To me, usability means making sure that everything is obvious, self-explanatory and easy to use. I often see things in the physical world which make me wonder what the hell the designer was thinking. Here’s a classic example:

This is one of The Werks‘ watercoolers. So, what’s the difference between the green button and the blue button? I don’t know.

Normally, blue taps signify cold water. So what about the green button? What does green signify? Is it hot? Why green?

Whichever button you press, you get cold water. So why two buttons? Why no explanation of what the buttons do? And why not stick to the convention of:

Blue = cold

Red = hot ?

This is a good example of bad usability, which leaves people with a vague sense of confusion. Obviously, giving people a sense of confusion is a bad thing.

Good web copy (and design) leaves no room for confusion.

Donald A. Norman makes an interesting point in his book The Design of Everyday Things – that people tend to blame themselves when technology lets them down.

How often do hear people taking the blame when the printer decides to quit? Or feeling guilty because they made the computer crash? Norman suggests we should not blame ourselves – we should blame the designer.

If something goes wrong because we haven’t used it properly, the designer clearly hasn’t designed it very well. A well designed object should be intuitive to use, removing the possibility of mistakes. I think good web design follows the same principles: it shouldn’t let you make mistakes.

The picture above is only slightly relevant to this post – but it’s what made me think of Norman’s work. It shows a door that has been well-worn by thousands of hands pushing it open. The fact that the door has a push-plate made me think of The Design of Everyday Things. This doesn’t represent bad design – it’s just interesting that everyone chooses to push the door not by the push-plate.

So the next time you struggle to open a can of beans, or your computer decides to act up, blame the designer for letting you get it wrong.