This is a wonderful essay, full of surprising little gems, like "People hate pushing a pull door, but they don’t think at all when they push a push door." It also made my blood boil when I began to reflect on all the examples of lousy psychological design in my life.
I visited the MooD website and concluded that it must be a hoax, since only deliberate malevolence could design such a lousy page.
Right?? It's either gotta be a piece of performance art like the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA, or it's defunct but they prepaid the website for a couple years.
The 'deliberate malvolence' bit is what I came here to post. Much of poor design occurs in places where the people making the decisions aren't directly involved with those hurt. E.g. the Diesel marketing department, like most marketing departments, exists through internal hype and as a way for the CEO to look like he's trying -- the marketers don't really care about the customer or about the profit; every single public sector example is at least an order of magnitude more utterly careless of impact.
There is, however, a strong counter-example that you might explore -- seems like the kind of thing you'd write about, if you haven't already: crime and corrections. The panopticon prison model is peak psychological engineering, as is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. When the question is "how can we deliberately make people less comfortable in a way that forces compliance?", suddenly the System cares about psychological engeering. That's a strong argument for the corrollary to Heinlein's razor (sufficient stupidity from those in positions of responsibility is indistinguishable from malice).
Seen from that point of view, it's a masterpiece. The colors are so repellent they make reading the individual exhibits almost impossible.
I hope you will consider submitting your essay to the Times, or something with a large circulation. Every reader will recognize that they have been unconsciously living in a chronic state of slight annoyance. When they do, they'll grab their pitchforks. I'll be leading the contingent that storms the Braun company for the idiotic owner's manual that comes with their electric razors.
"Bathrooms should be wheelchair accessible and easy to clean, but designers are probably not going to invite people who use wheelchairs to test out their bathrooms, nor are they going to try scrubbing behind the toilets." Why... why not? They definitely should try these things!
I loved it too! Though this post was originally going to be a series with a review of DOET that complained it's not very well-designed as a book. The examples are great, but they feel so slippery in my mind without direct experience, and the principles never stuck with me. So every time I pick up the book I go "ah yes! of course!" and then I go back to using my stupidly-designed stove and never think about how it could be better.
Perhaps the MOOD exhibitions live in heaven and we get to see them when we die!
Agree about forgetting the examples until it hits you. I have a pretty high-end cooktop, but they decided to have plastic handles right next to the gas burners. So any hot pan that touches the handles (which are 1/4 inch higher than the grate) melts the handles.
Would love to go to see MOOD exhibits, hopefully before I die.
Your post mentioned the elusiveness of the Museum of Design. In 2012 they put on a temporary exhibition in Como, Italy.. See https://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9635678.htm. Unclear if the Museum has appeared again in the physical world since 2012. The domain belongs to OMC Design Studios of Como.
I enjoyed this post tremendously. I would very much like to visit the MuPE when it’s built and filled with all the amazing improvements we don’t even know we need.
Living in Japan for five years has made me so used to amazing design and be helplessly impatient with bad design when I travel to places where I minimally expect a somewhat acceptable design. Great essay!
I like the essay but you're wrong about microwaves. We recently had a microwave that didn't keep beeping; it was terrible and had to be replaced. The repeated beep is successful psychological engineering.
You said so much that needed to be said, and there's so much more to say. My one issue: I find it hard to believe that someone cannot imagine not-knowing. What you call psychological design, I called intuitive design that involved two things: First, observing those who were going to be using my eventual design to see how they worked and operated; and while designing, mentally imagining myself knowing absolutely nothing while seeking to get where I needed to go in the fewest, most direct, most logical steps possible. As a result, the systems I designed didn't need instruction manuals or education classes. The "end user" as we called them, then, just enjoyed being able to do their jobs, efficiently and flawlessly. To be blunt: I think that being able to imagine not knowing anything is about empathy - you have to WANT to understand another person's point of view. You have to WANT to be in service to others more than yourself. And that, my friend, is the deeper problem - a problem that is solved simply by making the choice to care about what matters.
Bathroom engineering: people knock. So if you are able to reach a hard surface knock, back with the same rhythm. Tap-taptaptap. "Tap-taptaptap". It freaks them out a bit, but it's a clear message that doesn't require using ones voice during that intimate and sacred moment.
> Anyone who can overcome these challenges is rewarded with indifference
I think it's actually much worse than indifference, and that's a big part of the problem. Most people are very bad at coping with the idea that other people have different perspectives. If the door is perfectly intuitive to them, they are deeply resistant to the idea that it's confusing to others, and so they look for other explanations. Someone who says the door is unintuitive to them must be stupid, or lying for some strange reason. Such a person deserves not indifference, but contempt. And the same to the charlatan who produces a "solution" to this fake problem.
You are the only person aside from myself who I have ever noticed noticing the microwave that will not stop "helpfully" beeping to make me come get the food. And that you cannot turn it off.
This kind of thing is in my mind constantly. How, today, machines are designed in the inverse of how they should be.
That is, they are designed so that humans serve their desires, rather than the machines being tuned to human needs and convenience.
Anyone actually thinking about the user--the very person the product is designed for--could not fail to understand this. Apparently, no one thinks of the user.
This is a wonderful essay, full of surprising little gems, like "People hate pushing a pull door, but they don’t think at all when they push a push door." It also made my blood boil when I began to reflect on all the examples of lousy psychological design in my life.
I visited the MooD website and concluded that it must be a hoax, since only deliberate malevolence could design such a lousy page.
Right?? It's either gotta be a piece of performance art like the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA, or it's defunct but they prepaid the website for a couple years.
The 'deliberate malvolence' bit is what I came here to post. Much of poor design occurs in places where the people making the decisions aren't directly involved with those hurt. E.g. the Diesel marketing department, like most marketing departments, exists through internal hype and as a way for the CEO to look like he's trying -- the marketers don't really care about the customer or about the profit; every single public sector example is at least an order of magnitude more utterly careless of impact.
There is, however, a strong counter-example that you might explore -- seems like the kind of thing you'd write about, if you haven't already: crime and corrections. The panopticon prison model is peak psychological engineering, as is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. When the question is "how can we deliberately make people less comfortable in a way that forces compliance?", suddenly the System cares about psychological engeering. That's a strong argument for the corrollary to Heinlein's razor (sufficient stupidity from those in positions of responsibility is indistinguishable from malice).
Seen from that point of view, it's a masterpiece. The colors are so repellent they make reading the individual exhibits almost impossible.
I hope you will consider submitting your essay to the Times, or something with a large circulation. Every reader will recognize that they have been unconsciously living in a chronic state of slight annoyance. When they do, they'll grab their pitchforks. I'll be leading the contingent that storms the Braun company for the idiotic owner's manual that comes with their electric razors.
Nice. Writing to say "A Pattern Language" by Alexander et al is a good book for ideas about design for human living spaces.
"Bathrooms should be wheelchair accessible and easy to clean, but designers are probably not going to invite people who use wheelchairs to test out their bathrooms, nor are they going to try scrubbing behind the toilets." Why... why not? They definitely should try these things!
I agree!
Excellent essay. I read The Design of Everyday things and it changed my life. Glad to know I was not alone.
And LOL at MOOD website. Click on any of the green exhibition links and you get this:
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() in /nfs/c04/h06/mnt/58482/domains/museumofdesign.com/html/asistant.php:
I loved it too! Though this post was originally going to be a series with a review of DOET that complained it's not very well-designed as a book. The examples are great, but they feel so slippery in my mind without direct experience, and the principles never stuck with me. So every time I pick up the book I go "ah yes! of course!" and then I go back to using my stupidly-designed stove and never think about how it could be better.
Perhaps the MOOD exhibitions live in heaven and we get to see them when we die!
Agree about forgetting the examples until it hits you. I have a pretty high-end cooktop, but they decided to have plastic handles right next to the gas burners. So any hot pan that touches the handles (which are 1/4 inch higher than the grate) melts the handles.
Would love to go to see MOOD exhibits, hopefully before I die.
Your post mentioned the elusiveness of the Museum of Design. In 2012 they put on a temporary exhibition in Como, Italy.. See https://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9635678.htm. Unclear if the Museum has appeared again in the physical world since 2012. The domain belongs to OMC Design Studios of Como.
Ah! Another clue in the hunt for the mysterious MOOD. Perhaps we can only behold it when we achieve true enlightenment.
I enjoyed this post tremendously. I would very much like to visit the MuPE when it’s built and filled with all the amazing improvements we don’t even know we need.
In lean manufacturing they have a name for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke
Living in Japan for five years has made me so used to amazing design and be helplessly impatient with bad design when I travel to places where I minimally expect a somewhat acceptable design. Great essay!
Exactly my thought. Bathrooms in Japan are perfect. Perhaps just fly every American door and bathroom engineer over there for a quick lesson.
I got to your second “I’m against racism” virtue signal and died of cringe before I was able to finish the article
I like the essay but you're wrong about microwaves. We recently had a microwave that didn't keep beeping; it was terrible and had to be replaced. The repeated beep is successful psychological engineering.
You said so much that needed to be said, and there's so much more to say. My one issue: I find it hard to believe that someone cannot imagine not-knowing. What you call psychological design, I called intuitive design that involved two things: First, observing those who were going to be using my eventual design to see how they worked and operated; and while designing, mentally imagining myself knowing absolutely nothing while seeking to get where I needed to go in the fewest, most direct, most logical steps possible. As a result, the systems I designed didn't need instruction manuals or education classes. The "end user" as we called them, then, just enjoyed being able to do their jobs, efficiently and flawlessly. To be blunt: I think that being able to imagine not knowing anything is about empathy - you have to WANT to understand another person's point of view. You have to WANT to be in service to others more than yourself. And that, my friend, is the deeper problem - a problem that is solved simply by making the choice to care about what matters.
Bathroom engineering: people knock. So if you are able to reach a hard surface knock, back with the same rhythm. Tap-taptaptap. "Tap-taptaptap". It freaks them out a bit, but it's a clear message that doesn't require using ones voice during that intimate and sacred moment.
Ok I absolutely love this idea! Start the kickstarter.
> Anyone who can overcome these challenges is rewarded with indifference
I think it's actually much worse than indifference, and that's a big part of the problem. Most people are very bad at coping with the idea that other people have different perspectives. If the door is perfectly intuitive to them, they are deeply resistant to the idea that it's confusing to others, and so they look for other explanations. Someone who says the door is unintuitive to them must be stupid, or lying for some strange reason. Such a person deserves not indifference, but contempt. And the same to the charlatan who produces a "solution" to this fake problem.
Adam, I think you meant to hyperlink to this page re queue design: https://jamesrobertwatson.com/quelines.html
You are the only person aside from myself who I have ever noticed noticing the microwave that will not stop "helpfully" beeping to make me come get the food. And that you cannot turn it off.
This kind of thing is in my mind constantly. How, today, machines are designed in the inverse of how they should be.
That is, they are designed so that humans serve their desires, rather than the machines being tuned to human needs and convenience.
Anyone actually thinking about the user--the very person the product is designed for--could not fail to understand this. Apparently, no one thinks of the user.