Interaction Design
Design problems
First blog entry for my Interaction Design course covering some designs I think can be improved
Unfortunately, in our day-to-day life we, as users, have to interact with products that don’t seem to be properly thought for us. It is something that seems to be less and less common as designs advance, but you have probably faced more than one product that was inefficient, not intuitive, or difficult to learn to use — even all of the above. In this blog entry, I’m going to discuss a couple designs that I think are not well thought, trying to give an explanation on what is wrong with them and what could be improved.
One of the most common problems that I usually find with how products are designed is that many times there is too much information available to the user. This problem is usually referred to as Information Overload¹. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, the excess of information available to the user difficults his/her decision-making process, which can result in a poor decision made (or even no decision made at all!).
There are many examples of every-day situations when we have to deal with this type of problem. Ranging from TV remotes that have way too many buttons but you end up using a couple of them, to parking signs that offer so much information that at the end, drivers don’t know if they are allowed to park or not. But there is one annoying situation I’ve been facing every morning for many years when making breakfast, and you can observe it in the following picture:
At first, you may think it’s a completely normal microwave. It is indeed. But now I want you to take a closer look and think if you can figure out how you can do a very basic operation such as heating a mug of milk. Maybe you’re thinking that sliding the wheel will let you choose how long you want it to work, and maybe pressing the big button at the bottom will just turn it on. Well, you’re wrong. First, before doing all of that you have to press one button twice, then you can select the time with the wheel and finally press the big button to power it up.
Now, compare it with the classical design of most microwaves, where you basically select the timer and you’re done. This design introduces many intermediate steps that make such a simple process impossible to guess at first, very difficult to remember even when you have performed it a couple of times, and so much more inefficient. And what is the purpose of this design? Probably offering a broad range of functionalities to the user. But after all, this is just a microwave, and I’d say I’ve never used more than two or three of all the options that are offered, and I truly don’t know what’s the purpose of most of them after using it every day for many years.
Therefore, we can extract that in general, it is advisable to provide just the right amount of information in the right form to help the user make good choices, instead of providing more information thinking it will give value to the user⁴.
Now let’s move on to a completely different field, where I would like to comment on another design issue I’ve also been facing recently almost every day. It has to do with the way the LinkedIn app notifies users of new events in their profiles (at least on Android). Instead of using clearly defined messages for each of the events that can be notified, LinkedIn have opted to simply tell the user he/she may have missed some updates.
I find this message at least once a day in my notifications, and every time I get it I simply remove it and continue with my day. What do I find so annoying about it? Well first, have I missed these updates or not? Because that’s something you should know, LinkedIn, not me. And then, what kind updates? How many? And it seems I’m not the only user that doesn’t find this notification design useful, as people simply try to block this notification, as you can see in this and this post.
And whether or not this is irritating for me, I also believe that it goes against one of the basic design principles that Don Norman provides in The Design of Everyday Things⁵, which is the visibility of the elements. He suggests that the more visible an element is, the more likely users will know about it and use it. And this notification gives no visibility at all to each individual update, making it impossible to see at first glance without having to open the application (one of the biggest advantages in my opinion of having notifications) what updates you have.
And as this notification does not offer much value, users end up ignoring it or directly blocking it, resulting in probably the opposite of what LinkedIn wanted with the notification, which was to keep users engaged and checking the application several times a day.
In either case, I hope this blog entry has made it clear that information is key for any product, be it a microwave or a social network application, and providing the right amount and at the right place is as important as the information itself.
[1] The Interaction Design Foundation. What is Information Overload? Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/information-overload
[2] The Interaction Design Foundation. (2020, August). Bad Design vs. Good Design: 5 Examples We can Learn From. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/bad-design-vs-good-design-5-examples-we-can-learn-frombad-design-vs-good-design-5-examples-we-can-learn-from-130706
[3] Balay. [Balay Microwave]. https://www.balay.es/catalogo-electrodomesticos/electrodomesticosbalay/3WG2539XP
[4] Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2011). Interaction Design: Beyond Human — Computer Interaction (3rd ed.). Wiley.
[5] Norman, D. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised ed.). Basic Books.
