Lecture Topics in HCI, by Saul Greenberg
Contents for:	All Topics	CPSC 481	SENG 609.05	Industrial Course

Psychology of Everyday Things

This topic considers the design of everyday things. It begins with examples of bad design. The goal here is to have students realize that human problems and errors when dealing with technology are usually a result of design failure, and that good design accounts for human capabilities. It then introduces concepts and design principles that help us analyze bad design and create good designs. Students usually enjoy this section. They bring their own encounters of bad design into the discussion, and often propose fixes as well.

Overheads

• Psychopathology of everyday things: [Adobe PDF]
• Some useless things (?): [Adobe PDF]
• Psychology of everyday things: [Adobe PDF]

Handouts

• Exercise: Applying concepts from the psychology of everyday things to analyze a widget design.

Topics Covered

• Psychopathology of everyday things
  • From chariot races to tractors
  • Examples of poor design: microwaves, digital watches, slide projectors, telephones
  • World war two: machinery that taxed people's capabilities
  • Airplane problems
  • Computer Failure? The accident caused by the British Motorway Communications system
  • Other computer psychopathologies
• Psychology of everyday things
  • Visible affordances
  • Visible constraints
  • Mapping
  • Causality
  • Transfer effects
  • Population stereotypes
  • Conceptual models
  • Two guidelines for design
  • Individual differences and percentiles
  • Why design is hard

Required Readings

• Norman, D. A. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books. Excerpt pp. 5-22. 
  This  is an excellent, entertaining and informed discussion of what comprises bad and good design in everyday objects. (Reprinted in Baecker Grudin Buxton and Greenberg).

Videos

The Strauss Mouse is a re-enactment of situations where people used a mouse in inappropriate ways. It is humorous, and reminds us that even very "familiar" computer objects may be a mystery to new users. All the Widgets shows the evolution of many widget designs, and I use snippets from it to illustrate how early (and poor) widget designs often failed to satisfy many of the design principles suggested by Norman, and how later ones do. The evolution of scrollbars is a good choice, as early versions are quite arcane. It is a good way to show how graphical widget design should follow the principles similar to the good design of everyday things.

• The Strauss Mouse, by Mantei (1990, SVGR 56)
• All the Widgets, by Myers (1990, SVGR 57)

In-Class Teaching tips

I often bring in a bag to class full of everyday things. The bag includes staplers, scissors, tape-dispensers, alarm clocks, digital watches, floppy disks, CD-cases, and anything else I find lying around my office. When the discussion turns to design components of everyday things (e.g., visual affordances, constraints, etc.), I consider how well the items in my bag work.

I also try to find a real odd-ball device that is not familiar to most students. Examples in the past included an apple peeler and corer (which looks like an implement a torturer would use!) and a co-ax wire stripper. I pass it around for students to try and figure out what it is. We then discuss what visual clues helped them understand its function.

I give students the exercise. They analyze a GUI design, articulate its problems, and suggest redesigns.

Finally, I tell war stories about specific usability problems.

Major sources used to prepare lecture material

• The book Norman, D. A. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books.
• The HCI Hall of Shame
• The material of Professor David Hill, a previous teacher of this course, supplied several of the examples used in lectures.