2017_S2 User Experience in Design

Ironically, my first assignment in ADM was to analyze the user experience of navigating through the ADM building as a new student. Just finding this class as my first time in the building was more difficult than I expected.

‘The Psychopathology of Everyday things’ gave a more profound approach to design considerations which I usually abide to. As a design student, discoverability and understanding, unconsciously form part of the design thinking and process that I follow to conceptualize and design. Those terms were not properly defined prior to the reading but were internalized and naturally occurring. I had this Read more →

Done by: Kaywerlyn, Ummi, Raymond

In the first chapter, Norman introduces us to the concept of Human-Centred Design (HCD), as well as two of the most important characteristics of good design — discoverability and understanding, and the six fundamental psychological concepts that discoverability encompasses: affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings, feedback, and conceptual model.

With each of the psychological concepts, Norman uses relatable everyday examples to illustrate them, Read more →

Donald Norman’s first chapter of The Design of Everyday Things made me realize how difficult it is to explain design to someone. He has taken an idea that is at the center of design — the user experience — and analyzed its parts in a way that almost becomes scientific or mathematical. The way he describes affordances, signifiers and feedback Read more →

In response to The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things, I believe that good design has to be a human-centered design. I feel that a human-centered design has to be clear and precise about the functions and ability of the product, and the target consumers have to find the product easy to Read more →

Response to Chapter 1: Humans have always been great at adapting to unknown situations. We connect related (or even unrelated) past experiences to build conceptual models of a new experience. This implies that every single individual might have different way of perceiving things. What seems easy to use to someone might be hard to another.

It is our job as designers to Read more →

Thinking of affordances as a relationship between two properties is an interesting point that Norman mentions. Prior to reading The Design of Everyday Things, I have thought of objects and their affordances only within the context of one particular user. For example, a car affords a person with the ability to drive. But thinking of it as a relationship between Read more →

Chapter 1 mostly touch on the important characteristics of good design: discoverability and understanding. Throughout the chapter, I agree that designers should not only focus on making a product that works however they should also take into consideration of understanding the user’s interaction with the product itself. It would not be much of a success if the product sells well, Read more →