Good and Bad design of interactive products

In order to categorize a product as interactive it needs to be usable:

• Easy to learn
• Effective to use
• Enjoyable user experience (Sharp, Rogers and Preece, 2015)

For the product to be considered usable we need to follow as many of the five  HCI principles as possible:

1. Visibility 
2. Feedback
3. Affordance
4. Constrains
5. Consistency (Sharp, Rogers and Preece, 2015)

*more details about that you can find on my previous block post on the following link:

http://hci0013blog.blogspot.com.cy/2016/02/hci-blog-welcome-to-my-hci-blog-here-i.html

An example of Good design is the following Beer Dispenser:

• The designer well considered both the usability and the aesthetic of the dispenser.
• The size and the position of the handled hint the user that he has to operate by hand (affordance).
• The space between handles give the sense of direction to operate.
• The appearance of the handles (shape and colors of each handle represent the brand of the beer)
• The different shape of the handles prevent user from mistakes
• The user who frequently use the dispenser can easily find out if he wrongly pick a handle by the feeling from his hand.User will notice the error before he actually operate it. 
• The different of shape of handles is also applied for equipment in operations that mistakes are unacceptable such as power plants (kanrawi, 2016)

An example of Bad Design is the following fire alarm

• Will take time for user to find out when s/he needs it, in emergency situations
• the problem is the color:
• not attractive
• too similar to the color of the wall
• Difficult to find out how it works and how you can use it
• Not sure where should you pull the top or the bottom
• The keyhole convinced you to think that the box was nailed to the wall at that position
• Not sure if there was a psychological reason behind the design to prevent unintentional actions (kanrawi, 2016)

=> Poor affordance

=> Poor visibility

* To conclude, in order to design an interactive product not only do you have to follow the HCI principles but also you need to see some examples of good and bad designs. As a result you could identify what are the do's and what the don'ts for the interactive product design. 

References:

kanrawi. (2016).  Archive for the Good/Bad Interface Design Category. [Internet]. Available at: < https://kanrawi.wordpress.com/category/goodbad-interface-design/ >. [Accessed on: 24/2/2016].

 Rogers, Y., Preece, J.,  Sharp, H. (2015).  Interaction Design:  Beyond Human-computer Interaction. 4th Edition. Wiley.