“Can I borrow your pen for a moment?” I asked my colleague. It took him few minutes to search his backpack full of books, mp3 player, mobile phone, a thumb drive, music CDs, headphone and office ID card to find an old age Reynolds ballpoint pen. I needed to fill up a form manually and then I realized, ‘sheesh’, I could write faster on a key board.

Nowadays, I find it really difficult to find a pen when I need it badly. Moreover, I even find it difficult to write ‘traditionally’. It wasn’t the case seven years ago when I was a student, and a pen was one of my fundamental needs (food, water, shelter, clothing and a pen). I remember running back to my hostel during exam time to collect it. I was sure not to find one, even from my best of friends out there.

So what happened now? I was one of those persons who used to go out in the following manner:

1. Pickup  wallet and check money
2. Pickup my favorite pen and put in shirt’s pocket to show my sincerity
3. Pickup my bicycle’s keys and walkout

Now the sequence is different

1. Pickup wallet and check credit cards
2. Pickup mobile phone
3. Pickup laptop
4. Pickup keys and walkout

Where is the pen? “Well I don’t need it, and even if I do, I’ll find it somehow” I always answer to me.

I did a quick analysis of various scenarios where I always used pen and nowadays prefer to adopt alternate solutions

This is a brief list of scenarios I could immediately think of, and I am sure there could be more. Though I don’t see a major impact in my daily life in ‘absence’ of a pen, I still feel guilty about it. When it comes to writing, I have observed some changes which I would like to rectify. Sometimes my own signature looks fake to me. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that in actual writing there is very little room for rectifying errors. I am overcautious and write slow, as if I am driving my car after ages in midst of a narrow lane.

I have a very high regard for those who write on paper fluently, effortlessly and confidently. Which I feel is difficult to achieve in a digital world, where all your mistakes are being treated as an overlook and rectification is very easy.

Since more and more people are becoming part of the digital ecosystem, I really wonder what will be the future of handwriting analysts, calligraphy artists and all those associated with the written script on a physical sheet of paper. I also wonder, if a person like me who have lost the flair of usage of pen, could be analyzed on various parameters of handwriting to identify personality traits?

Lately, I came across an interesting blog called failblog.org.  As name suggests, it’s surely not a failed blog. Instead, it is very popular and contains fantastic videos and images of products, services, people, behaviors etc., which fails to do justice to their intended design. Not surprisingly, I did agree on the existence of most of the product on this blog. However, there was one specific video which made me to think more about it.

This video shows a person addressing people in a restaurant, using a wireless microphone. Sitting next to him, is an old lady enjoying her meal. This lady is very much engrossed in the meal, totally unaware of the person’s speech.  The person suddenly offers the microphone to the old lady for her comments. Surprisingly, at the very moment, the lady is expecting something else. It’s nothing else, but a Pepper Crusher.  Just imagine her rotating the upper part of the microphone to dispense black pepper.

Have a look at the video.

The situation is definitely funny and the lady was obviously embarrassed. But was this really her problem?

I don’t think so.

I have observed two mindsets for this kind of situation. Either blame the person (or rather make fun of them), or blame the product, like most designers or usability experts do always. I personally found this situation rather strange. I cannot directly blame the product, because I have never ever seen people getting confused between a pepper crusher and the microphone. Also, I didn’t see anything wrong in the way that old lady reacted to the microphone.

I see a major influence of the context in which the lady looked at the microphone. At the very moment she was offered the microphone, she was enjoying her meal. And being totally unaware of her surrounding, she could not expect more than someone offering something related to her ‘context’. In this particular situation, the perceived affordance of the microphone was changed due to the change in ‘context’.

This triggers a question. Can ‘context’ influence the perceived affordance of a well designed product? I do not have any specific research data to support my claim, but I strongly feel, ‘Yes’.  Here are some of my observations:

1. Imagine a person trying to kill you and you need to defend yourself. Most likely the affordance of a flowerpot or an ashtray near you will change to a weapon
2. You are travelling in a crowded bus, and suddenly driver decides to apply brakes. Your reflexes force you to grab the hand of a stranger next to you. In this ‘context’ the affordance a ‘hand’ becomes a ‘support handle’
3. You are walking on the road and it starts raining. You quickly look for cover and in most cases you might end up using your bag, books or a briefcase as an umbrella 

There are more examples like this for sure. Here is one more example of a person hurting himself by a hot electric iron while mistaking it for a mobile phone. Here, you must observe the ‘context’, which is more important.

This is a great learning for me personally, and I am convinced that having a deeper understanding of various contextual usage of a product would help me design products effectively.

Any comments?