Tag Archives: Homework

Week 1 – Ahmad – Psychology of Everyday Things

Reading the excerpt from the Psychology of Everyday Things raises some interesting points about the design of everyday objects and how people interact with them. It mainly discusses how increasingly difficulty it is to interact with such objects. For example a household appliance shouldn’t resemble a Hollywood interpretation of a futuristic spaceship; something as vital and dangerous as a cooking stove should not bewilder folks in an attempt to fry some eggs. Something as simple as open a door should be obvious but in many cases it isn’t. For example some of the doors have handles on them so when you walk to them you think “OK, I have to pull this door open” but then you’re met with the reality that you need to push the door open instead of pulling it open so the door does a good job of making an ass out of you.  Another issue brought up in the excerpt was the case of the materials implying what a particular object does or what’s for and what people do with it regardless of intent. An example brought it was vandals interacting with wood and class shelters; fans would write or carve into the wood and shatter the glass. An object I encountered that confused me was my the water faucet, like right should mean cold and left should mean hot but it’s not the case everywhere.