The Psychology of Everyday Things
March 5th, 2010On my recent trip to e mbedded world in Nuremberg, the lift (elevator) system in the hotel only had a single button to call the lift car.
This caused various problems as there was no ability to select direction of travel. My room wasn’t on the top floor, so when the doors opened I had no idea whether I was going to take a trip to a higher floor even though I wanted to go down to breakfast. To make matters worse the indication panel above the door didn’t reflect the subsequent direction of travel only the current direction.
So for example I was on the 4th floor and the lift, coming from the ground level, would arrive and be announced with an arrow pointing upwards. You would get in not knowing whether or not the lift was actually terminating at your floor or stopping just to continue upwards.
This annoyed me as it was just poor design. At times like this I’m always taken back to a book recommended to me by my father, called “The Psychology of Everyday Things” by Donald Norman.
Even though it is quite dated now it is still a good read (e.g. it explains why poor designcauses us to try and pull doors that need pushing).
I noticed the book has subsequently been renamed to “The Design of Everyday Things“.
Now I’ve of got that off my chest I can get back to understanding wordpress!
