Author: Qingyi Dou

Affordances and Constrains

In this article Norman talks about several concepts: the conceptual model, real affordances, perceived affordances, constrains, and conventions. By giving example of screen-based products, he clearly tells the difference between real affordances and perceived affordances, that real affordances “reflect the posible relationships among actors and objects”, for instance computer system comes with the affordances of pointing, touching, typing, clicking, while perceived affordances provide clues for people of what to do with and how to use an object when first see it. Also with this screen-based example, he distinguishes conventions and perceived affordances. Thinking of this I find that it is really possible to confuse and mistake conventions as perceived affordances, and I still cannot clearly tell whether a function or factor is a convention or perceived affordance.

Thoughtless Acts

It is very interesting to see and to be aware of the thoughtless acts occur around me. I am kind of surprised by some of the acts, and even after I notice such acts I still cannot think of a reason for taking this thoughtless act, maybe it is conventional, or maybe is intuitive. In the article Jane Fulton Suri also shares 10 techniques for observation. This inspires me to observe from more perspectives. Aside from looking at the surface, we also need to dig deeper to find why this happens, and think wider from for instance emotional and cultural aspects.

When I really began to observe people’s behavior in daily life, I found that many behaviors did occur unconsciously. For instance:

1. When I walk on the street and see a grid-like ground like the one in the picture, I will subconsciously avoid stepping on the side of the grid. When I talked to my friends about this, I found that most people have had this behavior before. Similarly, there is also thoughtless act of stepping only on the same color when walking on zebra crossing. This kind of behavior happens frequently, but I can’t think of why.
2. When I see the windows of buildings, shops, or other reflective surfaces, I will subconsciously take a look at my reflection on the surface. This time, when I realized that I was looking at myself in the windowpane, I deliberately slowed down and observed other people near me. I found that some people would look at the glass when they passed the window glass as well.
3. I found that as long as the phone is around, people will often pick up the phone and light up the screen and lock it again and then put it back.

Jasper Liu talked about design thinking in his article. Based on the classic double diamond design process model from Design Council and the modified model by Don Norman, Jasper raised a more detailed version of this model. It clearly shows the relationship in the whole design thinking process, and the in class design process also follows this model.

Jasper said Norman “summarized the process as finding the right problem and finding the right solution”. The two findings are quite  reasonable, and it seems that many design process really follow this model. Meanwhile, in Richard Buchanan’s Wicked Problem in Design Thinking, Horst Rittel, who formulated wicked problems approach, also asserts that design process “is divided in to two distinct phases: problem definition and problem solution.” I took User Experience Design course last semester, and I really learned to find the pain point of the user first and then try to solve the problem.

Liz Sanders introduced the map of design research in her paper. She talked about two intersecting dimensions which are respectively defined by approach and mind-set. (approach: design-led, research-led; mind-set: expert mindset, participatory mindset) She said that nowadays “the largest and most developed of the areas on the map is the user-centered design zone.” Similarly, Jasper’s diamond model also shows that the design thinking process is human-centered.

I thought in Processing the syntax “line( x1, y1, x2, y2)” is a good design. It is very clear that if you type in the coordinates of the start point and the end point then you can get a line. 

But after the class presentation I find that this is not that “good”. I know Processing so I think “line(x1, y1, x2, y2)” is clear and simple, but for someone doesn’t know Processing or coordinates, these four figures may be very confusing.