Chapter 6 – The Design Challenge
Summary
As the title suggests, this chapter discusses the main challenges of design. A few examples are brought in to make the point clear. Two of these are the typewriter and the faucet. Many iterations of keyboard layout have been tried, just as many iterations of faucet design have been used. Norman notes that a major pitfall in design is choosing aesthetics over practicality. He’s used this quite often in the book mentioning an award-winning design that no one can use. Often these designs fail to take the actual users into account. Keeping the user base in mind can alleviate this problem considerably.
Summary
As the title suggests, this chapter discusses the main challenges of design. A few examples are brought in to make the point clear. Two of these are the typewriter and the faucet. Many iterations of keyboard layout have been tried, just as many iterations of faucet design have been used. Norman notes that a major pitfall in design is choosing aesthetics over practicality. He’s used this quite often in the book mentioning an award-winning design that no one can use. Often these designs fail to take the actual users into account. Keeping the user base in mind can alleviate this problem considerably.
Discussion
The last technical paper I read was all about different ways of implementing the keyboard, so it’s interesting how this chapter brought this up as well. I agree that it’s ridiculous when the design of something most people need to use, such as a faucet, can actually be confusing. The operation of it is so simple. I would rather have the design be simple and easy to use than to be fancy looking and more difficult to figure out. The latter will be nicer to look at, but I don’t see the point in making something complicated to the point where you need to learn how to use it over time. This is especially true if the device is something simple that is made needlessly complicated by poor thinking.
The last technical paper I read was all about different ways of implementing the keyboard, so it’s interesting how this chapter brought this up as well. I agree that it’s ridiculous when the design of something most people need to use, such as a faucet, can actually be confusing. The operation of it is so simple. I would rather have the design be simple and easy to use than to be fancy looking and more difficult to figure out. The latter will be nicer to look at, but I don’t see the point in making something complicated to the point where you need to learn how to use it over time. This is especially true if the device is something simple that is made needlessly complicated by poor thinking.
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