I read an excerpt from Don Norman’s revised classic book on UX ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ that pointed at the cognitive functions of the human brain in the context of good vs bad design experience.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable. [/perfectpullquote]
When you think about software and “bad” user-interfaces for instance, consistent periods of exposure to a clunky task flow in a working environment per se forces the human brain to adjust to the flawed experience, and the pressure to meet those goals increases the cognitive efforts towards learning those relevant skills quickly despite the experience being unwieldy in gaining familiarity with the UI for accomplishing those recurring tasks. It might be termed as “efficient” but leaves the user in a quagmire. Such onerous yet persisting functionality naturally forms a so-called ‘blind spot’ preventing its users from judging the experience as ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘poor’ since they have now settled into a comfort zone in this burdensome journey. In my experience, I have seen its effect leaving a huge mark on their individual productivity, moreover in some cases, it even compels the users to thwart attempts to bring any positive change to the system. This is one reason why design thinking and user-centred frameworks fundamentally emphasize on ‘observing’ the users in their natural surroundings rather than ‘interviewing’ them to test their inherent judgement in relation to the tasks which they undertake. It could be, that in this context, Dr Norman is mentioning the human experience from the point of view of ordinary systems which are unrelated to the hurdles of technology, because the “inadequacies” which stem from a bad UI may not be necessarily perceived by the end-users for the reasons that I mentioned above, and also because they are committed to achieving those goals regardless of the quality of the UI or experience.
There’s another excerpt from this book pertaining to flawed systems and so profoundly worded, which very rightly assigns the responsibility of bad systems on the shoulders of its producers. ‘Producers’ consist of programmers, the business analysts, and other stakeholders of a project team who develop and maintain applications. I have lost count of the number of times that I have come across tech savvy users losing faith on themselves from a badly designed app.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is embedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, the human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.[/perfectpullquote]
Here again, I believe, Dr Norman’s emphasis was on non-technical items but in the context of software design, sometimes even the producers seem clueless about the shortcomings related to user frustrations until, among other methods, a 360° heuristic examination is concluded by a consultant to unearth the underlying blemishes. This book is a must-read.
