Author: Ribirth

Thoughtless Design

1. This is a bag of napkins. When people see it, they hardly need to think to know how to open it. By pressing hard and pulling outward, the original dotted line on the package will crack and the napkin will be available. I think the design is ingenious. When people see it, the first thing they see is the dotted line on the package, so they know immediately what to do next.
2.  Whenever my mobile phone battery is less than 20%, my mobile phone will automatically pop up such a prompt, prompting you to choose low battery mode to reduce the battery consumption. I don’t hesitate to click “low power mode” every time to reduce power consumption. I think it’s cleverly designed to take advantage of the psychology of people wanting their phones to last longer.
3. This is the door of my home, when you go out of the door, you will not hesitate to open it and push, rather than pull, even when I first use it, I do not need to think to know how to operate. I think it’s probably the convention in interior design that doors should open outward rather than inward.

Reading Response

After reading my interview with Fulton about the thoughtless act, I have been thinking about the question – – whether the cleverest thing about thoughtless Design is that it literally saves the user from thinking – – or whether it is based on experience in human life. He discusses how people interact with objects in their environment without much thought. He discusses the difference between perception and practice, which I think is a good explanation for why people tend to make the wrong move when they see a sliding door. Instead of directly exploring how people want to interact with objects, he encourages designers to observe what people do in the real world and think about what drives that behavior, as the basis for design and to advance it.

In Norman’s essay, he refers to “perceptual” revelation, which, unlike standard revelation, is acquired rather than formed naturally. Therefore, I think human perception is an intricate process, and the psychological state when interacting with objects should be the combination of innate perception and acquired experience, which may be the answer to the question I raised at the beginning.

This three reading analyzed the “design thinking” form different perspectives. Liu raised four different kinds of design thinking process. And compare the advantages and disadvantages between them, re-integration, and propose a new design thinking mode. Liu argues that the traditional thinking model is to too urgent to identify the key problems to solve. He advises that we should “start by uncovering the real problems, their root causes, and how people currently deal with them.” I think its a good idea of design. Only if we think deeper, and find the root of users problem, we can better “solve” the problem. As Liz Sanders argues that no matter in which kind of design mode, designer are working to meet the need of  users. Therefore,  knowing what’s the demand of the users, and what’s the problem they are facing, would be the first thing for a good design. 

Liu also argues that we should take “Human-center design” as the foundation. During the process of design, designer should not only think about the user of the product, but also other beneficial groups. I think design should based on they social and cultural background. As Richard Buchanan argues that “art” is crucial to understanding the new role of design and technology in contemporary culture, no matter fine art or useful art, they both have connection with contemporary culture. On the other way, human is the creator of culture, and human is also the center of society, therefore, no matter design (useful design) or science should take “human-center” as the foundation.

The targeted user of our group is Cindy. She is an IMA fellow in NYUSH, we analyzed her  interview video and we think the main problem she is facing now is she would been disturbed by the students who asking questions and the various notification from the App of her phone. It’s hard for us to reduce the students ask question, therefore, we decide to only focus on reducing the disturbance from App. 

This is the main interface of our app. When you open the app, the app icons on your phone will be arranged on the left and sorted by frequency of use and number of notifications. Click on the different app icons and the notifications for the different categories from this app will be displayed on the right. The user can swipe left to choose not to receive similar notifications, or swipe right to continue receiving similar notifications. If the user wishes to make a change, he can return to the app again to re-select. I think this app is a good grasp of the user’s pain points. And the design of the interface is simple and intuitive. In the automatic classification of information through the machine, users will be able to filter notifications from the app in a simple and clear way, without disturbing, without missing important information.

This is the project for the IMA “stupid pet trick” activity. I made it in my freshman year. I hope this project would be “stupid” but also useful. Therefore, it become a device that can avoid you to touch your phone with cute(stupid) appearance. You can put your phone inside,  the distance sensor would lead it’s hand clap yours once you get close to it.  

There are two reasons for me to defined it as a good design. First, it’s eyes is actually the sensor, I add month, hands and corner for it so that the user would not find out there is a sensor. So the whole device would looks cute and natural. Second, I like the design of its hand. The letter of “study” is big enough to remind user to study instead of playing their phone.