In the last few decades, thousands of products have entered our lives with the intention to make them simpler. So, why does so much modern technology confuse and trap us?

“Technology changes rapidly; people change slowly”, writes Donald Norman, in ‘The Design of Everyday Things’. Interaction with things is governed by our biology, psychology, society, and culture. Human biology and psychology do not change much with time, and society and culture change slowly. The rate of new product creation is so high that some features aren’t tested thoroughly, or aren’t tested at all.

Bad design affects the super-complex to the dead simple: for instance, bad design is a door with a raised bar across it. The door only opens if you apply pressure on the right side of the bar, but there is no visual indication of this.

And what about a phone interface with a mysterious button ‘R’? Nobody knows what the button does, but the button remains for as long as a designer can provide a reason for its existence. Likewise, bad design is a door that has a handle which suggests twisting and pulling, but slides open.

I have been toying with the idea of modern (in)conveniences for a while before I read Norman’s book. The supermarket and the washing machine were subjects of a brief post.

Bad design, I’ve since learned, is used to confuse users intentionally. Why would a designer want to do this?

The Supermarket Maze

Supermarkets are complex, distracting, confusing. They are also exotic, amorphous and evolving ecosystems of products. The products displayed in the supermarket largely sell themselves with their packaging. Graphic design is key here – how can one peanut butter stand out from another peanut butter?

To do our shopping in the twenty-first century, we no longer need to visit individual shops. Products are gathered together within a single building. We enter a shop, pick up a basket of pre-determined size, and working from a mental or physical list, walk around the shop selecting items to put in a basket, before taking the basket to the check-out. The products are checked out by a human or a machine, or perhaps both. We exit the shop.

How can we design a supermarket to make it easy to find a desired item? Thinking in terms of pure design, I would use a clear supermarket layout, with low shelves so you can see over them, and make use of clear signposting. A shopper could, with clear layout and signposting, be sent from A to B.

A businessperson, however, would think in terms of both design and profit. It’s good business to send your shopper on a longer route from A before they reach B, so they pick up more things to take to check-out. Most shoppers are sent into a maze of distraction and advertising. In other words, supermarkets are deliberately confusing.

The Space-age Washing Machine

It shouldn’t be more complicated than putting your dirty clothes in the machine, putting in the washing powder, and pressing a button. But washing machines have become needlessly complicated, with some interfaces looking like spaceship dashboards. Norman suggests this is because ‘complicated’ looking products actually hold consumer appeal. Apparent complexity, at least in Korea, suggests status. More features, Norman argues, defies simplicity. More features sell products. A more complex washing machine is more attractive than one that appears simple. How many people try to understand how products work before they buy them?

A wonderful experience should be able to overrule these poor business tactics. Driving sales via confusion and advertising exposure is far from ideal, but it seems to work – at least in some places. Apparent complexity may always sell. The iPhone and iPod Touch, though, are examples of wonderful apparent simplicity when the device itself is complex: the good design masks the complexity of the functions.

Supermarkets rely on products selling themselves off the shelf. That’s interesting, if you combine this with the fact that product packaging is on its way out. Sainsbury’s in the UK is trying out the milk bag, which may eventually replace the plastic bottle. The milk bag is already popular in Canada (according to the article, 60% of fresh milk in Canada is sold in bags). Supermarkets are bending to the pressure of environmental awareness, but as the Times article points out, it’s down to whether consumers will want it.

It’s worth bearing in mind a scenario where packaging is severely limited, or where we simply no longer can afford to spend our resources on disposable packaging. Without products selling themselves with their packaging, will the current supermarket model work? If products can no longer sell themselves individually with their packaging, the model for advertising products in stock will have to change.

What makes design so compelling is how it emerges from seemingly conflicting motives: in these cases, the aims of the designer are at odds with the aims of business. Business itself is at odds with environmental pressure, availability of resources, the ideal of how they would advertise their product, and ultimately, what consumers want.