Usability Experts
I don’t think that highly usable products were put together like legos. It’s not, “put a button here, a tab strip here, a knob here.” I think, instead, you’re presented with a problem and several known solutions, and then you start eliminating the bad ones.
It ought to be a an entirely thought out, approach, too. If A solves one problem, and B solves another, but A and B don’t work together well, then obviously that doesn’t come out to be usable.
You don’t need to be a software developer or ux designer to figure out if something’s usable. You just need to get angry at something, and realize that if a product is causing frustration, it’s not that usable. Here’s a few examples that I’ve come across in the last week:
- Nate’s Ralph Lauren Onesie - Ralph Lauren, in his baby GENIUS, decided to put all the buttons on the back of the onesie. Now, it looks great from the front, but once you’re changing an angry Natertot, you see the problem that arises from having to turn over a baby who’s already angry to be on a changing table.
- Our new ottoman/coffee table - The piece came almost entirely assembled, except the feet. Clearly whoever devised how to attach the feet to the table hadn’t actually done it. First, there were no preset holes, so you just put the feet where you thought they should go. So, knowing that, I get a drill bit the right size for the screw and start marking my holes. 3rd foot in, boom, I snag into some ribbon that was necessary to cover some of the plywood on the bottom, which conveniently snaps my bit in half. After getting some pliers and removing the bit from the wood, I tried to screw in the foot. How did I screw in the 2″ screw? With a hand held, no-ratchet screwdriver, because the hole in which the screw is run through wasn’t big enough for any sort of drill extension. Thanks for that, whoever-made-my-furniture.
When I pay money for something, I should enjoy it, not loathe it. It’s the little things that cause extreme frustration which seem to stand out much more significantly than the remaining good parts of a product. So, please, think of the drill-users out there.