Design of Everyday Things - Norman, Don [83]
Many museums and design centers make prime examples of pretty displays and signs coupled with illegible and uninformative labels. Mostly, I suspect, it’s because these buildings are judged as places of art, where the exhibits are meant to be admired, not to be learned from. I made several trips to the Design Centre in London to collect material for this book. I hoped it would have a good library and bookshop (it did) and good exhibits, demonstrating the proper principles for combining aesthetics, economics, usability, and manufacturability. I found the London Design Centre itself to be an exercise in poor design. Take the cafeteria: just about impossible to use. Behind the counter, the four workers continually get in each other’s way. The layout of the back-counter facilities seems without structure or function. Food is carefully heated for the customer, but it gets cold by the time the customer gets through the line. The cafeteria has tiny round tables, which are also too high. There are elegant round stools to sit on. The set up is impossible to use if you are elderly or young or have your hands full of packages. Of course, the design may have been a deliberate attempt to discourage use of the cafeteria. Consider this scenario.
The cafeteria is well designed, with spacious tables and comfortable chairs. But it then becomes too popular, interfering with the true purose of the Design Centre, which is to encourage good design among British manufacturers. The popularity of the Centre and its cafeteria to tourists is unexpected. The Design Centre decides to discourage people from using the cafeteria. They take out the original tables and chairs and replace them with dysfunctional, uncomfortable ones, all in the name of good design—the goal in this case being to discourage people from using the cafeteria and lingering. Actually, restaurants often install uncomfortable chairs for just this reason. Fast-food places often have no chairs or tables. So my complaints provide evidence that the design criteria were met, that the design was successful.12
In London I visited the Boilerworks, a part of the Victoria and Albert Museum, to look at a special exhibit called “natural design.” The exhibit itself was one of the best examples of unnatural design I have ever witnessed. Pretty, tasteful signs near each display. Dramatically striking layout of the objects. But you couldn’t tell which sign went with which exhibit, or what the text meant. Alas, this seems typical of museums.
A major part of the design process ought to be the study of just how the objects being designed are to be used. In the case of the cafeteria at the London Design Centre, the designers should imagine a crowd of people in line, imagine where the line will start and end, and study what effect the line will have on the rest of the museum. Study the work patterns of the cafeteria employees: consider them responding to customer requests. Where will they have to move? What objects will they have to reach? If there are several employees, will they get in each other’s way? And then consider the customers. Grandparents with heavy coats, umbrellas, packages, and perhaps three small children—how will they pay for their purchases? Is there a place for them to put down their packages so they can open their wallets or purses and get out their money? Can this be done in a way that minimizes the disruption for the next people in line and improves the speed and efficiency of the cashier? And finally, consider the customers at the tables. Struggling to get up on a high stool to eat off a tiny table. And don’t just imagine: go out and look at the current design, or at other cafeterias. Interview potential customers, interview the cafeteria employees.
In the case of science museums, studies have to be made on people who are the same as the intended audience. The designers and employees already know too much: they can no longer put