The Design Part Two

"I stand at the blackboard in my office, talking with a student, when my telephone rings. Once, twice it rings. I pause, trying to complete my sentence before answering. The ringing stops. "I'm sorry," says the student. "Not your fault," I say. "But it's no problem, the call now transfers to my secretary's phone. She'll answer it." As we listen we hear her phone start to ring. Once, twice. I look at my watch. Six o' clock: it's late, the office staff has left for the day. I rush out of my office to my secretary's phone, but as I get there, it stops ringing. "Ah," I think, "it's being transferred to another phone."... In fact, I could have retrieved the call from my office, had I acted quickly enough."

This passage was one of the most interesting, due to the paradox of ease of use versus innovation. The call forwarding function on the phone was made for those office workers who were out of the room or out of town, allowing callers to reach another line. This was made so that businessmen or women would not miss any important calls. The irony of this story is that Norman actually created more work for himself by chasing the phone call from one line to the next instead of taking two seconds out of his time to answer the call initially.

Although the book was published twenty years ago, the same rules apply in today's society. Companies want to keep "pushing the envelope" in terms of technology. As time advances, so must technology. The market is created for obsolescence, so that every year something new has to come out. Due to this time constraint, developers do not have as much time to test these products. This is why most companies advertise surveys for consumers to complete, but usually no one fills them out. If there is no feedback generated, then the companies continue to follow with the same design.

The factors would be used to evaluate the design of a product would be style, size, simplicity, affordance, cost, conceptual verus actual model, visibility in terms of function, shape, slickness of the material, sharpness of the design, color, durability, and separation of functions. Products are usually made smaller in order to conserve more space. With a smaller design, there is a less space for buttons, knobs, and controls. Although it is better for the size, if there are too many actions assigned to one control, the outcomes might be unfortunate.