Chapter 1: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

When Prof. Banzaert said that people live by this book, I thought I might like this book. No, I love it, and Donald Norman is a genius. A single man has encompassed every frustration and emotion I have had towards terribly designed products. Unlike those that continually attribute their failures with mechanics to their own inaptitude, I have always been the first to shout at an object and detail every aspect that is "wrong" about it. Who made you?... This is so non-user-friendly -- and just crazy... What person thought to put the buttons here?... Even the instructions are terrible! However, Norman goes beyond just simple frustration and opens the reader to the technical details of product design. He placed words to why I thought a product is badly designed: now I can look for "feedback" and "mapping" in a design as well as conscientiously see how my brain identifies "affordance." Moreover, I really enjoyed how he uses many real-life examples of well and poorly designed products, giving the reader an opportunity to apply what they just learned. 

One example that he could use in his section as a mix of bad and good ideas is my Otterbox case, known for its strong protection from scratches, cracks and drops. My sister and I had the hardest time constructing what we thought should be a simple case. Unfortunately, the instructions had fallen out of sight but, as they were only four small drawings (no text), the instructions may not have helped much more. In the Otterbox (defender series) case set, there are four layers plus a holster.

First, we placed on the open, rounded layer on top and the hard bottom case on the bottom: we heard several snaps, meaning they connected and meaning we received "feedback." The back layer was upside down and covering the camera. Yet, once we realized this, my sister and I could not unsnap the case. There were no clear indicators to press here or here. Finally, my sister took a knife and inserted it between the slit to pry it open. It finally unsnapped, and we corrected the back side. Unfortunately, we did not realize that a screen protector is included in the set. Moreover, it is a hard plastic (not the common adhesive), which had to be placed under the top layer. On the other hand, after prying the layers apart again, the screen protector had clear indications of how it should be placed: two openings existed that fit the Home button on the bottom and the shape of the forward-facing camera and speaker. The final layer was also easy to put on, since my sister and I were reminded earlier not to cover the camera. Moreover, the holster was designed that how one inserted the phone did not affect how it was held.

For some steps of the process, clear "feedback" and "mapping" existed. In other steps, the designer may have wanted to make a product that could not have the layers oriented incorrectly or produce false feedback. Also, if I need to reach my battery, it should be easy to recognize how to unsnap the layers. In this scenario, the Otterbox has good attributes as well as bad. For a person being introduced to the product or for someone who is not paying attention, the cases may present a problem (as it did to my sister and I).