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Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
Services, lectures, rules and procedures, and the organizational structures of businesses and governments do not have physical mechanisms, but their rules of operation have to be designed,
products actually fulfill human needs while being understandable and usable.
the products should also be delightful and enjoyable,
attention must be paid to the entire experience, which means the aesthetics of form and the quality of interaction.
Interaction design draws upon principles of psychology, design, art, and emotion to ensure a positive, enjoyable experience.
Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.
It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It
my understanding of human behavior was relevant to my interest in the design of technology.
“You are designing for people the way you would like them to be, not for the way they really are.”
we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.
human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.
Good design starts with an understanding of psychology and technology.
Experience is critical, for it determines how fondly people remember their interactions.
The term affordance refers to the relationship between a physical object and a person
An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used. A
An affordance is a relationship. Whether an affordance exists depends upon the properties of both the object and the agent.
Gibsonian psychology, an ecological approach to perception.
He argued that the world contained the clues and that people simply picked them up through “direct perception.”
He pointed out that all the senses work together, that we pick up information about the world by the combined result of all of them.
his brilliance was in focusing attention on the rich amount of information present in the world.
Affordances exist even if they are not visible.
Perceived affordances help people figure out what actions are possible without the need for labels or instructions. I
affordances difficult to understand because they are relationships, not properties.
Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We need both.
such as our use of the visible trail made
Affordances are the possible interactions between people and the environment. Some affordances are perceivable, others are not. • Perceived affordances often act as signifiers, but they can be ambiguous. • Signifiers signal things, in particular what actions are possible and how they should be done. Signifiers must be perceivable, else they fail to function.
Whenever you see hand-lettered signs pasted on doors, switches, or products, trying to explain how to work them, what to do and what not to do, you are also looking at poor design.
Gestalt psychology
Good design takes care, planning, thought, and an understanding of how people behave.
feedback: some way of letting you know that the system is working on your request.
Feedback is essential, but not when it gets in the way of other things, including a calm and relaxing environment.
conceptual models
It is up to the designer to provide the appropriate information to make the product understandable and usable.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry. I am so bad at mechanical things.” No, she had it backward. It is the mechanical thing that should be apologizing, perhaps saying, “I’m sorry. I am so bad with people.”
The Seven Stages of the Action Cycle. Putting all the stages together yields the three stages of execution (plan, specify, and perform), three stages of evaluation (perceive, interpret, and compare), and, of course, the goal: seven stages in all.
1. Goal (form the goal) 2. Plan (the action) 3. Specify (an action sequence) 4. Perform (the action sequence) 5. Perceive (the state of the world) 6. Interpret (the perception) 7. Compare (the outcome with the goal)
Not all of the activity in the stages is conscious. Goals tend to be, but even they may be subconscious.
This is called a root cause analysis: asking “Why?” until the ultimate, fundamental cause of the activity is reached.
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
Once you realize that they don’t really want the drill, you realize that perhaps they don’t really want the hole, either: they want to install their bookshelves. Why not develop methods that don’t require holes? Or perhaps books that don’t require bookshelves. (Yes, I know: electronic books, e-books.)
Why do we need to know about the human mind? Because things are designed to be used by people, and without a deep understanding of people, the designs are apt to be faulty, difficult to use, difficult to understand.
Most of human behavior is a result of subconscious processes. We are unaware of them.
As a result, many of our beliefs about how people behave—including beliefs about ourselves—are wrong. That is why we have the multiple social and behavioral sciences, with a good dash of mathematics, economics, computer science, information science, and neuroscience.
It is only the highest level, what I call reflective, that is conscious.
Cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Cognitive thoughts lead to emotions: emotions drive cognitive thoughts.
Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value.
The most basic level of processing is called visceral. This is sometimes referred to as “the lizard brain.”
For designers, the visceral response is about immediate perception:
This has nothing to do with how usable, effective, or understandable the product is. It is all about attraction or repulsion.
