Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Response To DOET Chapter 1

9-8-09

After Reading Chapter 1 of "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald N. Norman I learned a lot about improving an object's usability through design. Everyday i come across interfaces that are visually appealing, but are uneasy to use because of their design. It seems that some designers focus more on the visual aspects rather than creating a successful and easy-to-access interface. In some cases designers do not label objects in order to make them look more sleek and modern. In return this would make the object more confusing to actually use, which is the main purpose in the first place. Many customers choose to keep buying these products, simply because they look better, which gives the designer false pretenses as to how well their product is when it comes to usability. Norman made this much more apparent in his first chapter, opening my eyes to see not only an object's beauty, but how easy it is to utilize.

The Picture of this apple mouse is an example of a bad interface. Although it looks modern, sleek, and visu
ally appealing, it's usability is more difficult to comprehend than a regular mouse with left and right click buttons. This mouse does not clearly indicate how to right click something or scroll directly from the mouse. When looking at it, it is not apparent that there is a button at all. It looks visually appealing, but can be much more confusing to understand it's utility. Reading this chapter made me more aware of everyday objects like this that are not necessarily great interfaces.

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