Designing for Humans

Affordances in Product Design

One of the ongoing "philosophical" points of contention when I was in graduate school was between the cognitive psychologists and the ecological psychologists over the theory of perception. 

In a nutshell, the cognitive approach assumes that information in the world is ambiguous and cognitive-perceptual processes are required to interpret stimuli into meaningful information.  For example, an object is observed through the visual system and the brain uses that stimulation in conjunction with memory to disambiguate and identify the object.  This is in fact how most people understand perception to work. 

The minority alternative comes from the ecological perspective ("ecological" as in a rich stimulus environment, and not related to sustainable design), which posits that information in the world is specific and sufficiently detailed to communicate information without any interpretation.  That is, the visual stimulus is unique and conveys the relevant characteristics to the observer.  

This contrast in approaches also emerged in the world of product and interface design over the term "affordance".  The term was coined by J.J. Gibson, the father of ecological psychology, to define the relationship between an actor (e.g. human, animal) and an object or environment.  For example, a flat surface "affords" sitting on, a pointy one does not.  Note that an affordance is a property that exists whether it is perceived or not or acted on or not. 

Following Gibson, the term "affordance" was popularized, but also modified in use by Donald Norman, among others, to emphasize the perception of an affordance (rather than the existence of one).  In other words, good design is about effectively communicating affordances to the user. 

Now a recent article in Design Studies looks at the issue of affordances vs. perceived affordances in a tangible way - by applying those ideas to the control panel of a stereo system.  The paper summarizes the theoretical issues that I have attempted to touch on above, and then illustrates how they are applied to controls.  While there are not actionable conclusions from this work, it's an opportunity to understand some of the key theoretical issues in perception and design.

Incidentally, ecological psychologists have more fun.

Portfolio Review for Design Researchers

You read that right - a portfolio review for design researchers. 

With the growing number of design researchers and the importance of research as a skill for designers, there's a need for guidance on putting together a design research portfolio.

We are in the early planning stages, with the goal to pilot this at the Northeast District IDSA conference in Philadelphia, April, 2008 (district conference web site is not up yet).  This would likely be a sub-section of the overall design portfolio, with an emphasis on research methods.  The reviews will focus on the quality and presentation of:

• formulating research questions
• identifying research participants
• methods of conducting research and capturing data
• organization and analysis of findings
• communication of results and outcomes

It would be open to both students and professionals with work in design research, including designers, human factors specialists, design researchers, anthropologists, etc.

If you are a professional with experience in design research or human factors, and are planning to attend the NE district conference and are interested in serving as a reviewer, please contact me at robtannen@hotmail.com  Also, if you have suggestions or examples for the review process, guidelines, etc, please forward those to me as well.

Nothing written in stone  yet, so stay tuned...

UPDATE - Conference date has been set for first weekend of April 4-6, 2008.

Ergonomic Resources from/for Furniture Designers

Several office and furniture design companies provide free, valuable resources on ergonomics for design.  I've highlighted two particular examples:

• The ergonomics section of the Allsteel web site includes a downloadable reference guide: Ergonomics and Design (PDF).  This is one of the best introductory ergonomic guides that I've seen, with a clear explanation of basic anthropometrics and references for further information.  The guide effectively provides illustrations, a glossary and representative data tables to inform readers about designing for offices - including universal design.
• Steelcase's ergonomic section covers many of the same fundamentals, but give's broader consideration to other areas of ergonomics such as cognitive and acoustic concerns in office design.  The site also has a dedicated research article section, which covers both strategic (e.g. "A Macro-ergonomic Approach) and tactical (e.g. "Choosing a Chair") topics.

Two-Sided Touch Screen

Touch screen technology has been quite newsworthy in 2007 -  Jeff Han's large-scale multi-touch screen, Microsoft Surface, the Apple iPhone, and Synaptic's Onyx concept - to name a few.

But overlooked amongst these was the news this summer of the Microsoft/Mitsubishi collaboration on a two-sided touch screen.   This technology directly addresses one of the critical usability issues with touch screens - the user's hands blocking his or her line of site with the screen.  The two-sided touch screen optically tracks hand movements on the back side of the display and mirrors them to the front (see images).  It is likely that this solutions solves one problem, and introduces user usability challenges with working "backwards"

Incidentally, this is the first post I've done using the new Windows Live Writer, rather than directly via Typepad's site.  Writer provides some nicer features and editing capabilities.

Book Review: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

In the range of enumerative design books, Matthew Fredrick's just-published 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School falls nicely between the tangible, utility of Universal Principles of Design, and the theoretical, philosophy of John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity.

101 TILiAS is a pocket sized book that communicates principles of architecture and architectural education and practice through simple explanations, quotes and illustrations.  It can be a quick read, but can also be re-read several times, with each of the topics taking roughly between ten and sixty seconds to digest.

While many of the ideas are specific to architecture - for example "How to make architectural hand lettering" (#22) or "Careful anchor placement can generate an active building interior" (#87) - a good number of the topics are directly applicable to other fields of design, particularly industrial design.  For example, "Any design decision should be justified in at least two ways" (#18) is a terrific principle, considering some design decisions lack any justification at all.  And "Limitations encourage creativity" (#97) is a common way of life in the ID studio.  There are also several fundamental recommendations on 3D sketching (e.g. draw hierarchically, use soft lines for soft ideas, hard lines for hard ideas), which are certainly applicable to industrial design sketching,

And even the seemingly more architectural-specific principles can be related to by swapping out "architect" for "designer" as in a pair of my favorite, and quite direct observations:

• "Engineers tend to be concerned with physical things in and of themselves.  Architects are more directly concerned with the human interface with physical things." (#20)
• "An architect knows something about everything.  An engineer knows everything about one thing." (#21)

Above all, Frederick emphasizes the role of process over just following rules and as he elaborates "the design process is often structured and methodical, but it is not a mechanical process.  Mechanical processes have predetermined outcomes, but the creative process strives to produce something that has not existed before" (excerpt from #81).

Introducing DesigningforHumans.com

The IDSA Human Factors section site (what you're reading right now), has been reconfigured and renamed.  It is now DesigningforHumans.com

All of the previously working bookmarks, links and subscriptions should continue to work as before - you can continue to access the site with the previous URL - http://www.humanfactors.typepad.com/, or the new one.  All new links will use the DesigningforHumans.com domain, but will automatically map back to the old domain as well for continuity.  Please email me if you experience a problem: robtannen@hotmail.com

The change was made to give the site a more memorable and meaningful identity, but the content and mission remain the same - to inform IDSA members and the overall industrial design community about human factors, design research and usability.  The name is a tribute to Henry Dreyfuss' Designing for People, with our obvious slant towards human factors.

Human-Centered Design Workshop - NYC

The New York City chapter of IDSA is holding a human-centered design workshop on Saturday November 17th at Pratt in Brooklyn.  The event will include the following presentations in the morning:

• Usability and Human Factors :: Stan Caplan - Usability Associates
• Using Human Factors resources in product design :: Dan Harel
• Needfinding and interviewing :: Jenna Shanis - Peel Design
• User Interface design and evaluation :: Adam Shames – Design Science

Followed by collaborative group sessions in the afternoon.

Registration costs between $20 and $40 via Paypal links on the site.

Medical Design Articles in Businessweek

The November 12 issue of Businessweek features two healthcare design related articles:

• Getting Hip to the Boomers discusses the development of market specialized products in the growing joint replacement business.  For example, knee replacement components designed to better fit female patients, or hip replacement joints targeted at younger, more active patients represent targeting more specific consumer categories in the medical market.
• My iPod, My Cell, My Insulin Pump highlights the trends in medical devices towards more user-friendly interfaces, reflecting the design of more familiar consumer electronics devices.  One such example, the GlucoPhone, is a glucose reader that works with a standard mobile phone, eliminating the need for an extra device and facilitating data sharing between patients and healthcare providers.