Blog Post #4 - Look, The Bear Is Dancing!
User-Centered Design
As you read Cooper's Inmates are Running the Asylum, think about how you relate (or don't) to his discussion of user-centered design (or lack thereof) in high-tech products. What kind of computer user are you? (apologist? survivor? etc.) Are there any high-tech products that you find particularly counterintuitive? What are they, and what about them frustrates you?Describe a high-tech product you think is particularly well-designed and why.
Gong Xi Fa Cai Happy Chinese New Year
"Look,the bear is dancing!"
So, what about "user-centered design" that Cooper has discussed in his book? Personally, I feel that all product design must be user-centered. You don't want to pick up your morning newspaper and wonder "Where is the page for Local New?"; you don't want to pick up an electric kettle and wonder, "Hmm, how do I turn this thing on?"; and you certainly don't want to put your Gumbo into the oven and start to figure out which button to press to cook it. It is all about design!
Consider a car. The steering wheel is always in front of you so you can see the front and steer the car where you want the car to go; the horn is always at the center of the wheel for easy and quick access in times of emergency (and you can still look in front); and all fault lights are in the dashboard in front of you so that you can see them when they come on. Of course, it helps when the 'ding' comes on with the fault lights. You do not want to have to turn your head to the left to press the horn on door , or look to the right for the dashboard, right? It is all about design!
If you have driven a manual-shift car, you will know that you need to push the gear-shift to the left and up to engage the first gear, left and down to the second gear, center and up to the third, center and down to the fourth, right and up to the fifth, and finally right and down to engage the reverse gear. That's what most car designers design their cars. Or at least those I know of. In 1996 when I went to London, I rented this cosy Peugeot and drove to Stonehenge. Upon arrival and when I was trying to reverse park, I realized that I could not push the gear-shift to the right and down to engage the reverse gear. I tried several times and eventually gave up, convinced that Peugeot was designed with no reverse gear. I asked another driver in the car park anxiously, "Can you help me? My car does not have a reverse gear." He then calmly moved over and showed me ... put the gear to the left, then more to the left again and push up. "That's how you do it with Peugeot!" he said. Now how user-centered can that be?
A piece of high-tech equipment that frustrates me a lot is my LG external DVD burner cum drive. I'm using a HP tablet PC that does not come with any peripheral. I connected the external DVD drive to my HP tablet PC's USB port to install it, only to find that the installation comes in a CDROM or a 3.5" floppy disk. I'm thinking "dah!" How can I run the CDROM if my external DVD drive is not working in the first place? And who on earth at this present era still use a 3.5" floppy disk anyway? That's totally counterintuitive!
Like all other product designs, software designs must be user-centered too. Of course it must work in the first place. That's the job of the programmer. But more importantly, it must be easy to use by whoever is using it and make sense to the user why it should be that way. That's the job of the designer. Consider a computer game for little children. If you put the child in front of the computer and he/she can start clicking and playing it, without any instruction given, that is a good user-centered design game. Of course, the game must be attractive and interesting to begin with! It is all about design!
I particularly like Playhouse Disney website. It is very user-friendly, well thought and well designed. The target audience are little children and it was designed in a fashion that little children knows how to use it. My 6- and 5-year-olds have no problem surfing that website, find what they want, and play the very interesting games. Check it out at http://www.playhousedisney.com/!
I've a Bachelor degree in Computer and Information Sciences, and I love programming a lot! No, I'm not a geek, but I'm certainly a what Cooper will call 'apologist'. Yes, I defend the computer because it can accomplish a task that was impossibly difficult (p. 30). Like all programmers, all I want to do is to get the software to work. "Never mind about design. Let's get it to work first. We will figure out the design later." That's what I usually tell myself. You see, programming is such an absorbing task that it dominates all other considerations, including the concerns of user (p. 16). The creation of software is so intellectually demanding, so all consuming (p. 16) that I can even forgo my sleep when I was doing programming!
I guess I have to do what Cooper did ... to extricate myself and start looking from the interactive designer's perspective.
Reference:
Cooper, A. (1999) The Inmates Are Running The Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy And How To Restore The Sanity. SAMS Publishing.
Consider a car. The steering wheel is always in front of you so you can see the front and steer the car where you want the car to go; the horn is always at the center of the wheel for easy and quick access in times of emergency (and you can still look in front); and all fault lights are in the dashboard in front of you so that you can see them when they come on. Of course, it helps when the 'ding' comes on with the fault lights. You do not want to have to turn your head to the left to press the horn on door , or look to the right for the dashboard, right? It is all about design!
If you have driven a manual-shift car, you will know that you need to push the gear-shift to the left and up to engage the first gear, left and down to the second gear, center and up to the third, center and down to the fourth, right and up to the fifth, and finally right and down to engage the reverse gear. That's what most car designers design their cars. Or at least those I know of. In 1996 when I went to London, I rented this cosy Peugeot and drove to Stonehenge. Upon arrival and when I was trying to reverse park, I realized that I could not push the gear-shift to the right and down to engage the reverse gear. I tried several times and eventually gave up, convinced that Peugeot was designed with no reverse gear. I asked another driver in the car park anxiously, "Can you help me? My car does not have a reverse gear." He then calmly moved over and showed me ... put the gear to the left, then more to the left again and push up. "That's how you do it with Peugeot!" he said. Now how user-centered can that be?
A piece of high-tech equipment that frustrates me a lot is my LG external DVD burner cum drive. I'm using a HP tablet PC that does not come with any peripheral. I connected the external DVD drive to my HP tablet PC's USB port to install it, only to find that the installation comes in a CDROM or a 3.5" floppy disk. I'm thinking "dah!" How can I run the CDROM if my external DVD drive is not working in the first place? And who on earth at this present era still use a 3.5" floppy disk anyway? That's totally counterintuitive!
Like all other product designs, software designs must be user-centered too. Of course it must work in the first place. That's the job of the programmer. But more importantly, it must be easy to use by whoever is using it and make sense to the user why it should be that way. That's the job of the designer. Consider a computer game for little children. If you put the child in front of the computer and he/she can start clicking and playing it, without any instruction given, that is a good user-centered design game. Of course, the game must be attractive and interesting to begin with! It is all about design!
I particularly like Playhouse Disney website. It is very user-friendly, well thought and well designed. The target audience are little children and it was designed in a fashion that little children knows how to use it. My 6- and 5-year-olds have no problem surfing that website, find what they want, and play the very interesting games. Check it out at http://www.playhousedisney.com/!
I've a Bachelor degree in Computer and Information Sciences, and I love programming a lot! No, I'm not a geek, but I'm certainly a what Cooper will call 'apologist'. Yes, I defend the computer because it can accomplish a task that was impossibly difficult (p. 30). Like all programmers, all I want to do is to get the software to work. "Never mind about design. Let's get it to work first. We will figure out the design later." That's what I usually tell myself. You see, programming is such an absorbing task that it dominates all other considerations, including the concerns of user (p. 16). The creation of software is so intellectually demanding, so all consuming (p. 16) that I can even forgo my sleep when I was doing programming!
I guess I have to do what Cooper did ... to extricate myself and start looking from the interactive designer's perspective.
Reference:
Cooper, A. (1999) The Inmates Are Running The Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy And How To Restore The Sanity. SAMS Publishing.
posted by Francis Tan at
2:59 PM
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