Who’s the technology for, anyway?
As members of a CSA (community supported agriculture) program in Albuquerque called Los Poblanos, each week (or two, depending on what we want) we pick up a box of organic fruits and vegetables from them. Occasionally, due to travel or a full crisper drawer, we need to change our box pickup schedule.
The Los Poblanos website had a form-based way to change the pickup schedule. Or that’s what I think it was. It was a typical implementation of a typical technology to make a typical task possible.
Went I went to the site recently, though, their web designer had decided to put some more time into the interface, and this was the result:
With this version, I saw a representation of when my boxes were scheduled, and I could make the change I wanted easily. I hadn’t felt that the old way had been a problem, but when I experienced the new way, I realized why I liked it so much better.
The old interface was designed according to what a computer finds easy to do.
The new interface was designed according to what I find easy to do.
Spend a few minutes today looking at the implementations of technology around you. I guarantee you’ll find examples of person-ignorant design. What should the design have looked like instead?
Category: design, philosophy Comment »