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:
- 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
- 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’
- 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?
December 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Adesh, nice post. I’ve observed in the past that ‘affordance’ is sometimes intended (and designed) and sometimes unintended (and accidental). Physical forms frequently hew to a finite set of archetypes and therefore often provide accidental affordance to variety of different actions. For instance, any horizontal and reasonably flat surface at a height below, say one metre or so, often becomes transformed into a bench (and in contexts where being sat upon is not desired, the surface is intendedly transformed so as to not afford sitting — say, by making it sloping, or rough, etc.). Anything stick shaped and sized may be used as a stick to beat someone in a context where an argument erupts. Perhaps it should be designed to be unremovable (fixed to a surface), unliftable (heavy), have a slippery surface, etc. to prevent such unintended usage.
The larger point you seem to be making is whether an artifact should be designed keeping in view both intended and unintended uses. Of course, the simple answer is yes, but the more complex one is whether it is possible to ever enumerate all possible unintended uses (it is not). Certainly one should try to eliminate those kind of anticipated unintended uses that may have irreversible negative consequences.
I don’t know if such a thing already exists, but perhaps you could consider, as an exercise, an enumeration of important archetypal forms (shape, size, texture, colour, etc.) and the varied contexts of their usage.
Cheers,
Murli