After reading “The Psychopathology of Everyday Things”, it made me realize that a product designer can design a beautiful product, but in the eye of everyday people, that product maybe confusing and hard to use. Sometimes I feel like designers care more about the look of a product than how easy the product can be used. Even though the reading was a bit funny, for example the guy being stuck in the revolving door, the author was right about how year after year, we see the appliance or electronic come out, but with more features. For example, the iPhone, since its release in 2007, every year since then a new one has come out. Even though there have been changes to the physical phone and software each year, sometimes I feel like Apple does this because no matter what they put out, people would buy it.

One usability problem I recently encountered, is turning on the stove in my girlfriend’s apt. At home, all I do is click a button, then press another button to the desired temperature I want to pre-heat the oven to. But at my girlfriend’s apt, apparently to turn the stove on, you have to push the dial in, while holding it down, turn to the desired temperature, hold it there for a few seconds then release. The only way I figured this out was by Googling for the manual. I don’t think anyone would have expected it to be this complicated to turn on the stove.