Reflection on The Psychology of Everyday Actions

This week's reading once again seemed to be primarily common sense, however, it points out that many important things designers should consider. One important thing to keep in mind when designing something is that nobody is perfect and "the designer must assume that all possible errors will occur and design so as to minimize the chance of the error in the first place, or its effects once it gets made." This principle makes a lot of sense, and I am noticing it a lot in digital interface design, take the "undo" action for example, as soon as I make an error, my fingers almost instinctively drawn to "command+z". I also look back and analyze decisions I've made according to the flow of the psychology of how people do things. There are seven steps, but I understand it best when thinking about it flowing in this pattern: evaluate the situation, make a goal for what we want to happen, take action. I'm realizing that some problems do not come from a lack of understanding or knowledge, rather, it may come from a lack of understanding the relationship between the function of the interface and the mechanisms of the interface. The part of this chapter I found most helpful to my skills as a designer was towards the end, when it discussed the keys for good design: visibility, a good conceptual model, good mappings, and feedback.