This site presents examples of everyday things that cause people to become confused, make a mistake, or have difficulty when using them. The author is a usability engineer with a PhD in cognitive psychology. He has collected a large number of examples of designs that cause unnecessary confusion and difficulty. The material is organized in broad categories of things, displays, control, and signs/names/labels. The site allows users to automatically receive email notification when new examples are added and to submit their own examples of bad designs. There are also "common questions and answers" and "recommended books" sections.
Type of Material:
This is a collection of examples (web pages with images) that illustrate bad human factors designs. The author also provides brief (2-3 minute) podcasts describing some examples.
Recommended Uses:
This site would be useful for courses in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Human Factors, Consumer Behavior, and applied cognitive psychology. Instructors in these courses could direct students to the site to supplement and illustrate covered material. This site does not discuss the principles that underly sound design practices. In a course that covers such practices, this site could be used to identify examples that demonstrate the importance of specific design principles.
Technical Requirements:
None, although auditory capabilities would be required to listen to the podcasts.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This site provides the user with examples that illustrate what not to do when designing, with ideas for how to make objects more user-friendly.
Target Student Population:
Middle school, high school, and college students should find this site useful and interesting.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
In order to fully understand the material, a knowledge of human factors and design principles would be useful.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The examples are all everyday things that most people have encountered. By pointing out the design problems and then offering corrective design suggestions, the author encourages users to look at everyday items in new ways. Readers' comments are also included in some of the examples.
Concerns:
The educational context is not provided.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The site provides instructors with many contemporary examples that can be used to illustrate different human factors design principles. None of the examples require specialized technical knowledge on the part of the user.
Concerns:
This site would be more useful if there were assignments associated with it. For example, students could generate their own suggestions for improvement before reading the author's recommendations. In addition, general background information on good design principles might make the bad design examples more meaningful.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The webpages are easy to read and offer an explanation of the problem, as well as a potential solution. The site is not complicated to use. It is relatively easy to navigate through the material.
Concerns:
There is no easy way to find a particular example without paging through the entire table of contents. The site could be better designed to ease its usability. No assistance is provided for the user who has problems accessing the podcasts and transcripts of the podcasts are not provided.
Creative Commons:
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