Really interesting post here from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen Blog if you have seen any similar case studies of poor design or Ergonomics please let us know via the comments links on this site, we’re on the hunt for inspiration and your stories that could become exhibits in our exhibition at the Design Museum in a year’s time.
An example of a poor consideration of Ergonomics courtesy of Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen Blog
The obvious question is how could the designer have used Ergonomics or a Human Centred Design Process to prevent the confusion that this key card clearly caused on numerous occasions?
- Make sure that the text was suitably legible for all the likely users of the product.
- That there was a legible instruction on the ‘wrong side’ of the key to turn it over.
- And perhaps even an indication on the lock itself of which side up the key should be entered.
In an ideal world and to eliminate the likelihood of human error there should only be one way of inserting the key into the door and that is the right way. (For more on this visit Dan Lockton’s excellent Architectures of Control Blog)
Alternative Human Centred Design of Hotel Door Lock
It is our contention that a true Human Centred Design process would be asking why use a key card in the first place when users have a very clear mental picture of how to use a conventional key? The above very quick concept shows that by designing the key card to be more representative of a users mental image of what a key should look like, it might help eliminate some of the potential for error. The design process should also have involved extensive user testing of the design to highlight any misunderstandings before the product was released to market.
Are you a designer or an ergonomist with some ideas about this? Get in touch and lets start a discussion on the subject…
Over the next few weeks we are going to be running a series of posts explaining a bit more about the different facets of ergonomics and how the various sub-disciplines and practitioners of Ergonomics work together to make things better. So if there are any examples of products or systems out there and you want to know how or why Ergonomists and Designers have made them the way they are or how they might make them better, send them in via the comments link on this page and we’ll use them as case studies.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
