1. The author of this article, Donald A. Norman, illustrated many key points in this article. Norman uses many examples throughout the article of why people get frustrated with technology every day. Norman’s explanation to this is the poor design of the technology and the designers’ ambitions to combine newer technologies to attract customers. When designers create products, they tend to focus on adding technologies instead of improving the mapping and design of the product to make it easier to use. This is called paradox of technology. Another key point the author pointed out was how products are very difficult to use without instructions or pictures. “When things are visible, they tend to be easier than when they are not.” The author’s overall message in this article is for the designers to create technology to meet the people’s needs, not advance them so rapidly that it causes a paradox of technology.
2. This past weekend, I had a lot of trouble setting up my printer. There are only 4 buttons on the printer and over 20 functions it can perform. It had an instruction manual but it didn’t show all the functions the printer could perform. I had to go online to figure out how to perform a specific function. This example follows Norman’s explanation of how good design is where one button performs one function, not multiple functions.
3. The designers addressed the issue of design by making the iPod simple by giving one or two functions for every button or touchpad it had. The buttons and touchpad were labeled and easy to use. They also made it easy to use by giving the donut-shaped touchpad the function to navigate through thousands of songs and menus instead of a button requiring to be pressed multiple times to navigate through the device.
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