Showing posts with label user-centered design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label user-centered design. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2010

(Updated with Solution - TIDE) The designers of this Gain detergent container obviously didn't read Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" !


The designers who created the Gain detergent container below obviously didn't read "The Design of Everyday Things."

No matter which way you try to pour the darn thing, laying it on the side or trying to pour from the spout,  it still makes a BIG mess.  How would you explain this to your kid?

I wonder what it was like to be on the team for this container. Someone had to say, "Yes! Let's put the handle on the same side as the spout!

To put the container on the side, I have to put most of it on my dryer.  I often have laundry on the top of my dryer that is in the process of being folded, so to out the Gain container on its side, I have to move the clean laundry.

Although I prefer Gain over Tide, I went back to Tide.  One look at the container and you intuitively know what to do.







RELATED


Don Norman's Website

UPDATES

I received the following comment to this this post, plus a few others:


"The black cap is an airvent, not a pouring spout. You stand the container on its side and use the white spout to dispense the liquid using the red rubber button."


I DID use the little red button to dispense the detergent, and I set the container on its side.  It didn't work very well.  


Here is my response to the first comment:


True, the spout may be an air vent, but as a person who has been doing laundry since I was about 10, and for a family of four for a couple of decades,  this set up was NOT intuitive. It just doesn't flow.  
I'm usually in a rush when I do laundry, so I did not spend time inspecting the detergent container closely.   When I had difficulty pumping the detergent out of the container using the red button,  I noticed I the arrow on the "spout" pointing to the cap.   I presumed that the arrow meant that I should use the spout to pour the detergent, if the little pump thing didn't work.  So that's what I did!
I'm accustomed to using all sorts of cleaning products, and this one was not a good fit. 


My point is this:
Getting detergent from a container into a washer should not be this complicated.   


It wasn't easy to get the container of Gain down from the shelf above the washer and gracefully put it on its side to use the pump to get the detergent in the cup.   The container is pretty heavy when full, as it holds 170 fl oz of detergent, well over a gallon. And there are more problems. After you get the into the cup and then into the washer,  the next step is to rinse out the cap. This takes a long time, since the consistency is very thick. (I don't have a sink in my laundry room, so I use the water that is in the washer.)


The container pouring system needs to be simple.

Posted by Lynn Marentette at 11:54 AM 6 comments
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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

World Usability Day's Healthcare Focus: Thoughts about health care user-experience design...

The theme of the 2007 World Usability Day is healthcare. This event aims to create awareness about the need for user-centered design within the health care system. Here is some information posted on UPA's World Usability Community blog:

"..."The importance of user-centered design in healthcare is truly about life and death” noted Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Founder and Director of World Usability Day. “Whether it’s new medical devices or technologies; drug research, approval or delivery; patient forms or medical record sharing; emergency disaster planning or increasing the functionality of hospitals and everyday healthcare delivery, everyone is effected in some way by the intersection of usability and healthcare. There are many commonalities, yet each region of the world faces its own set of unique challenges. We believe that focusing World Usability Day 2007 on healthcare will create a stronger awareness of these issues and lead to initiatives that have long term impact on the quality of everyone’s life".

Information about World Usability Day:
www.worldusabilityday.org.

Usability and interaction with the health care system has become a personal interest of mine, as I've spent the better part of the past month assisting a close relative negotiate three hospital stays, a couple of surgeries, numerous medical tests, and visits to various medical professionals. This has been an eye-opening experience, as anyone who has followed a similar path would agree.

I propose that efforts to improve usability should consider using some of the strategies employed by user-experience designers, taking into consideration that the definition of "user" includes the patient/consumer, the patient's family and social support network, health care professionals, hospital and medical staff, health educators, researchers, and so forth.

When I have the chance, I'll post some of my observations and thoughts related to this topic.

Posted by Lynn Marentette at 12:48 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Putting People First blog from Experientia

I recently came accross the "Putting People First" blog when I was looking for information about usability and user-experience design. The blog focuses on "daily insights on user experience, experience design and people-centred innovation". The Putting People first blog is coordinated by Mark Vanderbeeken, from the experience-design company Experientia, located in Turin, Italy.

If you have an interest in user-centered design and related topics, take the time to explore the Putting People First blog, as well as the Experientia website.

Posted by Lynn Marentette at 5:20 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Know your user: Video clip comedy depicting tech support interaction with someone transitioning from ancient scrolls to books

This funny video clip highlights the idea that developers can not assume that users share similar approaches to learning new applications and technologies!

I noticed version of this videoclip, entitled "Old School Help Desk", posted on Ladonna Coy's (ladcoy)Technology in Prevention blog.

The scene depicts two medieval European men making the transition from scrolls to books. One man plays the role of the "low-tech" user, new to the concept of "books". Even with the patient support from the help-desk guy, the poor soul continues to be baffled by the book-opening, page-turning, and book-closing process.

If you watch the clip to the end, it closes with a humorous interaction with the new-fangled book's tech manual. The clip has English subtitles, but it is clearly funny in Norwegian.

Posted by Lynn Marentette at 3:09 PM 0 comments
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