exercise 4, Kyla Reis

First Item: My Aunts Dishwasher
At my house we wash the dishes by hand. I had never used a dishwasher before in my life until just a week ago when my aunt showed me how to use hers. I live with my aunt for the three days I am at school so therefore learning to use her dishwasher was essential. And this process took all of two seconds! All I had to do was put a little detergent pack in a slot in the dishwasher, lock the door and press start! It was so simple. Furthermore, The physical constraints of the lock made it virtually impossible to make a mistake while using the dishwasher. In order to press any buttons on the machine you have to lock the dishwasher door or else the buttons do not function. This way you do not accidentally press a button while the door is open and then have running water and soap all over your floor. In addition,  the handle to lock the door only moves left and right so this also puts a physical constraint on the machine.  The affordance of the dishwasher buttons and lock are also really effective design choices. The visibility of the lights and text also aids one in using this machine. Each button is labelled with text and has a small, green light so you know what option you have selected. These lights also provide feedback to the user and beeping noises let the individal know that they have selected something. Even the hum of the dishwasher notifies the individual that the machine is working.

Second Item: My Zune

I really do love my Zune to be honest. It has great sound, a clear screen and it looks great. However, there is one giant design flaw that really bothers me. You cannot turn it off...well not the way they say you can anyway. You are instructed that to turn off your Zune you must do exactly what you do to turn it on; hold down the play button. This unfortunately is not true. When I did this and went back to listen to music a few hours later it said that my battery was almost dead. This confused me because I had only listened to it for an hour that morning. When I went online I learned that in order to turn off your Zune you have to  hold down the back button and down button. This of course made no sense. There are no symbols or text anywhere on the Zune indicating that this is how one would shut it off. Due to this flaw it is obvious that there is unclear mapping in the Zune's design. I learned that holding down the play button did not turn off my Zune but instead put it in sleep mode. Therefore, the visibility of this design choice was very poor as it was impossible to know that the Zune was in fact not turned off. This was due to the fact that when you held down the play button it did exactly what one would expect it to do when "turned off"; show a blank, black screen. The Zune really is a great product but it does have a big design flaw.