What are the design implications? Don’t count on much being retained in STM. Computer systems often enhance people’s frustration when things go wrong by presenting critical information in a message th...
Warning messages are surprisingly ineffective against mistakes (even nice requests, such as the one shown in Chapter 4, Figure 4.6, page 143). Was this a mistake or a slip? Both. Issuing the close com...
Day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.
Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasur...
In some Australian Aborigine societies, time moves relative to the environment based on the direction in which the sun rises and sets. Give
In design, one of the most difficult activities is to get the specifications right:
Alas, sometimes clever people are too clever for our good. Some well-meaning plumbing designers have decided that consistency should be ignored in favor of their own, private brand of psychology.
The best products come from ignoring these competing voices and instead focusing on the true needs of the people who use the product.
Good design starts with an understanding of psychology and technology. Good design requires good communication, especially from machine to person, indicating what actions are possible, what is happeni...
What happens when we rely too much upon external knowledge, be it knowledge in the world, knowledge of friends, or knowledge provided by our technology? On the one hand, there no such thing as too muc...
Great designers produce pleasurable experiences. Experience: note the word. Engineers tend not to like it; it is too subjective. But when I ask them about their favorite automobile or test equipment,...
Fail often, fail fast,
In my university, copying machines are purchased by the Printing and Duplicating Center, then dispersed to the various departments. The copiers are purchased after a formal request for proposals has g...
Machines that give too much feedback are like backseat drivers.
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad de...
Even as simple a task as picking up a glass with the hand requires feedback to aim the hand properly, to grasp the glass, and to lift it. A misplaced hand will spill the contents, too hard a grip will...
Because visceral design is about initial reactions, it can be studied quite simply by putting people in front of a design and waiting for reactions. In the best of circumstances, the visceral reaction...
The standards should reflect the psychological conceptual models, not the physical mechanics.
The solution is 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.
Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.
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