Good Design Saves the Day

One of the biggest lessons I took away from my reading of The Design of Everyday Things was that when everyday things are designed thoughtfully and with users in mind, there is a spectrum of positive results ranging from the relatively mundane to the life-changing.

The Mundane

There is a way in which the cumulation of daily troubles can spill over when triggered by a stream of minor inconveniences. The "straw that broke the camel's back" effect can cause a great deal of stress and social strain for people and often this is triggered by a daily product which is relied upon working poorly or failing the user.

Let me pose a few different scenarios to you:

- Have you ever been having the worst day ever, flat-tire-in-the-rain, late-for-work, stuck-in-traffic kind of day, just to get to work and stub your toe on that bit of wall that juts out in the entryway?

Or

- You are on your way to work and you thought you were going to be late, but now you realize you are going to be right on time, except, suddenly you've hit a block of traffic stuck at a series of red lights and you're going to be late for sure.

The Worst.

In either of these scenarios, you find yourself in a situation in which you are already stressed and burdened by the accumulation of minor inconveniences that occur over the course of a day. You are feeling the stress, your cortisol levels are going up, you're going from 58 to 59 and if you get to 60 you might lose your temper. The people around you will ask what's wrong and then you'll feel bad for having an outburst. You know what would be nice right about now? For something to go right!

Life is stressful

It would be great for that soap dispenser to continue to diligently and obediently spray soap directly into your hand, without soaking the front of your work blouse with slick blue soap before that big work meeting. It would be great for your key to not get stuck in your door on the way into the house because it's freezing outside and your hands are full of groceries. It would be great if that smoke detector in the hallway would stop beeping for no reason. And so on, and so forth.

Why is this so important? People are stressed and harried, and are often running on empty in their daily lives. Making one thing that they have to use every day a little bit easier to use is a huge boon to their daily routine. Many people have disabilities and executive functioning disorders that make it difficult to perform daily tasks. Making activities of daily life that much easier to carry out (that faucet doesn't have to be quite so mysterious to operate, does it? does that door have to be so heavy?) allow people with disabilities a wider range of abilities in a world built for able-bodied and able-minded individuals. A major insight of disability studies has been that the same changes that make things easier for disabled individuals to navigate society, usually make things easier for everyone to do so (wider doorways and sidewalks are good for people in wheelchairs, but they are also good for strollers).

Casting a critical eye on the items we use every day and wondering if they could be used better, if they could be asked to perform more easily, for more people, with better results, is a worth-while goal because it improves the daily lives of millions of individuals. How many bad days can be prevented with good design? How many inconveniences? How many injuries? How many financial losses?

See the next blog post for my discussion of how good design can be life-changing.