A1: Thinking About Design

Overview

To complete this assignment, you need to have a very critical and reflective perspective in your everyday life. Your job is to "think like a designer," and experience the world while being cognisant of how it was designed. Pay attention to everything that you interact with -- the alarm clock that wakes you up, the schedule that you look at to catch the bus, the feel of the doorknob as you leave your house, the ways in which doors open, the interface of your phone as you receive messages or type new messages, etc. What things work well? What things don't work well? Then, consider why does it work well? Does it match your expectations? Is it because you know how from experience, or because you made lots of mistakes in the past? Are there things that don't work well, but you've constructed a workaround for it (for example: creating a path through a field, because the walkway takes a circuitous route)?

Warning: as soon as you start thinking in this way, the whole world will seem very poorly designed. Actually, the funny thing is that it really is, but humans are very adaptable, so we soon forget.

Deliverable

The deliverable is a written report containing three sections:

  • Breadth. Describe 10 interactions you have had with things in your everyday life. In a paragraph, describe this interaction in detail, discussing whether it was successful or not. In what ways was it successful? In what ways was it poor? Why was it poor? What workarounds did you come up with to overcome these problems? Note: it is best to keep a small notebook with you so that you can record these in detail as you go about your life. Trying to recall them in the evening or several days later will be difficult and lack the clarity and richness of recording it in the moment.
  • Principles. Provide 5 design principles that you could attribute both a good experience and bad experience to. Provide a brief description of what this principle means, and how it applies to one or more of the examples from the previous step. For example, in class, I used the example of the washroom sign. This was an example of inconsistency since the sign indicated the washroom would be on one side when it was on the other.
  • Artifacts. Find one thing (or program) that you love to interact with, and one thing that you hate to interact with. Describe each in detail, along with what aspects of it make it pleasurable or enjoyable to use, or what aspects of it that make it absolutely awful to use. Use the design principles that you described in the previous section, and discuss whether your artifacts meet or break these criteria.

Your report should be roughly 3-4 pages long. Make sure to use headers to delineate the different sections of the report. This report is to be single-spaced, double-sided. Use 12-pt Times font with 1" margin on all sides.

Your assignment is due at the beginning of lecture on the due date. You have a 10 minute grace period after the start of lecture. After this, no late assignments will be accepted.