Know the Difference Between Good and Bad Design
Have you ever:
Tried to figure out which button controlled which of the burners on your induction stove?
Gotten lost in a large building (hospital, museum, etc.)?
Pressed the elevator button several times without being sure it worked?
Left a website because you couldn't find the information you wanted?
If you answered “yes” to any of those, then you have been a victim of bad design!
When this happens, we tend to blame ourselves. Wrongly so – a badly designed interface makes us make mistakes!
An interface determines how you interact with the product. It can:
make your life easier—e.g., warn you if you exceed the speed limit, quickly and simply book a train ticket.
or make your life harder—e.g., not tell you when you’re running out of gas, hide the menu unless you go back to the home page.
To summarize: bad design is complicated design.
But what do you mean by “complicated”?
We can say that a product is complicated when the components of its interface, which are supposed to help us interact with it (buttons, controls, etc.), don’t allow us to quickly and easily understand how the product works.
Examples of signifiers:
When driving, if we see a one-way sign, we know not to go down that street.
In a public place, signs show us where the restroom or the exit is.
In a mobile application, we know that clicking on a symbol composed of three horizontal strokes (aka the “hamburger menu”) displays a menu.
We immediately recognize error messages because they are in red and/or have an exclamation mark.
An interface error in a design, therefore, makes poor use of signifiers.
This can take several forms:
Too many signifiers—remote controls and websites often suffer from this.
The signifiers are poorly placed, like burners on an induction stove that aren’t next to the buttons, or a mobile app where you have to scroll down for too long to find the information you need, or where you need to swipe sideways, but it’s not clearly indicated.
The signifiers are meaningless—incomprehensible symbols, cryptic pictograms that don't refer to any specific concept, etc. Picture an oven or a washing machine with pictograms that don’t clearly show what they’re for.
The signifiers aren’t there at all—there’s no indication of how to use the object, e.g., buttons with no color or symbol on them or a door in a store that doesn’t tell you whether to push or pull to open it.
This invariably leads to confusion, misunderstandings, and even stress or anxiety.
But sometimes, bad design can be very dangerous or even deadly.
The most well-known example is that of doors in public places (such as cinemas, theaters, museums, etc.).
One evening in the late 19th century, hundreds of people were packed in a theater. There was an announcement of a cash prize, and everyone rushed to the exit.
The problem was that it was a “pull” door.
In the midst of the chaos, it was impossible to get out because everyone was pushing forward, and no one realized that they needed to back up to open the door.
This led to hundreds of avoidable deaths.
This tragic accident inspired the design of fire doors, and more broadly, emergency doors, which make it easy to exit a building. These doors open as soon as you push the bar. Now, almost every public place in the world has this door system—it’s become an international standard.
The consequences of bad design aren’t always this extreme, but they can be disastrous for businesses.
For example:
You might lose users because your website interface doesn’t provide a smooth experience.
Over to You!
You’ll need to do a bit of exploring for this activity!
Take a look around your workplace and see if you can find a design object that misuses signifiers.
Now try to see how you could improve the example you found!
Identify Opportunities to Apply Design Thinking
In your professional life, you’ll undoubtedly be asked to work on projects. You’ll then have a mission, a problem that has been defined, either by a client or by a superior in the company, that you’ll need to work on and think about to come up with an appropriate solution.
But sometimes, you’re not given a clearly defined topic. Then it's up to you to set up a framework or even to find an opportunity yourself.
But how do you find this opportunity?
Finding an opportunity is about being able to:
Notice problems: things that don't work or are difficult to do.
Identify them not as an inevitability or an obstacle but as an opportunity to make an improvement!
Having trouble thinking of something off the top of your head? You can share your everyday frustrations with a friend or colleague.
Do the exercise and note down some sentences!
Examples:
"I dream of spending a vacation in an exotic country."
"What frustrates me is that I don't have enough money to go on vacation to far-flung destinations.”
Then transform them into a challenge by formulating questions that begin with "How could we...?". This will allow you to move from problem to challenge:
Example:
"How could we go on vacation without spending too much money?"
Conceiving Design for Flow
To design well, you must try to generate an emotional attachment.
The emotions that you feel while using a product often determine if:
you continue using it or not.
you talk about it with the people around you, or openly criticize it.
you recommend it to your friends, or advise against it.
In short:
Positive emotions can turn you from a casual user to a true ambassador.
Negative emotions can turn you from a simple user to a “hater”.
To conclude this chapter, I suggest you watch this 12-minute lecture by Donald Norman, which illustrates the three reactions of emotional design with numerous examples.
Let’s Recap!
There are many examples of good and bad design. It’s often enough to look at the signifiers to spot bad design: how are they used? And how can they be misleading?
Misuse of signifiers results in a bad interface, which can be difficult to navigate. This could be due to too many or too few signifiers (or none at all!), or ones that are badly positioned, or even just incomprehensible.
Design mistakes should be seen as opportunities for improvement.
Good design provides a good user experience.
Now that you know all this, I'm sure you'll see things in a new light. You’ll be able to tell the difference between good design and bad design, and this will make all the difference in your day-to-day projects. Let's see what tools you can use to help you in this process.
