Usability in industrial design.
The laws of usability can apply to non-screen interfaces and designs of real objects.
We have used some home appliance equipment items that were designed with lack of usability.
In our kitchen was an electrical tea kettle made by PHILIPS, which was impossible to fill with water using one hand because second one was required to keep the cover. There are a many situations on the kitchen when you need to feel kettle using one hand, and this ‘feature’ was very annoying.
A Philishave (again PHILIPS) shaver has a button of head release just behind the power switch button on the front of the handle. It is easy to assume that quit each time of using of this machine my finger had slid off on the switch and pressed the head release button, and head with my beard’s particles were immediately poured on the bathroom’s floor!
A GRUNDIC video recorder (on that time GRUNDIG was bought by PHILIPS), that we are using in the children room until today, have a “record” button placed beside of “stop” button. My kids have erased many videotapes until I took efforts to protect them immediately after buying.
I do not think so I can blame designers but rather design management that have passed product to work without proper testing. Designers cannot predict everything, because they are more familiar with their objects and with usage of various interfaces in general. Some testing check circle will eliminate these problems and will increase values and usability of products.
[…] Although that’s doesn’t mean that design is dead. It would be inaccurate so say. Design became an integrated part of corporative production process and designers now are blue jacket workers like these who work on conveyors of Ford. This is because the qualities of product’s design were decreased during the last 10 years. Corporations pay less attention to style consistencies, many products going to the production without passing usability testing. We see the results on the shelves of stores, on our table, everywhere (read this story). […]
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