Examples of Good an Bad Design in my Everyday Life
Just in my dorm alone, I was able to find an example of good design, and one example of bad design.
The Good:
This sink is wonderful. It does its job well in the categories the author of the design of everyday things states.
It has the affordance that it is a device a human can use to retrieve water/liquid because it has a spout by turning the handles which are molded to replicate human grip.
It signifies that one may use hot or cold water because the hot handle is red and the cold handle is blue.
The mapping is simple to understand, as the handles prevent you from turning them the wrong way naturally, and there are only two handles to turn, so one is mapped to hot, the other cold.
The feedback is ingrained in the device, you know you've turned the handle correctly when water is flowing, and you can feel the temperature change with various handle turns by putting your hand in the water. Feedback is immediate and doesn't annoy you with flashing lights or sounds.
The conceptual model is easy enough to explain, you modify how much you turn the hot and cold handles depending on what temperature of water you wish to receive.
With the five categories being met to a satisfactory level, I would congratulate this sink as a good design.
The Bad:
These window locks even miss the fundamental engineering design demands. In the first place, these window locks never even lock the windows, regardless of what position the locks are in.
Affordance-wise, these window locks do not clearly indicate the fact that the human may turn them to lock the windows. Most window locks show a piece sliding underneath another, to show that the window lock does, in fact, lock something when turned. These window locks lack that piece.
Because these locks lack that piece, they also lack a signifier of whether the window is closed or not. I tried all the various combinations of the locks being turned, and none of the positions locked the window.
This brings me to feedback, the only way to check if this window is locked is to try and lift the window yourself. This is a slow process of turning the dial locks just to see if the window is locked when in the end the window never locked at all.
There is no proper mapping with this design, again, I could turn the locks every which way and no matter what combination I tried the window never locked.
If the device is not easily mapped, the conceptual model must not be easy to understand either.
This is all because the window locks are lacking the indicating sliding piece that can tell the user that the window is locked. It is unfortunate that I have to live in a dorm where my windows cannot lock when I do not wish for them to be open, but I suppose that I am not on the first floor, so I should be alright.
The Good:
This sink is wonderful. It does its job well in the categories the author of the design of everyday things states.
It has the affordance that it is a device a human can use to retrieve water/liquid because it has a spout by turning the handles which are molded to replicate human grip.
It signifies that one may use hot or cold water because the hot handle is red and the cold handle is blue.
The mapping is simple to understand, as the handles prevent you from turning them the wrong way naturally, and there are only two handles to turn, so one is mapped to hot, the other cold.
The feedback is ingrained in the device, you know you've turned the handle correctly when water is flowing, and you can feel the temperature change with various handle turns by putting your hand in the water. Feedback is immediate and doesn't annoy you with flashing lights or sounds.
The conceptual model is easy enough to explain, you modify how much you turn the hot and cold handles depending on what temperature of water you wish to receive.
With the five categories being met to a satisfactory level, I would congratulate this sink as a good design.
The Bad:
These window locks even miss the fundamental engineering design demands. In the first place, these window locks never even lock the windows, regardless of what position the locks are in.
Affordance-wise, these window locks do not clearly indicate the fact that the human may turn them to lock the windows. Most window locks show a piece sliding underneath another, to show that the window lock does, in fact, lock something when turned. These window locks lack that piece.
Because these locks lack that piece, they also lack a signifier of whether the window is closed or not. I tried all the various combinations of the locks being turned, and none of the positions locked the window.
This brings me to feedback, the only way to check if this window is locked is to try and lift the window yourself. This is a slow process of turning the dial locks just to see if the window is locked when in the end the window never locked at all.
There is no proper mapping with this design, again, I could turn the locks every which way and no matter what combination I tried the window never locked.
If the device is not easily mapped, the conceptual model must not be easy to understand either.
This is all because the window locks are lacking the indicating sliding piece that can tell the user that the window is locked. It is unfortunate that I have to live in a dorm where my windows cannot lock when I do not wish for them to be open, but I suppose that I am not on the first floor, so I should be alright.
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