This was such an interesting chapter and loved the balance of theory with real world examples. The first thing I might improve about this chapter is in regards to the section where you discuss how to bridge the gulfs of execution and evaluation and mention that this can be done through tutorials, tooltips, etc. I wonder if it might be helpful to allude to how this notion overlaps with information experience design. By this I mean that it might be good to allude to that there is a whole other specialized area of design in which these designers carefully consider the right delivery mechanisms for users in how they try to achieve their goal or a given task. Here is a chapter of a book called Writing for Interaction by Linda Newman Lior that I found interesting about information design and delivery mechanisms.
Secondly, at the end of the first section of Chapter 2 you mention that “designing experiences that support vague, shifting and unobservable human goals is a different challenge.” This left me wondering how we design experiences in this case and whether we're even able to? I might be interested to elaborate a little bit more about that!
Finally, nearing the end of the chapter, I love that you mentioned how there exist stereotypes of what is “intuitive” or “user friendly” because the use of these words in the industry always made me cringe. I think this suggestion might be a bit out there but I wonder if you could also add here that from another perspective it’s important to understand theory because not only can it help you make decisions but it’s also good to know these theories to explain to “teach” non-designers so they can keep these principles in mind and advocate for design when a designer cannot be in the room (which can happen sometimes in organizations).
theory
critique:
• inserting some figures/diagrams next to the text might be helpful to understand the terms (affordance, gulfs of execution/evaluation, mental model)
• minor change: “But execution is only half of the equation… between the output of a user interface and a users’ goal”, change users’ to user’s
• would be helpful to compare the concept of signifier with affordance and clarify the difference
This was such an interesting chapter and loved the balance of theory with real world examples. The first thing I might improve about this chapter is in regards to the section where you discuss how to bridge the gulfs of execution and evaluation and mention that this can be done through tutorials, tooltips, etc. I wonder if it might be helpful to allude to how this notion overlaps with information experience design. By this I mean that it might be good to allude to that there is a whole other specialized area of design in which these designers carefully consider the right delivery mechanisms for users in how they try to achieve their goal or a given task. Here is a chapter of a book called Writing for Interaction by Linda Newman Lior that I found interesting about information design and delivery mechanisms. Secondly, at the end of the first section of Chapter 2 you mention that “designing experiences that support vague, shifting and unobservable human goals is a different challenge.” This left me wondering how we design experiences in this case and whether we're even able to? I might be interested to elaborate a little bit more about that! Finally, nearing the end of the chapter, I love that you mentioned how there exist stereotypes of what is “intuitive” or “user friendly” because the use of these words in the industry always made me cringe. I think this suggestion might be a bit out there but I wonder if you could also add here that from another perspective it’s important to understand theory because not only can it help you make decisions but it’s also good to know these theories to explain to “teach” non-designers so they can keep these principles in mind and advocate for design when a designer cannot be in the room (which can happen sometimes in organizations).
theory critique: • inserting some figures/diagrams next to the text might be helpful to understand the terms (affordance, gulfs of execution/evaluation, mental model) • minor change: “But execution is only half of the equation… between the output of a user interface and a users’ goal”, change users’ to user’s • would be helpful to compare the concept of signifier with affordance and clarify the difference