Journal #5 – A super washer

Donald Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things” is an excellent read for anyone who has to use anything created by another human. It vividly illustrates the good and bad design, and provides a good guide for the understanding of basic user-centric design in products that make up our world.

Our daily life is full of chaos now, there are too many issues waiting for us to attend once we open our eyes in the morning. As Maeda said, to save time is essential. When I purchase something back from a store, I expect to use it right away without learning how to use it first. It seems ridiculous that some manuals are like text books now, users even have to check the index first before they can finally dig out what they need from the thick user manual. Let’s admit it, who really likes that and really think that’s a brilliant idea to create such a hideous process when what I really want is just to use my brand new digital camera?

Here is another example of frustration-produce product in our daily life. This is a laundry machine in my mother’s house. Take a look of its control panel:

Pic1

At the right side of Pic1 is this washer’s control button for water temperature which looks really confusing. First, every description has two different colors, as a user, what does that mean to me? At the upper left, it says “Hot/Warm” (Hot in white and Warm in yellow), at the lower right, it says “Warm/Hot” (Warm in white and Hot in yellow here now). Again, a user would never figure out what does different color means unless he or she finally notices the small “index bar” at the bottom that indicates “white = wash, yellow = rinse”.

Pic2

In Pic2 we can see the washing mode setting button for this machine, it scares me just by looking at it. So I put my heavy laundry bucket aside in order to take a close look of it, I still don’t understand how to set it. The mode setting area is devided in 5 sections by deffrernt mode. In each of them, there are small white, silver and yellow squares with little numbers next to them, they are all even numbers, but I am not sure what do they do there on this panel. And what is the difference between “Permanent Press” and “Normal”? And why “Soak” and “Prewash” are independant from other modes? It wouldn’t soak my clothes if I choose “Normal” mode? And again, there is a “index bar” at the buttom that tells what those little squares are, but I still don’t see the relationship of it and the even numbers next to the squares. So at this point, according to what Norman said in the book, I blame myself. I think I am dumb, I don’t know how to manipulate such a smart machine which was designed for delicate duties, and I don’t even bother to check the user manual!

Pic3

Here we finally found the user manual hidden inside of this machine’s lid. It says a lot, but I probably have to rearrange another time for my laundry after I finish reading this guide. I have encountered a very difficult time when trying to wash some clothes in my mother’s house, no wonder she never tried to use other mode than the “Permanent press” since it’s such a pain to handle this machine and she speaks little English.

What makes a designer think that it is very important for users to sit down and study the products before they use them? I admire Henry Dreyfuss who could really design for people. A good design is meant to solve people’s problems and to reduce the chaos. A good design gives to the user self-assurance, efficiency and satisfaction. Most of all, a good design would not make a user feel like a dummy when trying to use a simple-purpose product.