WIKI SUBMISSIONS

USER CENTERED DESIGN

The book "The Design of Everyday Things", originally called "The Psychology of Everyday Things" is considered one of the most important books in the world of design. In this book, Donal A. Norman describes the psychology behind good and bad design through interesting examples and clear principles. Norman exalts the importance of design in our everyday lifes, and the consequences of errors caused by bad designs.

In his book, Norman use the term "user-centered design" to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside secondary issues like aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploting the powers of constraint, and designing for error.

Other topics of the book include:

-The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
-The Psycholohy of Everyday Actions
-Knowledge in the Head and in the World
-Knowing What to Do
-To Err Is Human
-The Design Challenge

Error in Design and the Design Challenge

5 minutes ago, when I was going to check my email in one of the computers at the UT Flawn Academic Center, I realized that I was writing my UTEID instead of my email address in the hotmail's user text-field. After reading chapters five and six from the book "the design of everyday things" I decided to classify this error as a "capture error", because two different actions have their initial stages in common, which in this case are entering my UT EID and entering my e-mail. Solving this error with good design could imply using a bigger font size for example. I believe that some errors can be prevented with good design, but not always our errors are the fault of bad design.

The evolution of design is an interesting topic. Improvements in design could be based on errors of past designs, especially nowadays, with the improvements in technology, and the flexibility of design. The famous "i-pod" is a good example of evolution in design, because 2 or 3 years ago it had about 6 buttons, and now it only has two.

Wiki Topic

For my submission I chose the topic of "Generative Art" which involves a new wave of media artists who use technology, algorithms, and mathematics as tools of self-expression. I believe that this topic is directly related with the class because it is a new way of using technology to achieve cultural and artistic objectives.