Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Bad design

Sybille Caffiau

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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What is it? Products (such as website) whose design is not

adapted to: Users Task Environment (human and/or material)

Example from http://www.baddesigns.com

Bad design

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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Design description: Sides of the knife blade have the same shape

User question: Which side cuts the food? Solution: Make both sides distinguishable

First example: a symmetric knife

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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Design description: Sense of nesting not visible

User question: Which way to plug in the USB? Solution: Make both sides distinguishable

Second example: USB ports

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Design description: non-transparent doors which open in both directions (forward and reverse)

Risk: Hurting another oncoming person when opening the door

Solution: Allow seeing if someone comes

Third example: Swing doors

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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Bad design due to a lack of integration of: User task: http://www.baddesigns.com/knife.html User’s capacities:

http://www.baddesigns.com/USB.html User environment:

http://www.baddesigns.com/scidoor

Everyday examples of Bad Design

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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Bad design of products implies: Increasing cost:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/10/3-critical-design-mistakes-that-cost-me-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars/

Security problems for users

Consequences of Bad Design of Interfaces

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

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What is a bad design? Not a functional problem Implies difficulties for users

Have to be anticipated Can be reduced by using the principles of

human factors and User-Centered Design

Conclusion

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Presentation license

The presentation is made available under the license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND. More information about license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

The presentation was created under Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships Project 2012-1-PL1-LEO04-28181 GUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY: EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES (http://usability-accessibility.org/).

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme.

Leonardo da Vinci Partnerships ProjectGUI USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY:

EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCES

Examples of exercise Look for a bad design example in common life

(except for interfaces). Explain why the usage has not been taken into account to design this object and suggest an improvement.

Analyze and suggest an improvement of this object

Exercise