Reading for 3/5
Design of Everyday Things Chapter 3
This chapter focuses on the psychology behind memory. I took AP Psych in high school, so I’ve already got a firm understanding of the short term and long term memory and the process of exchanging information between the two.
I used to have an outstanding memory, I could perform complex math in my head, I could even take derivatives in my head. Then I got my 3rd concussion right before entering college and everything was much different. I need to write down numbers to subtract now. It’s terrible if I had never gotten that 3rd concussion I might still be majoring in computer engineering. I get headaches every day, and more often than not those headaches develop into migraines, especially when I have to do a lot of math. Math is one of my most favorite subjects, so I am really upset that I just can’t keep up with it anymore.
The important takeaway from this chapter is that disrupting people’s pre-existing mental models by creating designs that clash with those models can prove fatal to your design. Tampering with preconceived notions can make people less able to understand how to use your product. If coins are already so dissimilar from each other, one should probably not create a new coin that is too similar to others. This also means you must consider other cultures preconceived mental models as well when designing a product. If someone in China cannot properly utilize motion controlled blinkers, for example, since they use different hand gestures than us to signal left or right, there could be fatal consequences.
Chapter 4
When a user is interacting with your object, there are certain constraints that affect the user and your design. Physical constraints, for example, may allow the user to know what lego brick fits where. They limit what actions can be performed within the physicality of the world. There are also cultural restraints. There are many different cultures with different ways of interpreting the world, so your products if worldwide must reflect these constraints. There are also semantic constraints revolved around meaning, and logical constraints as well. This is as easy as noticing that there is one piece leftover after you have completed a build.
Constraints are just as valuable to the design process as affordances, signifiers, and mapping. Constraints can buy into affordances and signifiers. If a door physically cannot open one way, that constraint can indicate that the door must not open that way.
Sometimes, things are built the way they are because it is the easiest way to build them. Rooms that require multiple switches are not mapped in the way you would expect because it would be complex to arrange the switches the way you desire. So in the case of this, we can use constraints that force the users to accept the intended mapping versus their own internal mapping. Interlocks force the user to perform operations in the proper order. Lock-ins prevent users from prematurely stopping an operation. Lock-outs prevent events from occurring.
Conventions are a unique case in cultural restraints. Conventions layout proper guidelines for designers to follow when considering a culture, but make it difficult for designers to invoke change by design. People tend to not enjoy changes in conventions because it requires new learning and adjustments to long term memory banks.
There are a lot of things in psychology that one must consider in design. I wish we could take a separate course that focuses just on that. There are a lot of differing opinions amongst the new media teachers in this category specifically and I am sort of sick of being bombarded with differing opinions daily.
This chapter focuses on the psychology behind memory. I took AP Psych in high school, so I’ve already got a firm understanding of the short term and long term memory and the process of exchanging information between the two.
I used to have an outstanding memory, I could perform complex math in my head, I could even take derivatives in my head. Then I got my 3rd concussion right before entering college and everything was much different. I need to write down numbers to subtract now. It’s terrible if I had never gotten that 3rd concussion I might still be majoring in computer engineering. I get headaches every day, and more often than not those headaches develop into migraines, especially when I have to do a lot of math. Math is one of my most favorite subjects, so I am really upset that I just can’t keep up with it anymore.
The important takeaway from this chapter is that disrupting people’s pre-existing mental models by creating designs that clash with those models can prove fatal to your design. Tampering with preconceived notions can make people less able to understand how to use your product. If coins are already so dissimilar from each other, one should probably not create a new coin that is too similar to others. This also means you must consider other cultures preconceived mental models as well when designing a product. If someone in China cannot properly utilize motion controlled blinkers, for example, since they use different hand gestures than us to signal left or right, there could be fatal consequences.
Chapter 4
When a user is interacting with your object, there are certain constraints that affect the user and your design. Physical constraints, for example, may allow the user to know what lego brick fits where. They limit what actions can be performed within the physicality of the world. There are also cultural restraints. There are many different cultures with different ways of interpreting the world, so your products if worldwide must reflect these constraints. There are also semantic constraints revolved around meaning, and logical constraints as well. This is as easy as noticing that there is one piece leftover after you have completed a build.
Constraints are just as valuable to the design process as affordances, signifiers, and mapping. Constraints can buy into affordances and signifiers. If a door physically cannot open one way, that constraint can indicate that the door must not open that way.
Sometimes, things are built the way they are because it is the easiest way to build them. Rooms that require multiple switches are not mapped in the way you would expect because it would be complex to arrange the switches the way you desire. So in the case of this, we can use constraints that force the users to accept the intended mapping versus their own internal mapping. Interlocks force the user to perform operations in the proper order. Lock-ins prevent users from prematurely stopping an operation. Lock-outs prevent events from occurring.
Conventions are a unique case in cultural restraints. Conventions layout proper guidelines for designers to follow when considering a culture, but make it difficult for designers to invoke change by design. People tend to not enjoy changes in conventions because it requires new learning and adjustments to long term memory banks.
There are a lot of things in psychology that one must consider in design. I wish we could take a separate course that focuses just on that. There are a lot of differing opinions amongst the new media teachers in this category specifically and I am sort of sick of being bombarded with differing opinions daily.
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