Monday 7 May 2012

The Design of Everyday Things II or Don't Make Me Think

We have recently had a refit of the kitchen at work, and we have acquired some nice-looking canisters for tea, coffee and sugar. This is them:
How long does it take you to work out which one holds, for example, the sugar? Each time I make a cup of tea (and I drink a lot of tea), I need to put conscious effort into choosing the canister with tea in.

As Don Norman says in his book The Design Of Everyday Things, the designer probably won an award for them; and that's not a good thing. This is exactly what he talks about when he talks about knowledge "in the world" and not "in the head".

That's all, it's just a rant.

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