Identify feature list
- Configuration
- Scale
- Functionality
- Personality
Visualize solutions, combining, adapting, cross-breeding and morphing features of related products
Explore potential material-process combinations
Materialize through model building and rapid prototyping
Prototype with production materials and processes
Reference: Materials and Design, the art and science of material selection in product design. By Make Ashby and Kara Johnson. Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford UK, 2006
(Functionality is a measure of how well a product meets its technical expectations. Personality measures the degree to which it provides emotional delight and satisfaction in ownership.)
donderdag 10 mei 2012
woensdag 9 mei 2012
Literature study: Materials and Design
Last week I've read the book 'Materials and Design, the art and science of material selection in product design' by Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson.
The book focused on the role of materials and processes in product design, with emphasis on the ways in which they can be used to create the aesthetics and associations of the product, and the ways in which it is perceived. For me this book was very valuable to understanding how products are designed, what elements there are in product design and products. I hoped that by understanding all of this, I could get a better understanding of how affordances are designed.
During the reading of this book, I've made a lot of notes. Some of them are exact copies of important information, some of them are my own thoughts or brainstorms about this information. Especially the little brainstorms give me a lot of insights in how to visually design affordances.
Most important insight about using visual design to create affordances was that it is very hard to create some sort of absolute list of how to visually design affordances, because a visual design can't be right or wrong, it is not binary, and every case is different. There are millions of affordances, it cannot be listed. I believe it is better to create some sort of diagram of elements of affordances to give designers of toys or products some sort of handle for visually designing the elements of products to create affordances. These elements should tell something about what types of affordances there are and what kind of visual handle you can give the user or player.
I think it is also necessary to explain what influences the perception of a user (context - environment, scale, etc.). I didn't know what all of these elements were before, but during the reading of Materials and Design I came to the understanding that by looking at how a designer designs a product, I also learn about how a user perceives a product. Because a user doesn't just perceive a product, he or she actually communicates with the designer through the object the designer has made. Or the other way around: the designer communicates with the user by the object.
So by looking at how designers design a product, what elements and features they name, I can learn what elements and features involve affordances.
So lets start:
Design of product interface contains three broad aspects - Human Factors:
1: Matching product to the capability of the human body
2: Matching to the reasoning power of the human mind
3: Matching with the surroundings in which the human lives and works.
So out of the perspective of affordances, affordances have three broad ways of communicating - Factors of affordance:
1: The capability of the body of the user - The product has elements that fit in a way to the body of the user which explains how to use it.
2: The reasoning power of the mind of the user - The product has elements that give the user a logical 'conclusion' of how to use it.
3: The surrounding in which the human finds himself with the product - The product has a certain context that explains the user how to use it.
Physical elements: Height/length, mass, weight, strength, body shape, bend-ability, hear, sight, smell, etc. All of these elements can be used to communicate physical affordance factors.
Products nowadays are more complex and have more functionality than at any time in the past. Much of the functionality is now derived from, or is controlled by electrons. (Toys in chips, chips in toys)
Electrons, unlike simple mechanical things, are invisible and give few clues of what they are up to or that they are responding to the users' wishes. Thus two sorts of communication must be built-in to the overall design:
- The passive one, indicating function (icons, pictograms)
- The active one, indicating response to an input
You want a product to be clear, so that the user is not insecure about using the product.
A person operating a device is part of a closed control-loop. Such a loop requires:
1: One or more displays that document its current state (visual displays are most efficient, though for urgent warnings sound is better).
2: Control elements or input methods. Pust buttons, knobs, levers are replaced by keyboards, mice, laser pointers, touch sensitive screens and speech recognition systems. The inputs are interpretet by the device which reacts to them.
3: Indicator (visual, tactile or acoustic) that the input has been received; without it the operator has no immediate confirmation of acceptance and may mistakenly repeat or override the operation.
4: The decision, which is provided by the operator.
For instance:
Control element: A shower has knobs you can rotate to get (more) warm or cold water out of the showerhead.
Control channel: The tube between the knobs and the showerhead where the water flows through to get to the showerhead.
Display element: When you interact with the control element (opening the knob to get water), water comes out of the showerhead.
Display channel: The water that comes out of the showerhead gives you feedback that there is water coming out of the display element, so it is feedback to your interaction with the control element.
Decision element: The brain of the user that wants to get a shower.
Decision channel: The muscles, bones and blood from brain to fingers that turns the knob.
A product has perceived attributes and associations - it is these, in part, that give it its personality.
Formulation of desired features in products (This is very handy as a diagram for elements of affordances)
Generic features are configuration and scale
Configuration: Hold by 1 person, grip, points
Scale: 0.3
Attributes of an object:
Formal attributes: features such as shape, measurable dimensions and components.
Stylistic attributes: decorations, pattern, color and surface finish.
Technological attributes: Describing the material and process used to make the object.
To what extent can the attributes of materials - technical, aesthetic, perceived - be used for expression? The are some obvious examples. Gold, silver, platinum, diamond and sapphire have associations of wealth, success, sophistication and lasting value; used in a product they give it the same associations. Polished woods suggest craftsmanship; granite - permanence; steel - strength. Metals, generally, are recognizable as metals; a product made from them acquires, as part of its personality, the character-traits of metals. But polymers can - at least in appearance - assume the character of almost any material; in particular, they can be made to look like metal, or like wood, or even like glass.
The aesthetics of a product are created by the materials of which it is made and the processes used to shape, join and finish them. Ideas are expressed and perceptions and associations created by the ways in which these are used. The technical requirements of the product impose certain constraints on shape, but within these there is still room for expressing quality, or humor, or delicacy, or sophistication. Joining, too, can be used to suggest craftsmanship, or robustness, or to differentiate parts of the product that have different purposes. Above all, surface treatments modify color and reflectivity, texture and feel, and can add pattern, symbol or text to instruct, amuse or deceive.
There is more than one way to approach the selection of materials. One is through technical function. The other iis through form and features, seeking materials capable of providing them.
The act of design transforms a need into a product. Some definitions:
A need is an abstract idea. The need for illumination carries the idea of light, but says nothing whatever about its form, its feel, how it will be achieved or how it will be perceived.
A concept is one way in which the need might be met. A candle, an incandescent lamp, etc. ANd for each of these there is a set of possible sub-concepts.
A product is a realization of one of these it is a concrete object, with forms and features that can be seen and touched. It is made by processes, using materials that themselves have visual and tactile behaviors.
A feature is an aspect of the design that contributes to its functionality, usability, or personality. Features are of many types. There are topological features, defining the configuration of the product. There are geometric and dimensional features, some determined by technical requirements (strength, stability, efficiency etc), others by the needs of the user (ergonomic features), still others to give the product certain visual and tactile qualities. Beyond these, there are perceived features - those that create the associations of the product and the meaning it conveys.
Solutions are combinations of features that embody the concept, making it real, and which do so in ways that, to some degree, meet the intentions of the designer. The solution that is chosen for manufacture becomes the product.
The starting point for developing form is the formulation of the desired features of a product. The features define the constraints to which the form and materials must comply. Formulating and applying constraints is central to any act of selection. But why designing includes the act of reducing the set of possible solutions, it importantly also contains also the act of expanding them. The designer, experimenting with ways in which the features are used, evolved and combined, visualizes new solutions. Thus moving from concept to product involves both narrowing the number of solutions by screening out those that fail to meet the constraints and expanding it by creating new solutions that are in turn screened.
Features are identified, and solutions synthesized and screened in ways that we shall group under the headings:
Identification, Visualization and Materialization.
Using a text-based analogy: design, and particularly the creation of form, is not a linear procedure like filling out a tax form ('if this, then that...'), it is more like a multi-dimensional crossword puzzle ('does this fir with these... or perhaps these are not yet quite right... what if we tried this instead...')
Identification of concept is the first step in developing a feature list for an initially abstract idea. When choosing a concept (for instance a chair) the choice of chair implies that it will have certain generic features - features that are accepted characteristics of a chair. There are of two types:
Configuration: a chair, normally, is designed to support one person; it has a horizontal seat, supported above the floor by legs or some quivalent structure, and it provides support for the back. This combination of generic features already differentiates it from all the other concepts of seating.
Scale: The chair is to support an adult; if it is to do this, the depth and width of the seat, and its heigh above the floor are constrained to lie within certain broad ranges.
The use of intentions to guide choice of features goes further than simple market objectives: design van be adapted to meet economic objects, environmental objectives, and, of course, performance objectives. The phrase 'Design for X' nicely captures the way broad underlying intentions in mind - here, design for public use, or design for children.
Intentions describe the broad visions that guide the design. A single product may have more than one dominant intention.
Market
Design for public use
Design for woman
Design for the elderly...
Economics
Design for minimum cost
Design for assembly
Design for mass production...
Sustainable
Design for the environment
Design for recycling
Design for biodegradability
Performance
Design for a maximum insulation
Design for minimum mass
Design for minimum volume
Personality describes the associations and meaning that a product has for those who own or use it. Personality relies most heavily on the visual and tactile: a sense of order, proportion and internal coherency, and on shape, color and texture. And it includes the sense of compatibility with the lifestyle and aspirations of the consumer.
Perceptions are harder to express precisely, and are usually described by loosely defined words or metaphors like 'rugged', 'feminine' or 'classic' that suggest rather than define the perception, but still convey a certain set of features created by the choice of form and material.
Color, texture, feel, a sort of 'character' deriving from the shapes to which it can be formed, its ability to integrate with other materials, the way it ages with time, the way peopole feel about it. The kind of creativity that gives a product its personality, making it satisfying, even delightful.
A material has many dimensions:
A technical dimension, the one seen by the engineer;
An eco-dimension, that seen by the environmentalist;
An aesthetic dimension, the one encountered by the senses of sight, touch, hearing;
And a dimension that derives its features from the way in which the material is perceived, its traditions, the culture of its use, its associations, its personality.
There are words to describe visual, tactile and acoustic attributes; they can even, to some extent, be quantified. Perceptions are more difficult. A few, perhaps, can be identified - gold is, almost universally, associated with wealth, steel with strength, granite with permanence, plastics with the modernity...
Perceptions depend on time, on culture, demographics, taste, and more. But the consumer encounters materials only in the products in which they are used, and these are designed to appeal to a specific culture, demographic and taste.
Materials have an intrinsic personality, but one that is hard to see until brought into sharp focus by sensitive product design.
The first step in product design is that of identification of concept - the principles on which the product will be based.
In the second - visualization - the desired features are developed, using sketching, model-making and computer graphics to sharpen the constraints on configuration, size, functionality and personality,.
It is in the third - materialization - tat the choice of materials and processes is made, prototypes built and tested, and the final design agreed.
The choice is guided not only by technical requirements but also bu requirements of product aesthetics and personality. To achieve it we need selection methods that are flexible and can deal fluently with information of many different types.
A material can be characterized by its name, technical and aesthetic attributes. It can be indexed, so to speak by the processes able to shape it and by products in which it is used. Products are designed with certain broad intentions in mind. These intentions condition every design decision, including the choice of materials; thus materials can be linked to intentions through products. Products also have aesethetic and perceived attributes that are deliberate part of the design, materials can be linked to these too. This is not the only way to organize the information product designers need, but it is one that works.
The book focused on the role of materials and processes in product design, with emphasis on the ways in which they can be used to create the aesthetics and associations of the product, and the ways in which it is perceived. For me this book was very valuable to understanding how products are designed, what elements there are in product design and products. I hoped that by understanding all of this, I could get a better understanding of how affordances are designed.
During the reading of this book, I've made a lot of notes. Some of them are exact copies of important information, some of them are my own thoughts or brainstorms about this information. Especially the little brainstorms give me a lot of insights in how to visually design affordances.
Most important insight about using visual design to create affordances was that it is very hard to create some sort of absolute list of how to visually design affordances, because a visual design can't be right or wrong, it is not binary, and every case is different. There are millions of affordances, it cannot be listed. I believe it is better to create some sort of diagram of elements of affordances to give designers of toys or products some sort of handle for visually designing the elements of products to create affordances. These elements should tell something about what types of affordances there are and what kind of visual handle you can give the user or player.
I think it is also necessary to explain what influences the perception of a user (context - environment, scale, etc.). I didn't know what all of these elements were before, but during the reading of Materials and Design I came to the understanding that by looking at how a designer designs a product, I also learn about how a user perceives a product. Because a user doesn't just perceive a product, he or she actually communicates with the designer through the object the designer has made. Or the other way around: the designer communicates with the user by the object.
So by looking at how designers design a product, what elements and features they name, I can learn what elements and features involve affordances.
So lets start:
Design of product interface contains three broad aspects - Human Factors:
1: Matching product to the capability of the human body
2: Matching to the reasoning power of the human mind
3: Matching with the surroundings in which the human lives and works.
So out of the perspective of affordances, affordances have three broad ways of communicating - Factors of affordance:
1: The capability of the body of the user - The product has elements that fit in a way to the body of the user which explains how to use it.
2: The reasoning power of the mind of the user - The product has elements that give the user a logical 'conclusion' of how to use it.
3: The surrounding in which the human finds himself with the product - The product has a certain context that explains the user how to use it.
Physical elements: Height/length, mass, weight, strength, body shape, bend-ability, hear, sight, smell, etc. All of these elements can be used to communicate physical affordance factors.
Products nowadays are more complex and have more functionality than at any time in the past. Much of the functionality is now derived from, or is controlled by electrons. (Toys in chips, chips in toys)
Electrons, unlike simple mechanical things, are invisible and give few clues of what they are up to or that they are responding to the users' wishes. Thus two sorts of communication must be built-in to the overall design:
- The passive one, indicating function (icons, pictograms)
- The active one, indicating response to an input
You want a product to be clear, so that the user is not insecure about using the product.
A person operating a device is part of a closed control-loop. Such a loop requires:
1: One or more displays that document its current state (visual displays are most efficient, though for urgent warnings sound is better).
2: Control elements or input methods. Pust buttons, knobs, levers are replaced by keyboards, mice, laser pointers, touch sensitive screens and speech recognition systems. The inputs are interpretet by the device which reacts to them.
3: Indicator (visual, tactile or acoustic) that the input has been received; without it the operator has no immediate confirmation of acceptance and may mistakenly repeat or override the operation.
4: The decision, which is provided by the operator.
For instance:
Control element: A shower has knobs you can rotate to get (more) warm or cold water out of the showerhead.
Control channel: The tube between the knobs and the showerhead where the water flows through to get to the showerhead.
Display element: When you interact with the control element (opening the knob to get water), water comes out of the showerhead.
Display channel: The water that comes out of the showerhead gives you feedback that there is water coming out of the display element, so it is feedback to your interaction with the control element.
Decision element: The brain of the user that wants to get a shower.
Decision channel: The muscles, bones and blood from brain to fingers that turns the knob.
A product has perceived attributes and associations - it is these, in part, that give it its personality.
Formulation of desired features in products (This is very handy as a diagram for elements of affordances)
Generic features are configuration and scale
Configuration: Hold by 1 person, grip, points
Scale: 0.3
Attributes of an object:
Formal attributes: features such as shape, measurable dimensions and components.
Stylistic attributes: decorations, pattern, color and surface finish.
Technological attributes: Describing the material and process used to make the object.
To what extent can the attributes of materials - technical, aesthetic, perceived - be used for expression? The are some obvious examples. Gold, silver, platinum, diamond and sapphire have associations of wealth, success, sophistication and lasting value; used in a product they give it the same associations. Polished woods suggest craftsmanship; granite - permanence; steel - strength. Metals, generally, are recognizable as metals; a product made from them acquires, as part of its personality, the character-traits of metals. But polymers can - at least in appearance - assume the character of almost any material; in particular, they can be made to look like metal, or like wood, or even like glass.
The aesthetics of a product are created by the materials of which it is made and the processes used to shape, join and finish them. Ideas are expressed and perceptions and associations created by the ways in which these are used. The technical requirements of the product impose certain constraints on shape, but within these there is still room for expressing quality, or humor, or delicacy, or sophistication. Joining, too, can be used to suggest craftsmanship, or robustness, or to differentiate parts of the product that have different purposes. Above all, surface treatments modify color and reflectivity, texture and feel, and can add pattern, symbol or text to instruct, amuse or deceive.
There is more than one way to approach the selection of materials. One is through technical function. The other iis through form and features, seeking materials capable of providing them.
The act of design transforms a need into a product. Some definitions:
A need is an abstract idea. The need for illumination carries the idea of light, but says nothing whatever about its form, its feel, how it will be achieved or how it will be perceived.
A concept is one way in which the need might be met. A candle, an incandescent lamp, etc. ANd for each of these there is a set of possible sub-concepts.
A product is a realization of one of these it is a concrete object, with forms and features that can be seen and touched. It is made by processes, using materials that themselves have visual and tactile behaviors.
A feature is an aspect of the design that contributes to its functionality, usability, or personality. Features are of many types. There are topological features, defining the configuration of the product. There are geometric and dimensional features, some determined by technical requirements (strength, stability, efficiency etc), others by the needs of the user (ergonomic features), still others to give the product certain visual and tactile qualities. Beyond these, there are perceived features - those that create the associations of the product and the meaning it conveys.
Solutions are combinations of features that embody the concept, making it real, and which do so in ways that, to some degree, meet the intentions of the designer. The solution that is chosen for manufacture becomes the product.
The starting point for developing form is the formulation of the desired features of a product. The features define the constraints to which the form and materials must comply. Formulating and applying constraints is central to any act of selection. But why designing includes the act of reducing the set of possible solutions, it importantly also contains also the act of expanding them. The designer, experimenting with ways in which the features are used, evolved and combined, visualizes new solutions. Thus moving from concept to product involves both narrowing the number of solutions by screening out those that fail to meet the constraints and expanding it by creating new solutions that are in turn screened.
Features are identified, and solutions synthesized and screened in ways that we shall group under the headings:
Identification, Visualization and Materialization.
Using a text-based analogy: design, and particularly the creation of form, is not a linear procedure like filling out a tax form ('if this, then that...'), it is more like a multi-dimensional crossword puzzle ('does this fir with these... or perhaps these are not yet quite right... what if we tried this instead...')
Identification of concept is the first step in developing a feature list for an initially abstract idea. When choosing a concept (for instance a chair) the choice of chair implies that it will have certain generic features - features that are accepted characteristics of a chair. There are of two types:
Configuration: a chair, normally, is designed to support one person; it has a horizontal seat, supported above the floor by legs or some quivalent structure, and it provides support for the back. This combination of generic features already differentiates it from all the other concepts of seating.
Scale: The chair is to support an adult; if it is to do this, the depth and width of the seat, and its heigh above the floor are constrained to lie within certain broad ranges.
The use of intentions to guide choice of features goes further than simple market objectives: design van be adapted to meet economic objects, environmental objectives, and, of course, performance objectives. The phrase 'Design for X' nicely captures the way broad underlying intentions in mind - here, design for public use, or design for children.
Intentions describe the broad visions that guide the design. A single product may have more than one dominant intention.
Market
Design for public use
Design for woman
Design for the elderly...
Economics
Design for minimum cost
Design for assembly
Design for mass production...
Sustainable
Design for the environment
Design for recycling
Design for biodegradability
Performance
Design for a maximum insulation
Design for minimum mass
Design for minimum volume
Personality describes the associations and meaning that a product has for those who own or use it. Personality relies most heavily on the visual and tactile: a sense of order, proportion and internal coherency, and on shape, color and texture. And it includes the sense of compatibility with the lifestyle and aspirations of the consumer.
Perceptions are harder to express precisely, and are usually described by loosely defined words or metaphors like 'rugged', 'feminine' or 'classic' that suggest rather than define the perception, but still convey a certain set of features created by the choice of form and material.
Color, texture, feel, a sort of 'character' deriving from the shapes to which it can be formed, its ability to integrate with other materials, the way it ages with time, the way peopole feel about it. The kind of creativity that gives a product its personality, making it satisfying, even delightful.
A material has many dimensions:
A technical dimension, the one seen by the engineer;
An eco-dimension, that seen by the environmentalist;
An aesthetic dimension, the one encountered by the senses of sight, touch, hearing;
And a dimension that derives its features from the way in which the material is perceived, its traditions, the culture of its use, its associations, its personality.
There are words to describe visual, tactile and acoustic attributes; they can even, to some extent, be quantified. Perceptions are more difficult. A few, perhaps, can be identified - gold is, almost universally, associated with wealth, steel with strength, granite with permanence, plastics with the modernity...
Perceptions depend on time, on culture, demographics, taste, and more. But the consumer encounters materials only in the products in which they are used, and these are designed to appeal to a specific culture, demographic and taste.
Materials have an intrinsic personality, but one that is hard to see until brought into sharp focus by sensitive product design.
The first step in product design is that of identification of concept - the principles on which the product will be based.
In the second - visualization - the desired features are developed, using sketching, model-making and computer graphics to sharpen the constraints on configuration, size, functionality and personality,.
It is in the third - materialization - tat the choice of materials and processes is made, prototypes built and tested, and the final design agreed.
The choice is guided not only by technical requirements but also bu requirements of product aesthetics and personality. To achieve it we need selection methods that are flexible and can deal fluently with information of many different types.
A material can be characterized by its name, technical and aesthetic attributes. It can be indexed, so to speak by the processes able to shape it and by products in which it is used. Products are designed with certain broad intentions in mind. These intentions condition every design decision, including the choice of materials; thus materials can be linked to intentions through products. Products also have aesethetic and perceived attributes that are deliberate part of the design, materials can be linked to these too. This is not the only way to organize the information product designers need, but it is one that works.
Literature study: Affordances and Product Semantics
I decided to do more study about affordances and what they are because I stumbled upon a discussion about affordances and product semantics. I did not know what product semantics were and if this had anything to do with what I'm researching (how to use visual communication for affordances).
The following text are my insights in affordances and product semantics.
Sensory elements
Affordances are elements of an object (or environment, but I will be focusing on objects) that communicate possibilities for actions with this object that have been given through sensory elements.
The main sensory elements to communicate actions are tactile and kinematic senses.
The kinematic sense (kinestetic) is the feeling of movements in limbs, relating to sensations in muscles, tendons and joints.
The tactile sense is the skin as sense organ, including sensations of pressure, temperature and pain. This is a passive sense, since you don't need to move to use these senses.
The haptic sense is impressions conveyed by the kinematic and tactile senses (Revesz, 1950).
Example: Doorhandle
Visual exploration:
First impression tells us it is a handle which can open the door to allow passage. This is perhaps followed by an anticipation of how to grasp the handle.
Haptic exploration:
This first impression does not always tells us how the handle can be manipulated regarding to the amount of force, when to pull or even the amount of rotation required. That will require haptic exploration or some kind of visual guidance (mostly product semantics are used in this case)
Product semantics:
The study of the symbolic qualities of manmade forms in the cognitive and social context of their use and application of knowledge gained to objects of industrial design. Product semantics are cognitive, not perceived (Krippendorf and Butter 1984)
Affordances:
Gibson: Affordances, or clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action, are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing. (Buttons for pushing, knobs for turning, handles for pulling, levers for sliding, etc.) (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2010)
Environment: Buttons, switches, knobs
Affordances: Push-able, flip-able, rotate-able
Constraints: Buttons allows it only to be pushed, rotating it will not turn on the light bulb.
Feedback: Light of the bulb (action is succesfull or not), on or off, up or down or counterwise or clockwise.
Structure of affordances, Chemero 2003:
'Affordances are relations between the abilities of organisms and features of the environment (or object).'
Affords-X (feature, ability)
Example:
Affords-sitting (flat surface, butt and bendable legs)
If affordances are properties of the environment relative to an animal then we can state that we can design affordances in a toy, because they would be properties of the toy relative to a learner/player.
All the 'action possibilities' latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation the the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities.
Ecological psychology (Young, 2001):
The importance of the environmental or ecological niche in cognition, hence it considers cognition as situated. So:
'What and how' people think depends on the situation they found themselves in.
Micheal Young (2001): 'Affordances can be thought of as possibilities for action. Affordances are detected by a goal-driven agent as they move about in an 'information field' that results from the working of their senses in concert with their body movements.
The theory of affordances, James Gibson (1977)
When a user perceives the affordances clues from the appearance features of a product, the user can correctly and intuitively operate the product to complete the operating tasks without any exploration or specification.
The theory of affordances are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes.
Exaple: if an object which has a rigid, level, flat and extended surface and it is about knee-high to human, then it affords sitting-on.
If a human can detect visual information of the five properties, the object can offer the affordance of sit-abillity to the human.
Conclusion:
The difference between affordances and products semantics is very clear:
Affordances is that what can be immediately understood based on perceived properties of an object. Affordances reflect possible relationships among actors and objects; they are properties of the world (Norman 1999)
Product semantics communicate an affordance by using symbols. They are not affordances theirselves, they are not interactive or tangible. Product semantics are based on conventions, they are arbitrary, artificial and learned.
So to make my research more clear, I say that with researching how visual design communicates affordances, I'm not talking about product semantics (using symbols and conventions to communicate affordances), but about the properties of an object, how these are perceived to come to an understanding of how the object can be used. I'm not interested in researching product semantics because I think that the challenge for designers should be in creating products where exploration is encouraged until skilled performance is possible (so don't put an icon on everything to tell how it works). Visual exploration is okay, but only with haptic exploration you can really learn to use a product (skilled performance).
The following text are my insights in affordances and product semantics.
Sensory elements
Affordances are elements of an object (or environment, but I will be focusing on objects) that communicate possibilities for actions with this object that have been given through sensory elements.
The main sensory elements to communicate actions are tactile and kinematic senses.
The kinematic sense (kinestetic) is the feeling of movements in limbs, relating to sensations in muscles, tendons and joints.
The tactile sense is the skin as sense organ, including sensations of pressure, temperature and pain. This is a passive sense, since you don't need to move to use these senses.
The haptic sense is impressions conveyed by the kinematic and tactile senses (Revesz, 1950).
Example: Doorhandle
Visual exploration:
First impression tells us it is a handle which can open the door to allow passage. This is perhaps followed by an anticipation of how to grasp the handle.
Haptic exploration:
This first impression does not always tells us how the handle can be manipulated regarding to the amount of force, when to pull or even the amount of rotation required. That will require haptic exploration or some kind of visual guidance (mostly product semantics are used in this case)
Product semantics:
The study of the symbolic qualities of manmade forms in the cognitive and social context of their use and application of knowledge gained to objects of industrial design. Product semantics are cognitive, not perceived (Krippendorf and Butter 1984)
Affordances:
Gibson: Affordances, or clues in the environment that indicate possibilities for action, are perceived in a direct, immediate way with no sensory processing. (Buttons for pushing, knobs for turning, handles for pulling, levers for sliding, etc.) (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2010)
Environment: Buttons, switches, knobs
Affordances: Push-able, flip-able, rotate-able
Constraints: Buttons allows it only to be pushed, rotating it will not turn on the light bulb.
Feedback: Light of the bulb (action is succesfull or not), on or off, up or down or counterwise or clockwise.
Structure of affordances, Chemero 2003:
'Affordances are relations between the abilities of organisms and features of the environment (or object).'
Affords-X (feature, ability)
Example:
Affords-sitting (flat surface, butt and bendable legs)
If affordances are properties of the environment relative to an animal then we can state that we can design affordances in a toy, because they would be properties of the toy relative to a learner/player.
All the 'action possibilities' latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation the the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities.
Ecological psychology (Young, 2001):
The importance of the environmental or ecological niche in cognition, hence it considers cognition as situated. So:
'What and how' people think depends on the situation they found themselves in.
Micheal Young (2001): 'Affordances can be thought of as possibilities for action. Affordances are detected by a goal-driven agent as they move about in an 'information field' that results from the working of their senses in concert with their body movements.
The theory of affordances, James Gibson (1977)
When a user perceives the affordances clues from the appearance features of a product, the user can correctly and intuitively operate the product to complete the operating tasks without any exploration or specification.
The theory of affordances are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes.
Exaple: if an object which has a rigid, level, flat and extended surface and it is about knee-high to human, then it affords sitting-on.
If a human can detect visual information of the five properties, the object can offer the affordance of sit-abillity to the human.
Conclusion:
The difference between affordances and products semantics is very clear:
Affordances is that what can be immediately understood based on perceived properties of an object. Affordances reflect possible relationships among actors and objects; they are properties of the world (Norman 1999)
Product semantics communicate an affordance by using symbols. They are not affordances theirselves, they are not interactive or tangible. Product semantics are based on conventions, they are arbitrary, artificial and learned.
So to make my research more clear, I say that with researching how visual design communicates affordances, I'm not talking about product semantics (using symbols and conventions to communicate affordances), but about the properties of an object, how these are perceived to come to an understanding of how the object can be used. I'm not interested in researching product semantics because I think that the challenge for designers should be in creating products where exploration is encouraged until skilled performance is possible (so don't put an icon on everything to tell how it works). Visual exploration is okay, but only with haptic exploration you can really learn to use a product (skilled performance).
dinsdag 24 april 2012
Playtest #2
Today I did my second playtest. I wanted to do this earlier, but earlier appointments failed.
Out of this playtest I wanted to get information about what kind of gestures were linked to musical changes.
So how do children move when;
- They want to make the music more busy or calm,
- They want to make the music louder or quieter,
- They want to stop the music.
I used two short loops out of Griegs Hall of the Mountain King. One short loop was very calm, the other was very busy.
I gave the tester one conducting baton (selfmade). The children sat around in a circle on their chairs. One child was conducting in the centre of the circle (confronting their 'crowd', not my laptop where the music came out of), I let the child conduct for a short time, asked them what they wanted to do (make the music louder or quieter of busy or calm), or asked them to do something. They had to decide how to gesture this. When they were done, they chose somebody else out of the circle to play with the baton. Children were very eager to be chosen.
Funny thing was that one girl didn't pay attention to how she was holding the baton and the other kids explained her how to, and argumented this by explaining where the grippiece was for. This clearly shows that children of the age of 6 are aware of affordances.
I taped the whole playtest, however I'm not allowed to put images of the children online, I'm only allowed to use the tapes for documentation of my research.
For the interaction I tried to make logical changes in music according to the movements of the children. The music can be more busy or calm, louder or quieter or stopped. This is all done by hand, I don't have a program yet. But as shown in the post before, the technical prototype is on its way.
Results:
- Children all use the same movement to stop the music. This is a quick, tight, decisive movement of both hands with the baton down.
- To start the music most children use the same movement to stop the music.
- Children hear that loud/quiet and busy/calm are two different things, but are not conscious of how to make different movements of this. However:
- Unconsiously they do make different movements for this:
- To change the volume of the music they make bigger or smaller movements
- To change the music to calm or busy they make quicker or slower movements
- The children like the music itself, but after a while (7 minutes) the children in the circle found to music to be boring. This was because I was only switching between two very short loops, so it is logical that after 7 minutes of watching children play, music gets boring. But this does show that the music needs to have a lot of variations, even in the same playstate.
- Children asked after 7 minutes of watching somebody play on the same music to change to music to something else. This shows that it is very good to give the ability to choose different musical pieces.
First technical prototype!
Let me introduce you to Mikail Pehlivan and Raymond Reints, they make the technical prototypes for my concept. This weekend they have finished the first prototype.
I'm already very happy with the result, this prototype already shows that my toy will be able to recognize direction and it works very smoothly!
Sort of feels like my baby sais 'mommy' for the first time ;)
donderdag 19 april 2012
maandag 16 april 2012
7 essential guidelines for functional design
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/05/7-essential-guidelines-for-functional-design/
7 Essential Guidelines For Functional Design
By Dustin M. Wax
August 5th, 2008 Guidelines, Principles, Web Design 52 Comments
Look at what you’ve made. Beautiful, isn’t it? But does it work? For whom does it work? Of course you can use it, but can anyone else? In short, is it functional?
At the heart of every piece of practical design, whether it be a website, product package, office building, manufacturing system, piece of furniture, software interface, book cover, tool, or anything else, there is a function, a task the item is expected to perform. Most functions can be achieved in a variety of ways, but there are some basic elements a designer needs to take into account to create a product that best fulfills its intended function.
These are the elements of functional design, the process of responding to the needs or desires of the people who will use an item in a way that allows their needs or desires to be met. Functional design is both an outcome and a process. As an outcome, it describes products that work well to perform their assigned tasks; as a process, functional design is a set of practices guided by the principles that produce that positive outcome. (Functional design is also a computer modeling technique, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.)
In order to create a product that works, there are seven questions you should keep in mind about the product you’re designing, who will be using it, and how they’ll be using it.
1. Consider the product’s goal.
Consider the screwdriver. The goal of a screwdriver is pretty straight-forward: to drive screws. Although there’s certainly a lot of room for innovation in screwdriver design — there are screwdrivers with more ergonomic handles, ratchet-assemblies, magnetic tips, and exchangeable heads — ultimately everything in a screwdriver’s design is aimed towards the accomplishment of that single goal: driving screws.
Ultimately everything in a screwdriver’s design is aimed towards the accomplishment of that single goal: driving screws. Image source.
Now, consider a website like Amazon.com. What is the goal of Amazon’s website? Amazon has a lot of different uses, some intended by Amazon and its designers and some not intended — you can look up reviews, compare product prices while you’re in a store considering a purchase, promote your brand by leaving lots of reviews, scam shoppers by creating fake storefronts, collect images of book covers for a school project, search book text for half-remembered quotes, and so on.
For the folks at Amazon, the website has one purpose: to sell stuff. All the features that allow those other uses were put in place as ways to sell more products.
But none of those are the reason the site was built. For the folks at Amazon, the website has one purpose: to sell stuff. All the features that allow those other uses were put in place as ways to sell more products. (And it seems to be working!)
2. Consider who will be using it.
Perhaps the single most important consideration in the design process — and the one most often forgotten — is the intended audience for the product. What works perfectly well for one user might be completely dysfunctional for another. And if the hoped-for users fall more into the second category than the first, you’ve got a problem.
Think about the way your parents or grandparents use their computers. Anyone with a bit of tech-savviness has probably fielded dozens of "tech support" calls from family members who are simply baffled by things like adding an email account to their email program, downloading family pictures from the Web, or dealing with a too-full hard drive.
Since CNN’s web-site is supposed to be used by huge and versatile audience, it has to work equally well for all its potential users if it’s to accomplish its goal.
Why do people have so much trouble with their computers?
They don’t know enough about how computers work.
They don’t have enough experience with computers.
They don’t have time to figure things out.
They don’t enjoy tinkering until they find a solution to a computer problem.
The manuals are written in a dense, uninviting language that they find boring and difficult to comprehend.
Considering the kinds of problems they have can give us a clue about the kinds of questions designers should be asking about their audience.
What kind of knowledge do your users bring with them?
How much experience do they have?
What kind of time do they have? Are they looking for a leisurely diversion or do they want to get in and out fast?
What kind of personalities do they have?
How much support will they need, and what form should it take?
Obviously there are likely to be several audiences for any given product. Plenty of computer users have the knowledge, experience, and personality types to easily do whatever they choose to do on their computers. If you’re designing a niche product — a website for Linux users, for example — perhaps you can get away with directing yourself towards only one, narrow audience. In most cases, though, a product has to work equally for all its potential users if it’s to accomplish its goal.
3. Consider what your audience intends to do with it.
As we saw in the case of Amazon.com, there are a lot of ways that users use a product besides those that directly fulfill the product’s main goal. In fact, every user comes to a product with his or her own intention — and they are rarely the goals that designers have in mind. For example, nobody in the history of humankind has ever wanted to record what was on channel Three between 9 pm and 10pm on Thursday the 27th — yet for years that was how VCR designers insisted we program our VCRs. No surprise, then, that few people programmed their VCRs.
Instead, what people want to do is record House tomorrow night. Likewise, your dad doesn’t want to configure his POP3 and SMTP settings. He doesn’t even want to send and receive email. He wants to send pictures of the baby to Aunt Jill in Iowa. Engineers and designers have long suffered from a tendency to substitute concrete specifications and processes for fuzzy user behaviors — but users don’t do that.
Engineers and designers have long suffered from a tendency to substitute concrete specifications and processes for fuzzy user behaviors — but users don’t do that.
Adequate knowledge of who your audience is requires some sense of what their intentions are and how they are going to think about your product. That’s what Tivo did when they replaced the complicated process of recording a show on a VCR with a process that better reflected their users’ intentions — just select a show you want to record and hit "Record".
4. Is it clear how to use it?
The best design, as often said, "speaks for itself". It is immediately clear — at least to its target audience(s) — what a product does and how to use it. Clarity is key to functional design. Probably one of the best-designed objects in the world is the ball. With minimal instruction even infants can use it!
In contrast, look at the website above. That’s the home page for Chipotle, the Mexican fast food restaurant known for its use of free-range, organic, and locally-grown ingredients. Not that you’d know that from the homepage. What you know is a) they have a logo, and b) there’s something you should know about jalapeño peppers. If there were no food scare involving jalapeños, you’d see only the logo. What do you do? We can assume the site has a goal — probably to get you to buy some tasty Mexican food — but how do you, the visitor, fulfill your own goal of finding what you want to know about Chipotle?
This is a classic example of what Vincent Flanders calls "mystery meat navigation" (presumably free-range, organically-grown mystery meat), a website navigation system so clever, so stylish, that visitors have no idea what the site does or how to do it. Make your product difficult enough to understand and it won’t get used at all — which means it doesn’t achieve its goal, which in turn means it doesn’t function.
5. How does your user know it’s working?
Remember in the Bad Old Days of the Web, when you’d make a purchase online and the "Submit" button would say underneath something like:
Please press the "Submit" button only once. Pressing more than once will duplicate your purchase.
We’ve come a ways since then, but it’s surprising how many times you still come across a website feedback form that doesn’t tell you when your message has been sent, or a search form that doesn’t tell you that it’s working on your request.
This problem is by no means limited to the online world. How often do you double-check to see that your alarm clock is set to go off, and at the right time, before you can relax and go to sleep? Or maybe you’ve run into this problem: you hit "Program" on your CD player (assuming you still have one) and key in the tracks you want to hear, but aren’t sure whether to hit "Program" again or just hit "Play" — and if you hit the wrong one, whether your program will be lost and you’ll have to re-do it.
These are all examples of inadequate feedback — it’s not clear whether you’ve completed the task you inteded to do or if there are more steps still required. While technically a product is functioning even if you don’t know it’s working, it’s not functioning well from the user’s standpoint — and products that don’t function well tend not to create very loyal users.
6. Is it engaging to your users?
One of the great products of recent years, at least in terms of engagement, is the Blackberry. Blackberry owners can’t stop fiddling with their devices — they check their email, flick the trackball around, check email again, send a text, scroll around the home screen, and then do it all over again. And again.
It’s no accident it’s earned the nickname "Crackberry."
Usability testing and paper prototyping are common methods to understand the way your target group will interact with you web-site and find out if it is engaging to your users. Image source.
Good design draws users in, whether through visual appeal, feel, ease of use, or sheer amazement. Anyone who has ever picked up a well-made hand tool and felt the desire to build something has experienced this — the tool just feels right.
This is, in part, the aesthetic value of the design — we are naturally drawn to things we find pretty. But aesthetics are hardly the limit of what makes something engaging. There are plenty of websites out there that are downright hideous — but they work. Those long form sales pages that litter the Web hawking "get rich quick" programs and miracle cures (like this landing page which won the SEOmoz landing page contest last year) are as ugly as human ingenuity can make them — but they consistently succeed in leading visitors (at least the kind of users that the pages are designed for) to the inevitable sale.
7. How does it handle mistakes?
How often have you visited a web page, realized it didn’t have the information you were looking for, clicked the "Back" button, and ended up on the same page again?
You made a mistake, to be sure — you clicked the wrong link — but that happens. It was the designer, though, who decided to make your mistake difficult to undo. Good design takes into account the possibility that users make mistakes.
Unless your only desired user is a member of that very small demographic of people who don’t ever make mistakes, your design should accommodate and even anticipate mistakes as much as possible. Web designers have come up with all sorts of ways to accommodate visitors’ mistakes, from persistent menus and "breadcrumbs" to 404 pages ("Page Not Found" pages) that link to the pages the websurfer was likely to have been looking for.
Designers who don’t make room for — and offer solutions to — users’ mistakes create non-functioning products.
Conclusion
Design is necessarily a relationship between users with problems to solve and designers with solutions to offer. Too often, though, users are left out of the designer’s considerations. Whoever designed the Chipotle site, for instance, had no conception of how any part of their target audience would approach the site. They had a clever idea — "it’s minimalism, man!" — and ran with it, to the detriment of potential diners, and possibly to the detriment of Chipotle.
Unless your specialty is creating concepts that have no possibility of being made into actual products, the ultimate goal is to design things that will be used. Think about how and why your product will be used, and by whom, as a central part of the design process to assure that your designs not only can be used, but will.
7 Essential Guidelines For Functional Design
By Dustin M. Wax
August 5th, 2008 Guidelines, Principles, Web Design 52 Comments
Look at what you’ve made. Beautiful, isn’t it? But does it work? For whom does it work? Of course you can use it, but can anyone else? In short, is it functional?
At the heart of every piece of practical design, whether it be a website, product package, office building, manufacturing system, piece of furniture, software interface, book cover, tool, or anything else, there is a function, a task the item is expected to perform. Most functions can be achieved in a variety of ways, but there are some basic elements a designer needs to take into account to create a product that best fulfills its intended function.
These are the elements of functional design, the process of responding to the needs or desires of the people who will use an item in a way that allows their needs or desires to be met. Functional design is both an outcome and a process. As an outcome, it describes products that work well to perform their assigned tasks; as a process, functional design is a set of practices guided by the principles that produce that positive outcome. (Functional design is also a computer modeling technique, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.)
In order to create a product that works, there are seven questions you should keep in mind about the product you’re designing, who will be using it, and how they’ll be using it.
1. Consider the product’s goal.
Consider the screwdriver. The goal of a screwdriver is pretty straight-forward: to drive screws. Although there’s certainly a lot of room for innovation in screwdriver design — there are screwdrivers with more ergonomic handles, ratchet-assemblies, magnetic tips, and exchangeable heads — ultimately everything in a screwdriver’s design is aimed towards the accomplishment of that single goal: driving screws.
Ultimately everything in a screwdriver’s design is aimed towards the accomplishment of that single goal: driving screws. Image source.
Now, consider a website like Amazon.com. What is the goal of Amazon’s website? Amazon has a lot of different uses, some intended by Amazon and its designers and some not intended — you can look up reviews, compare product prices while you’re in a store considering a purchase, promote your brand by leaving lots of reviews, scam shoppers by creating fake storefronts, collect images of book covers for a school project, search book text for half-remembered quotes, and so on.
For the folks at Amazon, the website has one purpose: to sell stuff. All the features that allow those other uses were put in place as ways to sell more products.
But none of those are the reason the site was built. For the folks at Amazon, the website has one purpose: to sell stuff. All the features that allow those other uses were put in place as ways to sell more products. (And it seems to be working!)
2. Consider who will be using it.
Perhaps the single most important consideration in the design process — and the one most often forgotten — is the intended audience for the product. What works perfectly well for one user might be completely dysfunctional for another. And if the hoped-for users fall more into the second category than the first, you’ve got a problem.
Think about the way your parents or grandparents use their computers. Anyone with a bit of tech-savviness has probably fielded dozens of "tech support" calls from family members who are simply baffled by things like adding an email account to their email program, downloading family pictures from the Web, or dealing with a too-full hard drive.
Since CNN’s web-site is supposed to be used by huge and versatile audience, it has to work equally well for all its potential users if it’s to accomplish its goal.
Why do people have so much trouble with their computers?
They don’t know enough about how computers work.
They don’t have enough experience with computers.
They don’t have time to figure things out.
They don’t enjoy tinkering until they find a solution to a computer problem.
The manuals are written in a dense, uninviting language that they find boring and difficult to comprehend.
Considering the kinds of problems they have can give us a clue about the kinds of questions designers should be asking about their audience.
What kind of knowledge do your users bring with them?
How much experience do they have?
What kind of time do they have? Are they looking for a leisurely diversion or do they want to get in and out fast?
What kind of personalities do they have?
How much support will they need, and what form should it take?
Obviously there are likely to be several audiences for any given product. Plenty of computer users have the knowledge, experience, and personality types to easily do whatever they choose to do on their computers. If you’re designing a niche product — a website for Linux users, for example — perhaps you can get away with directing yourself towards only one, narrow audience. In most cases, though, a product has to work equally for all its potential users if it’s to accomplish its goal.
3. Consider what your audience intends to do with it.
As we saw in the case of Amazon.com, there are a lot of ways that users use a product besides those that directly fulfill the product’s main goal. In fact, every user comes to a product with his or her own intention — and they are rarely the goals that designers have in mind. For example, nobody in the history of humankind has ever wanted to record what was on channel Three between 9 pm and 10pm on Thursday the 27th — yet for years that was how VCR designers insisted we program our VCRs. No surprise, then, that few people programmed their VCRs.
Instead, what people want to do is record House tomorrow night. Likewise, your dad doesn’t want to configure his POP3 and SMTP settings. He doesn’t even want to send and receive email. He wants to send pictures of the baby to Aunt Jill in Iowa. Engineers and designers have long suffered from a tendency to substitute concrete specifications and processes for fuzzy user behaviors — but users don’t do that.
Engineers and designers have long suffered from a tendency to substitute concrete specifications and processes for fuzzy user behaviors — but users don’t do that.
Adequate knowledge of who your audience is requires some sense of what their intentions are and how they are going to think about your product. That’s what Tivo did when they replaced the complicated process of recording a show on a VCR with a process that better reflected their users’ intentions — just select a show you want to record and hit "Record".
4. Is it clear how to use it?
The best design, as often said, "speaks for itself". It is immediately clear — at least to its target audience(s) — what a product does and how to use it. Clarity is key to functional design. Probably one of the best-designed objects in the world is the ball. With minimal instruction even infants can use it!
In contrast, look at the website above. That’s the home page for Chipotle, the Mexican fast food restaurant known for its use of free-range, organic, and locally-grown ingredients. Not that you’d know that from the homepage. What you know is a) they have a logo, and b) there’s something you should know about jalapeño peppers. If there were no food scare involving jalapeños, you’d see only the logo. What do you do? We can assume the site has a goal — probably to get you to buy some tasty Mexican food — but how do you, the visitor, fulfill your own goal of finding what you want to know about Chipotle?
This is a classic example of what Vincent Flanders calls "mystery meat navigation" (presumably free-range, organically-grown mystery meat), a website navigation system so clever, so stylish, that visitors have no idea what the site does or how to do it. Make your product difficult enough to understand and it won’t get used at all — which means it doesn’t achieve its goal, which in turn means it doesn’t function.
5. How does your user know it’s working?
Remember in the Bad Old Days of the Web, when you’d make a purchase online and the "Submit" button would say underneath something like:
Please press the "Submit" button only once. Pressing more than once will duplicate your purchase.
We’ve come a ways since then, but it’s surprising how many times you still come across a website feedback form that doesn’t tell you when your message has been sent, or a search form that doesn’t tell you that it’s working on your request.
This problem is by no means limited to the online world. How often do you double-check to see that your alarm clock is set to go off, and at the right time, before you can relax and go to sleep? Or maybe you’ve run into this problem: you hit "Program" on your CD player (assuming you still have one) and key in the tracks you want to hear, but aren’t sure whether to hit "Program" again or just hit "Play" — and if you hit the wrong one, whether your program will be lost and you’ll have to re-do it.
These are all examples of inadequate feedback — it’s not clear whether you’ve completed the task you inteded to do or if there are more steps still required. While technically a product is functioning even if you don’t know it’s working, it’s not functioning well from the user’s standpoint — and products that don’t function well tend not to create very loyal users.
6. Is it engaging to your users?
One of the great products of recent years, at least in terms of engagement, is the Blackberry. Blackberry owners can’t stop fiddling with their devices — they check their email, flick the trackball around, check email again, send a text, scroll around the home screen, and then do it all over again. And again.
It’s no accident it’s earned the nickname "Crackberry."
Usability testing and paper prototyping are common methods to understand the way your target group will interact with you web-site and find out if it is engaging to your users. Image source.
Good design draws users in, whether through visual appeal, feel, ease of use, or sheer amazement. Anyone who has ever picked up a well-made hand tool and felt the desire to build something has experienced this — the tool just feels right.
This is, in part, the aesthetic value of the design — we are naturally drawn to things we find pretty. But aesthetics are hardly the limit of what makes something engaging. There are plenty of websites out there that are downright hideous — but they work. Those long form sales pages that litter the Web hawking "get rich quick" programs and miracle cures (like this landing page which won the SEOmoz landing page contest last year) are as ugly as human ingenuity can make them — but they consistently succeed in leading visitors (at least the kind of users that the pages are designed for) to the inevitable sale.
7. How does it handle mistakes?
How often have you visited a web page, realized it didn’t have the information you were looking for, clicked the "Back" button, and ended up on the same page again?
You made a mistake, to be sure — you clicked the wrong link — but that happens. It was the designer, though, who decided to make your mistake difficult to undo. Good design takes into account the possibility that users make mistakes.
Unless your only desired user is a member of that very small demographic of people who don’t ever make mistakes, your design should accommodate and even anticipate mistakes as much as possible. Web designers have come up with all sorts of ways to accommodate visitors’ mistakes, from persistent menus and "breadcrumbs" to 404 pages ("Page Not Found" pages) that link to the pages the websurfer was likely to have been looking for.
Designers who don’t make room for — and offer solutions to — users’ mistakes create non-functioning products.
Conclusion
Design is necessarily a relationship between users with problems to solve and designers with solutions to offer. Too often, though, users are left out of the designer’s considerations. Whoever designed the Chipotle site, for instance, had no conception of how any part of their target audience would approach the site. They had a clever idea — "it’s minimalism, man!" — and ran with it, to the detriment of potential diners, and possibly to the detriment of Chipotle.
Unless your specialty is creating concepts that have no possibility of being made into actual products, the ultimate goal is to design things that will be used. Think about how and why your product will be used, and by whom, as a central part of the design process to assure that your designs not only can be used, but will.
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)