching your direction of travel change) IS natural, but using a wheel to accomplish that (and not a "tiller" as on some early cars, for example) is not "natural," it is a convention we have been trained to accept, imposed on us by designers who realized the inherent mechanical disadvantages of using a tiller to steer a car.

In summary, we are trained by convention to think certain things are "natural," and this is why it seemed to the author that the telephone was harder to operate than the auto - no established convention exists yet. The upshot for those of us in CS160, designing interfaces for sometimes very ethereal electrically-based operations, is that the more we can imitate preexistent conventions and standards in the real world (often those with more mechanical and physical analogues), the better off our users will be.

(My apologies for the long-winded post...)

Vedran Pogacnik 04:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Norman’s “paradox of technology”. It is quite curious how, in the complex radio example, if the functions are divided so that you have eight different machines / gadgets / appliances, anybody could figure out how to use them. That seems obvious since each of those eight things would look differently, and have a maximized functionality for what it was created. The trend has always been to make things smaller and work better, but there are limits to that. The limit for such commercial appliances follows from the size of human fingers (in a generic case the human body). What good is a phone keypad with really small buttons, when pressing one would in fact press all of them. Or, even broader, the printer-in-fax-in-scanner-copy machine-in-wireless phone-in-speaker phone-in-answering machine-in… is a really bad idea because to retain the maximum functionality of all those devices hidden in a black box, one would either need a huge, robust, and clumsy casing with clear and straightforward control sections for each device, or the casing would be small (as it is), with functions grouped together, which Norman explained in the need for “mapping”.

Oftentimes, it is impossible to create a good balance between space and functionality, like in the printer/scanner/fax/… machine, and that is so simply because it is not feasible. When talking about how technology made our lives more complicated because of bad design, Norman failed to acknowledge the trial and error methodology that is present in the human race. Obviously, the trials and errors happen over long years, like the telephone example. Today, if a company can afford them, modern office phones do not have such problems like toe ones that Norman described in his text. I am baffled how much he expects from designers, especially since all the examples he is talking about seem like ancient history. Probably the designers didn’t have access to ideas or usability studies from around the world, and also each part of the world went about things differently. Also, Norman fails to acknowledge that in those years there WERE good phones that didn’t have such a bad interface as the ones in UC San Diego. UC San Diego maybe didn’t have the budget to buy them. Thirdly, there is a lot of politics involved in designing things, and laughing at things that became commercially available is counterproductive in terms of making good design, because if we didn’t have bad examples, how would we know the good one?

Mohammed Ali 05:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

In our complicated world, we take good design for granted. We often do not pay attention to the things that are simple and natural, we just go with the flow. I guess that's one of the downsides of good design, you don't really notice until something gets messed up. The analogy is almost that of defense in sports. We don't really notice how good the players are doing in protecting the quarterback during the play but we do notice when a player allowed a tackle to slip to sack the quarterback. Norman pointed out many examples of bad design, from a non-intuitive phone system to the double set of doors with no apparent visual signals. Norman pointed out key areas in design that could significantly effect the experience of the users. These concepts included visibility, affordance, the conceptual model, constraints and mappings. In the doors example, the user was trapped because of a lack of visual signals in the way the doors open. Mappings are also essential. The one-button slides clicker was an example of poor mappings. Although the one-perform-all-actions-needed-button may have been considered a technological feat in its time, it defeats the purpose of not allowing transition between slides easily. Convention is probably the single most effective use of affordance. People can figure out functions easily with experiences from previous exposures; knobs are to be turned, and buttons are to be pushed. Design should provide the correct conceptual model where the user would be able to mentally simulate an objects operation. A good rule of thumb is to match the number of action performed by an object to one control. These function can be easily remembered and if they don't then control is there to remind them. When the number of actions exceed the number of controls, function become invisible and hard to remember.

Jimmy Nguyen 12:50, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

As a computer science major, I agree with some of the ideas that engineers have the logic needed to make things in the real world "work", but sometimes it is the design implementations that make things easier for people. It's interesting because my girlfriend is an architect major and knows a lots of things that would make it easier for people to work with.

For instance, we were at the University lounges at the Unit dorms and she was saying how they had huge staircases, but they did not have "landings", which would have been useful to allow people to momentarily rest as the traverse up a staircase. Another thing to add on the door issues is that in addition to not knowing whether doors are made to push or pull, it is also often the case that people cannot identify the entrance and exit doors. These should be "highlighted" somehow.

Personally, as a web application designer, simplistic designs are the design of today, so I support the article's about making things visible, but it should be concentrated on keeping things simple. In terms of today, simplistic designs are the way to go and whitespace is even a good tool that should be efficiently used. A very obvious case is why people use facebook (simple) over myspace (cluttered, hard to find tools).

Mike Kendall 19:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

This article, and the discussion of features vs. controls reminded me of my experience purchasing a new mp3 player. I like the ones with flash memory, having been a creative customer for the last four years. What i loved about their players is that i could control things through my pocket. To change what album i was listening to, I just had to hit enter, enter and then left or right.

I just switched to a sansa player, which has very different controls. It's very hard for me to change albums without looking at the screen (since it modeled a lot of its functionality after the iPod (that piece of junk)) but now I can delete files without looking at the screen, an unexpected bonus. Not only that, the sansa plays more file types than my creative did. I find that I am not changing albums as frequently as I used to...

I have to say that I disagree with a lot of what was said in this article because, as was discussed in the section about telephones, a lot of the time, all you need is a "next option" button and a "select option" button. My creative player had three buttons (left, right and enter) which controlled many things really easily. My sansa on the other hand, has five buttons (left, right, up, down, enter) and i don't feel like I'm controlling things remotely as easily, because of the logic through which these input is controlled.

SaliemThan 20:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I used to take violin lessons in elementary school. The elementary school I went to could afford an instructor for such a course. The later schools I attended did not, so I instead drew violins for different pieces of art. I was obsessed about the shape and intricate details of the violin.

I think Norman's articles validate this obsession of mine. Not only is the violin aesthetic, it fulfills a number of the principles that Norman outlines {rants} about, those principles of constraints, mapping, visibility and feedback. The peg tuners fit the finger tips, creating a form of constraint. The same can be said of the chin rest, somewhat. All the parts are visible, and not hidden. there are no corners to turn, the body of the violin is curved. If you were to slide the bow across the strings, sounds would be heard, creating feedback. If the bow was slid across any other part of the violin, it wouldn't create any as notable sounds. As for mapping, the strings are an example of excellent mapping, an excellent design heuristic. The strings towards the base of the violin are thicker than the strings towards the neck, and create very deep sounds. The thin, more high pitched sounds are created by running the bow across the upper thinner portion of the strings.

Norman's outlined principles are good general principles for everyday objects. However, if I were to try to extend those principles to another object, a building, the Jean Hargrove music library {another aesthetic I am obsessed with}, those principles don't apply as well. I'd say it is an everyday object as well, but one that spans the category of more than an everyday hand held tool. Which is too bad because I would love to validate my obsession with the interior design of this library.

Wenda Zhao 23:31, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Norman's paper is very interesting and useful, Norman's principles would definitely lead to better design, and they could be applied to our design project. He points out the importance of design in our everyday lives, and the consequences of errors caused by bad design. He is totally right. A good example will be the Trac machine killed several patients due to the bad design. What I have learned most from him is that we should follow design based on the needs of the user, and do not pay too much attention to minor issue of the development.

Paul Im 23:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Don Norman’s analysis of conceptual models seems to be very practical in its applications. The simple things in life need to be easy to use, and should be made so that the average Joe can use them without too much complexity. In other words, each new invention should have very obvious and convenient affordances. Making something unnecessarily complex just for show would definitely be a waste of a design.

Feedback is also crucial, as inventions with automatic results, whether they are correct or incorrect, are easier to debug and fix. A system should always spit out what you are doing right or wrong, as this makes things significantly easier for you to diagnose whatever problems you might be having.

I agree somewhat with Norman’s analysis regarding technological advances. According to Norman, technological advances should not take away from usability. In this sense, I agree with his opinions, but it seems that technology will constantly be improving and evolving to the next level. Because of this, it may be impossible for technology to always accommodate for a technologically un-savvy person. People need to do their part and at least keep up with smaller advances that are going on around them. I disagree with Norman in that technology does has to accommodate for the average person; I believe it should only have to accomodate the average technologically savvy person.

Juanpadilla 01:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

That was great!!! I never really realized how poorly designed the world around us was. I enjoyed the way he presented simple, everyday items such as doors and telephones and analyzed the really simple things that designers get wrong. For example, the use of different types of door mechanisms to indicate which way a door opens is so subtle yet makes complete sense. I wonder what he has to say about those crazy round about doors.... Also, his advice on the conceptual model and feedback not only make sense, they seem obvious. However, as he states, it is not always done right. As an engineer It is a shame to see all the features that we invent or incorporate into our devices are not being properly used due to poor design choices.

Kumar Garapaty 01:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I found mental models the most important concept of the article. The designer should aim to follow the mental models of the average user not their own biases and models. The conceptual models and visibility aspects of the article both connect to this mental model of what the user expects to use and see versus what actually happens. The article discussed how some parts of a product become vestigial with a new design. Vestigial parts have advantages and disadvantages. Vestigial parts can introduce familiarity and the user would not be scared to use a certain product because they see things that they are not used to seeing. At the same time, it makes users think that certain parts have certain functions but they end up not functioning as they expect it to.

JoshuaKwan 02:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The topics covered in this reading reminded me strongly of Alan Cooper's (the author of About Face) writing in "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" - written about 10 years ago, to provide an insight into the ideas of About Face for a broader audience. The lack of real, visible, reasonable human feedback was something he called "cognitive friction"; i.e. when what you do does not have any visible result, and you are groping around in the dark until you hit some sort of button that causes all the changes you have made up until that point to be realized. That is, that what your actions serve as input to a meta-function, not a real function. He blames most computer programs as providing a lot of cognitive friction to users. A review from IBM developerWorks explains it better:

Cognitive friction is "the resistance encountered by human intellect when it engages with a complex system of rules that change as the problem permutes." Complexity alone doesn't lead to cognitive friction; it is more the product of a lack of sensory feedback and the "meta" states that result from having controls with multiple functions. Cooper's contention is that interacting with software systems -- programming a VCR, for example -- is extremely high in cognitive friction. Playing a violin, however, is not.

I also really like the idea of natural mappings and that should be the sort of ideal that any designer should strive towards - not just in computer programs but in all kinds of design projects that will end up being used by a large, diverse group of people. I know a number of people who just hate anything that has to do with computers or machines because they are fed up with the "meta" behavior often purveyed by such machines. If humans as a race have trouble adapting to new and wonderful technologies that make our lives better, then that means the progression of our race is slowing down because of that.

Jonathan Fong 04:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Its incredible to see that the concepts described by Norman really do have direct relevance to our everyday activities and frustrations. For example, on the first week of classes, I had the following experience with the design/implementation of the door to Room 405 in Soda (the classroom for CS160 discussion):

The door has a handle, which by convention is for turning to activate the latch mechanism, after which the user should push to open the door. The handle wouldn't turn, and this is convention for a door in a "locked" state. Thus another student and I both assumed the door was locked, and the room was inaccessible. A few minutes later, another student goes to try the door, and it pops right open! We ask him how he got it open; we assume he has a cardkey that somehow unlocked the door. He said he just pushed, even though the door handle would not turn.

Due to the wrong affordances and the flawed conceptual model, the door basically no longer "worked" (at least not how it was expected to).

Alan McCreary 04:51, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Norman's discussion of mental models reminds me of our earlier reading by Lewis and Rieman on the design process. The L&R approach of "plagiarizing" seems to come from the idea that Norman explains - that when the design model is inconsistent with the user's mental model, there will be problems. I think that one of the most important things to learn from this reading is the importance of testing a design with its intended users. It's easy to take the lazy route and assume that the user shares the same intuition with you in using a product, but Norman's example of the refrigerator shows the dangers of this. The reading also does a good job in showing just how many everyday things we see are the result of human design. This awareness can give us new ideas for design improvement - every time someone uses a device (or computer program) and has trouble using it, then there is a possibility of making a better design.

Perry Lee 05:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I was impressed by how clearly the author pointed out design-related problems, specifically the examples of the phone and the door. His examples emphasized how important it is to keep designs simple, and provide visual cues. For example, in the case of the push/pull doors, people should not have to think twice -- there should be visual cues that indicate whether to pull or push the door. Design should place more emphasis on users' needs rather than will it make the development process harder.

Jordan Berk 05:32, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I thought Norman's discussion of the phones in the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge was interesting. It seems that despite having a multitude of seemingly useful features, the phones and many other products emphasize their features over the usability of their features. Having a bunch of features may look good marketing-wise, but if they are hard to use, the product will most likely be less usable than an otherwise equivalent product that emphasizes usability. But people generally buy products based on the marketing and packaging, most often without using the product. Because of this, the problem will never really fix itself.

Shyam Vijayakumar 05:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I found it interesting that many of the examples that Don Norman brought up involved a struggle between attractiveness and usability. The doorway of the European post office in which Norman’s friend got trapped is one example. The doors might have been elegant in design, but as shown, it is extremely easy to get trapped. Not only does this design not achieve its purpose, but it also prevents the user from doing anything else. People get carried away with things that look nice, but they do not stop to think whether it is actually usable.

Another example is the Italian washer-drier that Norman ran into. It might have been nice to look at and to know that it supports every possible feature that a washer-drier could have, but since it was too complicated, the users did not bother using it to its full potential. I, myself, have let myself be captivated by the beauty of a product and ignore any design faults. For example, the iPod that I just purchased might be nice to look at, but it is not possible to skip to the next song without taking it out of my pocket and looking at the controls. Any other music player provides buttons that enable users to skip songs without taking it out of their pocket. This is one design flaw that I find annoying sometimes, yet I put up with it, as many of the people in this article did with whatever products they were using.

Frank Yang 06:02, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This reading really shows the difference between the concept and the implementation. The function of an object could be incredibly useful, but if it's too hard for the user to actually activate the function, the object's usefulness disappears. Norman's whole discussion was very interesting, especially the designs of everyday things. I think his discussion on doors to be really interesting. Nowadays, in order for something to be marketable, it must look sleek and hip. If the aesthetic qualities are there, products get away with having a very low functioning quality. The way Norman talked about everyday objects made me realize that all the objects that we interact with have some sort of design to it, and if we operate things without thinking about it, it is the designer that succeeds, and not our own natural ability (or inability). To this day, I still turn my key the wrong way to unlock the door to my apartment building. I guess the lock and key manufacturers need to collaborate and decide which direction will do what.

Buda Chiou 06:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it's really hard to judge if a design is good or not. Some designs seems cool but are actually useless, and some designs implement many functions but are really complicated and hard to used. Even though both design style have obvious disadvantages, there are still large amount of people who prefer these design more than those which are useful and simple. Therefore, I don't think we can say a design is poor because it's hard to use or useless.

Antony Setiawan 06:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Norman points brought up an interesing topic in the beginning of chapter one, that is, the designer of post office doors' aimed for beauty, not utility. A door is an important element of a building. Focusing on beauty will results on the "incident" that Norman's friend experienced. That also applies to us in a way. We got to know which part should be focused on beauty and which part should be user friendly so that the user won't ended up having a nice non-used figurine. Designer should and must learn about the psychology of Everyday things in order to accomplished tangible objects.

Some points taken from Norman are the principles of design for undestandability and usability by making the conceptual model before actually realizing it. As Norman said, a good relationship between the placement and control and what it does makes it easy to find the appropriate control for task. Feedback also crucial for improvement or finding mistake in the design.


KevinFriedheim 07:07, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I found reading Norman's book very *obvious* -- that is, all of his ideas and design principles {Affordance, Conceptual Model, Feedback} seems so straightforward that you would have to be a designer to really stop and notice these things in products that we use from day to day. Its the same idea as not understanding/appreciating a waiter in a restaurant unless you've experienced being one. I found that many of the examples that he gave, digital watches with two to four buttons on the side -- everybody has had one of these and has experienced using "trial and error" (one of Norman's big 'no-no's of design) as a means of determining the usability of the watch. I defiantly enjoyed the presentation of the three big design techniques through numerous examples of everyday things.

I found the idea of "natural design" especially interesting since, (and this is in my opinion) the definition is more than what Norman would say it is -- I think that over time, everyday objects (toothbrushes, paintbrushes, shoes, etc..), commonplace things have made their way into such a natural design category, that to redesign something that would be contrary to the original could be coined "decidedly unnatural."

Haosi Chen 07:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Today, people always take good design for granted. We often do not pay attention to the things that are simple and natural, we just go with the flow. That's one of the downsides of good design, you don't really notice until something gets messed up. we are trained by convention to think certain things are "natural," and this is why it seemed to the author that the telephone was harder to operate than the auto - no established convention exists yet. In the article, Norman pointed out many examples of bad design, from a non-intuitive phone system to the double set of doors with no apparent visual signals. Norman pointed out key areas in design that could significantly effect the experience of the users. These concepts included visibility, affordance, the conceptual model, constraints and mappings.

Bing Wang 07:55, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

- This reading is very interesting. I agree with Norman in some aspect but not all of it. He does have a point that the things that we use everyday should be simple and intuitive. I also agree that aesthetic should not take precedence in usability. A designer should always consider usabilities first. However, this has changed somewhat in the recent years. In some products, aestheticism has taken over. Products like the iphone, many simply buy it because it looks good but the typing interface is very hard to use. In a blackberry, it's easier to type but it does not look as good. I guess it's hard to satisfy everyone.

- One the other hand, he interviewed someone and they said that their washing machine has so many functionalities that they only uses one. This is because manufacturers are trying to add more functions to their products to attract customers to get the upgraded version of the products. I do not think the manufacturer has much of choice of not upgrading to a new product. I understand that things should be kept simple, but if they only have the basic functions, no one might even buy your machine. When individuals go shop, they probably want a balance between price and function as oppose to something that just does the barebone basic function.

Hao Luo 07:58, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The reading brings up something very interesting that's often overlooked. In designing a product, many times the developer would focus too much on what functions to provide. The focus on accessibility is lost. By this I don't mean that the features are inaccessible. Rather, how accessible are the features? The subtle difference is what often causes major design flaws. A designer would put in all these features into a product, and made sure they were accessible. That seems like enough but it's not. We have to think about how accessible these features are. Depending on the user group, these features may have to be very accessible. Another problem is, from the designer's perspective, the features are accessible. But, the designer often neglects to stop and look at the product from a user's point of view. A feature that's obvious to the designer may be hard to figure out by your average Joe. To use an example from the reading, the washing machine had a plethora of features, but it's all wasted because they were not accessible enough for the average user. The woman in the example only used one setting. This is obviously because it took so long to learn a setting that it simply wasn't efficient for the woman to learn how to use all the different settings.

To bring up another real-life example, what separates the iPhone apart from the other smartphones is accessibility. The other smartphones have better capacity, more advanced features, earlier than the iPhone. But the iPhone excels in the user interface, in making these features much more accessible to the user. It accomplishes this by highlighting all the important functions in the main screen with icons. It's all there. With most other phones, the features are hidden in lists and you'd have to pull up menu, scroll through a list (with no icons) to find what you're looking for. There are a lot of features, and they are all accessible in a sense, but it's still difficult to figure out. The features are accessible once the user learn how to access them, but the learning curve is much harder on a typical phone. The key is, how do we make accessible features that are also intuitive and easy to figure out. We want to reduce as much "learning" as possible. The user should already "know", in a sense, how to use the features because of the way they're designed.


Jacekmw 08:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Norman's book resounded with me on a personal level. As someone who is relatively experienced in web design, I have gravitated more and more toward the most simple and visible designs. Though interesting and new designs are often intriguing, they are very difficult to make properly usable, and as such, many websites that try for complicated or unusual layouts end up alienating users with difficulty in finding the information they are looking for. Much like the artistic but difficult-to-distinguish-hinges-from-openings doors Norman describes at the beginning, an unfortunate trend in modern web design is to use nontraditional websites entirely produced in flash. While this allows all kinds of nice-looking special effects and beautiful flowing designs, it creates a whole host of problems. Accessibility is impaired, as electronic text readers made for blind people do not function in flash designs, preventing them from accessing the same information. Often, with these designs, designers forfeit what many users expect as common practice, such as the ability to send someone the url you are at to allow them to see the exact same content, or the ability to open links in other tabs or windows.

Jeffrey Rosen 08:32, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This reading was pretty eerie for me. Just today I had an embarrassing incident when trying to exit the Peet's coffee on Shattuck that is almost exactly like the one in the reading. In fact, my brother, who has a photographic memory, saw me and told me about the exact passage from this very book. I told him it would be cool if we read this book in this class and we did. Anyways, the door at Peet's had a pull style handle, so I tried to pull it. It wasn't going anywhere, so I assumed it was locked and pulled the other one. That one didn't work either. I had to push it to get it to open. It's annoying that these simple things are ignored and it is just frustrating for the end user.

One of his examples that I thought was really interesting was the refrigerator where the designer made a simple UI for the user: one control for the temperature of the refrigerator and one control for the freezer. However, the engineers were unable to do this and the temperature of the refrigerator would actually affect the freezer and vice versa. They decided to stick with the simple UI even though it was now extremely complicated despite looking deceivingly simple.

Ultimately, it seems like the largest lesson from this reading is simply to test out the UI. All of these things - the incorrect door, the deceiving refrigerator, the complicated washing machine, etc. would not have past a simple user test. One thing I found ironic was how one of the few examples of good UI was the seat controller of Mercedes Benz. Maybe it's because it is rare to ride in a fancy car, but it never dawned on me that those seat adjusters were actually in the shape of the seat. I always thought of them as some kind of funky joystick and thought it was bad UI. Maybe it's because I play too many video games.

Gary Wu 08:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of natural design signals for visibility. It definitely is a hard thing to try to balance aesthetics and functionality, but with some ingenuity, one should not have to suffer for another. To a certain point, conceptual models are great but I've definitely seen some (IKEA) conceptual models just as bad as the text that supports them. I feel that the idea of natural mapping definitely depends on the standards of the culture or area you live in.

I've always wondered how designers tackle the "Lefty" persona in their design calculations. As most products are designed for right-handed people, are the lefties in the world forced to learn the "natural mappings" of the right-handed dominated society? After reading this article, I realize the importance of user feedback. This is why customer responses on online purchasing websites, such as Amazon, provide such great feedback. Designer specs are completely biased and judging from the article, don't product test many of their designs. It's not until the product hits the "wild" when designers realize their flaws.

Karen Tran 08:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This reading gives me many mixed feelings. While I strongly support some observations/ideas mentioned, I also don’t quite agree with some of the arguments that were brought up. I completely agree with what the author said about “visibility,” that is one of the most important principle of design; that when a product is being designed, the functionalities should have correct visible parts that must convey the correct message right away to the users. You can have a really fabulous, most ingenious product of all times, but if the “visibility” of that product’s capabilities is not clear, the product will certainly become lost because the users have no idea of their existence. I like the example of the washer-drier machine. The designers of the machine certainly cared a great a deal about providing their audience the best product; however, they did not ‘test” their products on the users, such as watching how the users would use their machine, etc. this illustrates an important concept that no matter how the machine might have been, if designers’ effort would be in vain if the users are not provided enough ‘visibility’ to their machine.

On the other hand, I disagreed with the author’s opinions on a few examples given to illustrate how “bad” some of the designs were. The author mentioned that the “hold” function of the phone should be more visible. In the early days of the phone’s era, there are only so many inventions of the phone capabilities. As technology progresses, the demand for greater capability increases; and of course the phone designers must accommodate that demand. As the complexity of the phone’s function increases, more functions being added, one would expect the old “important” functions would give way to the more recently demanded needs because there is only so much space on the phone used to fit that complexity. The reason that the hold button is less “visible” might be because its popularity diminishes in favor of better functions that the phone has to offer. As complexity increases, I think it only makes sense that the interface does as well. You cannot expect the phone to be improved continuously and yet it uses the same “simple” interface as it first came out. That would be quite boring.

What I find myself enlightened the most was reading the section of “paradox of technology.” I think it is very true that ‘the development of a technology tends to follow a U-shaped curve of complexity: starting high, dropping to a low, comfortable level; then climbing again.” I think the process of figuring out how to balance the simplicity of the interface with the complexity that is demanded with advancing technology is just educated trial-and-error. “New kinds of devices are complex and difficult to use. As technicians become more competent and an industry matures, devices become simpler, more reliable, and more powerful. But then, after the industry has stabilized, newcomers figure out how to add increased power and capability, but always at the expense of added complexity and sometimes decreased reliability.” This cycle keeps on repeating itself over and over. How to be balance the see-sawing between the complexity and capability of the product is the challenge.

Xuexin Zhang 09:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have read this article for my E190 class when we were trying to redesign a system. I was surprised to see so many seem to be so great ideas turned out to be not useful at all in practice. Norman suggests designing every system as everyday thing that is easier for the users to understand and control. Also, I believe that engineers should gather feedback of their design from real users to ensure design’s usability.

Witton Chou 09:09, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that product design is a great factor that affects the use and efficiency of using a product. Visibility is definitely a crucial aspect of a design and are the major hints as to how to use a particular device. This eludes to the problem of using "generic features" as described in one of our previous readings. These affordances yield to our intuition of how to operate various interfaces.

Many of the points Norman poses will be very useful to consider in our project. It will be interesting to so how to balance visibility with affordance and aesthetics - what will help the user in operating the product and what will be extraneous and detract from the usability?

Trinhvo 09:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Norman's writing is so easy to understand. He brought up many examples of bad designs users have to face with e.g. telephone, or refrigerator. After reading this, I've learned what should a designer think about while designing something. There are alot of factors that make up a good design such as conceptual model, visibility, good mapping and feed back. I think providing a good coneptual model is the hardest task in designing. How can a designer make users able to see his product's functionality without getting their hands dirty?

Volodymyr Kalish 09:58, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

As I was reading this article, I tried to setup the alarm on my newly purchased as a replacement for my old mobile phone so I won't miss tomorrow's cs160 lecture. After I set it, being paranoid, I tried how it would sound and to my surprise it was only vibrating. After a few minutes spent going through settings I found out that by default the sound of alarm was the same as the sound of ringer for an incomming telephone call, which I set on "vibrate" so it won't ring during lecture if someone calls. Why was I surprised? Because in my old phone the defauld setting for alarm ringer was on a "loud".

So, as the humanity progresses and new features are added to simple everyday items it is very important to keep the old controls in the new devices. And the new features should have intuitive and easy to learn controls. I beleive that most of the problems with phones or other devices can be avoided if touchscreens are used as controls. Since, as it was proven that 1-to-1 mapping of controls is much easier to navgate, but the size of the device increases with each new button. However, if there is an area with buttons, the labels and functionalities of which change accordingly, it would be possible to keep a 1-to-1 mapping.

Geoffrey Lee 12:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thinking about the digital watch example in the book, I realized that UI designs become exponentially more difficult as you add more and more features. It comes down to the fact that you only have so much physical space provide controls. For example, given a limited number of buttons (such as on a digital watch), each feature must be mapped to a combination of button presses. So I then attempted to brainstorm a better way to implement a digital watch that contained lots of features. Rather than pressing a button to cycle through the watch's various features (such as timer, stopwatch, alarm, etc), you would rotate a ring surrounding the face of the watch to select the feature. The important part here is that the ring contains an arrow which points to an icon of the selected feature. This makes each feature visible to the user. I would then add a direction pad (up, down, left, right) to create a natural mapping for navigating the currently-selected feature.

Anthony Kilman 15:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The Norman reading brings up some points that I believe have significant value, but again their internalization for the purposes of this course must be done with moderation. By arguing that design of everyday objects should obey the natural "intuition", I believe it is this intuition which may be misinterpreted. Perhaps in Ancient Greece this natural intuition was understanding a tools utility based on how this unit mimiced their counterparts in nature. Like a faucet that had had the emplem of a stormy cloud or something (bad example). Perhaps today, natural intuition is recognizing a unit's function based on it's relation and/or resemblance to tools we've used extensively in the past. It's a notion of a *more or less* automated response based on our everyday psyhcology. In this reading I feel that much more may be gained by interpreting this intuition as a familiarity.

For example, the door design in the beginning of the chapter. Norman seemed to argue for subtle psycological cues to hint to the everyday user "push/pull here." Yet with doors who did not incorporate this design (the set of doors that his friend became trapped in), were somehow futile. I agree with Norman on this point, but at the same time having door handles closer to the seams of a set of double doors is hardly natural. It's logical, and because we're used to using doors, the snazzy glass ones with the handles close together are a piece of cake. But if another design is incorporated, perhaps for a very legitimate reason such as crowd control (lets suppose these "trap" doors were used in Wall Street in the past couple of weeks) the casual, infrequent user who will become frustrated. There is a tradeoff for every specialized function of a tool or system, and it is an imperative of good design that these tradeoffs are understood.

Shaharyar Muzaffar 16:02, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the author about how things which are visible are easier to work with. This is because of an obvious reason. Things which are visible can be seen directly, and therefore it is directly accessible. Things which are not visible require some sort of searching, either through the actual product or a manual. This searching could lead to confusion and frustration. However, labeling every button and knob generally isn't a great idea, because then the item is not aesthetically pleasing. It is best to find a good balance between the two in order to keep your product easy to work with, but still "cool" looking.

Yuta Morimoto 16:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree to what Norman said "Complex things may require explanation, but simple things should not.". Sometimes, I have experienced trouble in subway transfer in some cities. It looks easy to change subway line to another that I want to ride on, but I missed the train many times. In fact, people living there are seemingly not confused and taking it for granted. They are used to transferring subway and do not need to pay attention to the things that are strange for travelers. I think this problem has a similarity like the telephone example. Because subway map is hard to be understood for me and I have experience in transferring subways, but I am confused a lot of times subway maps or directions. As Norman said, it is possible to solve some difficulties such as subway transfer by taking advantage of conceptual model or affordance.

Billy Grissom 16:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

After reading this article I can't help but think about the video we saw last week about IDEO. Honestly, before watching that I had no idea companies like that existed. Now, after reading this article, I have a better understanding of why companies like that do exists. As designers I guess it's really tempting for us to come tot he conclusion that the image we have in our head is the right way to go. Truth is though this might not be what is best for the user. As a designers we become familiar with our product and end up leaving out important details that a common user might need to work the product. Simply put, it's very easy to take certain things for granted. Take operating systems for examples. There's so many things that can be done in things with Windows, but so much that doesn't get done. So many of my friends don't even know the Control pane freaking exists. I think a large part of this is due to poor design.

I guess the truth is we have to realize that users aren't always willing to get their feet dirty in order to understand a product. People like to play close to the chest and work with what's recognizable and comfortable to them. Conceptual thinking is extremely useful for this, because it takes into play so many things engineers might not. Sure engineers might have the working idea of how the product works, but unless if it's not implemented correctly and if the interface is designed poorly...then the whole thing can mean nothing to the consumer.

Kevin Lam 16:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Norman makes a very good point about designing products so that their functional parts are clearly "visible" to the user. If you compare websites that were designed even three years ago to those that are being developed today, you will see that most new websites are being built on the concept of keeping the layout simple and user friendly. Sites with a lot of complex features and buttons tend to steer users away, because more often than not the user has a difficult time figuring out how to access a feature. This also applies to other products. Take my printer, for example. There are two buttons on my printer that show ink cartridges. I have been using the printer for several years now and have only been using one of the two buttons. To this day, I still don't know what the other button is for.

Simplicity does, however, have its breaking point. While websites and interfaces for other products should be kept simple they must also display the functionalities of the product. A friend of mine owns a Honda Civic. If you have ever seen the clocks on Honda's, you will know that there are very few buttons (usually three but sometimes two). In my friend's case, her car had two buttons: one for changing the hour and another for changing the minute. The design is simple enough, but neither my friend nor I could figure out how to reset the clock. Unlike some cars, my friend's Civic didn't have a reset button and holding the hour and minute buttons didn't reset the clock either.

With that, I would absolutely agree with Norman's concept about making functionalities "visible." Many designers today attempt to make products user friendly by focusing on simplicity. However, simplicity doesn't always translate to ease of use. Instead, as designers, we should adhere to Norman's philosophy of keeping "visibility" in mind.

Cynthia T. Hsu 16:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that Don Norman brought up many interesting points about the value of good design, I found some of his arguments gave the impression of a fanatical, close minded opinion that a designer shouldn't necessarily have. As Stuart Bottom said, the comparison of a car to a telephone (or even a car to a door for that matter) is comparing one thing that has maintained the same level of functionality since its simpler days versus something that has implemented a lot of new features. The radio and sunroof are all compartmentalized, and justly so - the radio and sunroof are features that are in essence implemented independently of the engine and the steering wheel, and have their operation grounded in a separate physical location as they are completely different entitites. In contrast, the added features on the telephone that he is referring to can only be implemented in a "physical" sense by adding a different button - what the designers intended to do with the R. While I agree that the instructions for using R could be much clearer and a bit more feedback is useful, most people nowadays consider landline phones too bulky as is - adding more buttons or more detailed instructions would make the phone larger and thus increasingly unattractive and unmarketable. The concept of a glass display was interesting, but it reminded me of one of those machine automated respones you get at some customer service places, "If you would like to do this, press 1. If you would like to do something else, press 2." It's very trying to have to try and view all those options at once, and things can tend to get buried in the long list; someone else brought up the UI of the iPhone as an example and I think that the main menu of the iPhone (all graphical) is a very stark contrast to this. I remember Professor Brian Harvey's explanation of why the Therac-25 failed - a long sequence of irrelevant error/warning messages that were easy to disregard as unimportant; having a long list of features might be similar.

MuQing Jing 17:22, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it is very accurate for Norman to mention that a good concept (i.e. something that has a high practical value) isn't necessarily a good design. As complexity of a product increases, the learning curve becomes steeper, and this usually turns the majority of people who are less tech-savvy away. Apple's incredible success with the iPod is that it is very simple to use; Apple could have implemented a lot more features to it, in turn making it a much more power music player, but they decided to keep it simple for the sake of a good design. This type of thinking is very important, in my opinion, in being able to market the product to the target audience that was previously decided upon.

Kai Lin Huang 17:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Nowadays telephones and fridges controls are not as bad as they were twenty years ago; however, a variety of problems still exist in the product s that are designed recently, such as those mini virtual keyboard on iPhones. Norman’s article inspires me to pay attention to the usability problem with guideline in mind. Here is a picture of my keyboard that I bought two years ago. A keyboard is one of the most defined products. There are some small variations in different types or brands of keyboard, but they generally serve one function: computer input. Computer users conceptually have already accepted the general design of a keyboard and would not expect any hardship in using it. The keyboard in the picture does make an ordinary job in matching users’ conceptual keyboard model with its look. Function Visibility and Function Mapping: All keys are labeled and easy to understand what they do. However, the problem comes in here. There are functional keys on the sides that are supposed to make users’ life easier by one-button-do-all. The fact that this is a wireless keyboard kills these functional keys because when users try to move and handle the keyboard to somewhere else, most users find it hard to avoid pressing any of the functional keys. Intuitively, users would handle a typical keyboard by hold the left and right hand sides of it to move it, but this genius work of design keep bothering users by invoking the functional keys to call instant messenger or turn on the music player in the computer. As a result, I have never set these functional keys to map anything, and thus these are officially the annoying junk keys. Visibility-wise, this keyboard does a great job. However, the function mapping on the keyboard does not even satisfy a very fundamental need of moving it since it provides the mobility as a wireless keyboard. If the designers and even the hardware engineers could follow these guideline when designing this keyboard, then they would succeed in making a multi-functional keyboard and there would be no need to put this on sale for very cheap during Thanksgiving.

Mikeboulos 18:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with norman, with most of the ideas brought up in his book. Especially with feedback, I have used software many times that doesn't give feedback on certain actions done by the user, so I ended up repeating the same action many times to make sure that it has been processed, and hence the action has been done many times. which was very confusing, since I thought that no action has been done. So feedback is one of the important parts to consider when designing. We should also watch out for complexity, This has been one of the greatest problems for Microsoft Windows, when they try to add more functionalities the design becomes more complex, so making it as simple as possible given the multi-functional product will be easier for the user to use with minimal error. I think Humans make computer related mistakes due to bad designs that doesn't flow with the way human beings think, hence judgment will be built on top of the feedback given by the program.

James Yeh 18:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems as if Norman supports the idea that poor design will cripple the usability of a product and that an intuitive design will solve the problems of a complex device. While I agree that design plays an important role in determining the steepness of the learning curve of a product, I felt that Norman’s description of poor design was a little exaggerated and oversimplified. Sure, a poorly designed door could create unnecessary and annoying inconvenience, but Norman’s portrayal of the European post office doorway made it seem as if the author’s friend was indefinitely trapped between the two doorways solely because of poor design. In reality, however, the friend would have learned how to operate the doors—it just would have taken longer. We are all born with brains for a reason, and I find it hard to believe that a non-intuitive design would prevent someone from completely using the device at all (especially as an engineer). Another example that Norman presented which I thought was ill-described was the comparisons between the designs telephone and car. In this example, he makes it seem as if it takes less effort and/or time to learn how to operate a car than to learn how to use the phone, when in reality this is not true (at least from my experience). I don’t deny that the telephone was poorly designed, but it’s hard to imagine that even an excellent design could make something as complex as an automobile easier to use than something as simple as a telephone (the car was probably easier for the author to use because he drives his car more often than he uses his telephone). In the end, after I read this article I learned that design is important in determining ease of use, but I also believe that there are many other factors that determine the appeal of a product (something that Norman seems to ignore).

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