Good design is invisible. See for instance this Bruce Sterling video. When using a GPS navigator, you don't want good instructions per se, you want "I didn't have trouble finding the place". When using a word processor, you don't want "Clippy really helped me", you want "I had no problem writing my letter". Writting the letter may or may not have been helped by Clippy popping up and suggesting things, but it should've been unobtrusive, forgettable that he did so. When wearing a suit of clothing, you don't want people to go "nice outfit", you want them to go "handsome fellow". Good design for all these things means that they are essentially invisible.
But — how do you sell invisible?
You lie about it is one option, observed by T. You pretend that visible features are the important ones, maybe even have a demo mode that attracts attention in a way the real usage mode does not. It's not a good option, but all things considered it could be worse.
Design badly is worse. Design things that, to quote Bruce's phrase, "hang around the user's neck". I've seen GPS navigators that insist on defaulting to an information-rich, too-distracting screen that's practically unusable without the even more distracting voice instructions. We've all seen how Clippy turned out.
Even moderately well-designed things have their weaknesses. Auto-ranging is one idea that's common but often unfortunate; it interferes with quick reading of rough value, which depends not on the large, easy-to-read digits but on the tiny "V" or "mV" in the corner. Fortunately, in the case of my GPS navigator, it only has two ranges, which are easily enough distinguished (12.3km or 100m). My multimeter, while practically unusable that way, has a button to select a range manually. My GPS navigator will default to the silly screen, but it's easy to switch to the useful-for-driving screen — and it will stay there.
I wonder if there is a better solution.
⇦ lolinstructions | ⇨ In defence of "off the scale" |
