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~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

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Tag Archives: consumer products

Getting Into (the “right”) Shape

07 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cats, consumer products, Design, form, function, HCI, human factors, kittens, usability, UX

 

 

A truism we have all heard is that “form should follow function.”  I tend to agree with this as a good general principle, but only if the designer has given more than 30 milliseconds of thought about what the actual function is. Even better is to observe function being used in practice.  Below, I give examples of how form may look like function but not actually follow (actual) function.

The first comes from the complex and technical domain of nail clippers.  My nails are tough and I actually need to use toenail clippers to cut my fingernails.  But the same principle applies to both fingernail clippers and toenail clippers.  I see many many examples where the designer has attempted to curve the surface of the nail clipper to “match” the curve of nails.  This is a brilliant idea, but only if every nail on every human being on the planet has the same curvature.  A priori, I would tent to think this is not the case, but being empirically oriented I decided to test it out by actually looking at real nails.  I looked at my thumbnail and the fingernail on my little finger.  Sure enough, my hypothesis was borne out.  They are NOT the same.  What this means is that a nail clipper that is curved so that it fits my pinkie will wreak havoc when applied to my thumbnail.  I am probably going out on a limb here, but I suspect that if one were to include fingernails from other people in this sample, one might find an even wider variation in curvature.  What are people thinking when they make curved nail clippers? I can only speculate that they have never looked at the fingernails of more than one person and that, indeed, they never looked at more than one fingernail on that one person.

Image

Image

If only there were a solution.  Sigh.  Oh, wait!  There is a solution. Make the cutting surface of the nail clippers flat.  This enables the person to clip nails of any curvature.  It does, of course, require multiple cuts.  It has the added advantage, that if you so wish, you can sharpen your nails so they resemble cat claws.

Image

Cats bring me to my second example.  When we moved to California amid a large garden, we wanted to let our cats to spend most of their time outdoors, partly so litter box cleaning would be at a minimum.  Unfortunately, we soon discovered that while the outdoors here offers many opportunities for cats to be hunters of lizards and mice, it also offers even more opportunities for them to be prey for bobcats, cougars, eagles, and especially coyotes.

Now, here is a beautifully shaped litter box (a gift).  It even has a place for the cats to clean their paws before they track litter back into the living room.  Nice.  Unfortunately, this is a beautiful shape by someone who has never cleaned a litter box, at least not by litter box shovel.  Perhaps they clean litter boxes with their bare hands?  Anyway, this curved shape does not jibe well with the typical litter box shovel.  Of course, the cats could choose to do their business along the gently curving side of the litter box.  And, of course, they never do.  They choose instead the places along the edge of the litter box where there is maximum curvature.

Image

Image

The idea that there is a place for the cats to clean their feet before venturing back out into the living room or pouncing up on the kitchen counter is a sweet idea.  It is an idea that would never occur to the owner of an actual cat, however.  Here are two cats we obtained from a shelter (Tally on the left, Molly on the right).

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They are cute, but defective in that they do not speak English, nor so far as I have been able to discover, any other language.  So, despite my explanations that they are supposed to wipe their feet on the way out of the litter box, they do not.  Instead, they do their business on the foot-wiping section of the litter box.  So, apart from the annoying high curvature, if you are unlucky enough to get a cat who either does not understand complex sentences or just doesn’t care, this is probably not the litter box for them either.  It might work for cats who: 1) speak your language fluently and 2) are cooperative. (Recent estimates indicate the total number of such cats is zero).

The third example comes from health care and is a bit more abstract.  On my insurance ID card is a field which is labeled: “Identification number.”  In order to use this, I have to go to their website and “register.”  In order to register, the website says I need to enter my “identification number.” But in actuality, that does not work!  No.  Instead, I am supposed to leave off the first three characters in what is labeled my identification number.  The website doesn’t say this.  But the help desk is quite familiar with the issue and will happily explain it to you after you listen to musak for three or four hours.  This is not so much shape not matching real function, but label not matching function.

The fourth example comes from some of our “bookcases.”  Why, I hear you ask, are there scare quotes around bookcases.  I will tell you why.  I put scare quotes because although the shelves are flat and just the right size for books, and although this piece of “furniture” is sold as a bookcase, in fact, it is a nick-knack shelf.  My wife and I foolishly tried filling it with books and it collapsed.  So, in this case, the label and the shape lead one to believe it serves a particular function but the underlying functionality is insufficient to fulfill that dream of ours (that the “bookshelf” would actually hold books).

 

grey metal hammer

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

The fifth example comes from my experience with companies who want to simplify things for their customers.  That sounds worthwhile.  So, they launch major efforts to make their products “consistent.” But they soon learn that making products behave consistently years after they were independently developed is way too expensive.  So instead, they focus on making them look the same and using consistent terms across products, while leaving the underlying functionality behave quite differently.  To me, this is quite akin to the bookshelf case. Making things look the same while continuing to have them act differently is actually worse for the user than having things that act differently also look different! 

 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com



The moral of the story? It’s fine to have form follow (and signal) function, but you need to understand how users actually behave. They won’t necessarily behave as you imagine they are supposed to any more than a cat will read your mind in order to please you. Of course, if you see yourself, not as a partner of your users, but rather out to deceive them into thinking they are buying and using something different from what they really are… 

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Introduction to Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation.

Index for Collaboration Patterns  

Author Page on Amazon

Using Stories and Storytelling 

What do you do when the client insists you solve the “wrong” problem? 

The word “simply” should be banned.

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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Tags

Complexity, consumer products, health care, packaging, Simplicity, UX

So, in 2013, I changed from four medical plans to four different medical plans to six plans for 2014.  Thank goodness we don’t have a “single payer” system because there is nothing I love more than pouring through a hundred pages of text for each plan which is mainly garbage but occasionally has important information.  There is nothing more fun than ping-ponging among doctors every time your plan changes.  Oh, wait!  I forgot that in addition to the plans I *actually* had, IBM also sent me huge packets of information on plans that were no longer relevant.  In the midst of all this, I was heartened to find a concise 72 page document from my dental plan which also informs me: “Please note: if you are a previous user of MyBenefits, you can still enjoy all the same features under the new plan. Simply visit (our website) and re-register with an updated username and password for access to your new plan.”  It is the word, “simply” that I object to. Indeed, in some parallel universe, there is probably a time and place for the word “simply” but in has no legitimate place in actually 21st century America.  It *invariably* signals this message: “We are going to make this difficult for you.  But we don’t want to come out and say that so we will preface our instructions with the word simply so when you have trouble you won’t blame us but yourself.”  

(Why do I need a different userid and password?).   Anyway, you know the drill.  You go to the website and the first six userids that bear any resemblance to my name are taken.  But they don’t typically tell you that till you also enter a password.  And, of course, there are the typical “security questions” such as “What sized underwear did you wear in the fourth grade?”  “What was your second grade teacher’s maiden name?”  “What was the name of the company you bought your first ant farm from?”  And so on.  

This ironic use of “simply” is not confined to websites.  It also applies to packaging as in, “SIMPLY remove the plastic overwrap.” Yeah. But, what if you left your chain saw in the garage?  “Simply, tear the plastic along the indicated line.”  In the rare case, when it is physically possible to tear, it never tears evenly.  More typically it is some semi-metalic plastic that requires an industrial laser cutter. the most recent example involved two different kinds of dry cat food.  These were nearly impossible for me to “simply” open.  I left the bags for a few minutes to get an exacto knife and when I returned two minutes later, my CATS had indeed simply opened the packages and spread the contents around the hallway.  For all I know, they might have actually ingested a piece of cat food but it was clear that their main intent was simply to cause a mess.  The reason they could open the packages simply is that they have cat claws!  I don’t!   Not sure what genius came up with the idea that packages of cat food should be opened simply by cats but complexly by humans.  

Since the word “simply” has simply gone out of fashion in its true meaning, I think we should simply ban its use.   Period.

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