chapter 2- The Design of Everyday Things

A passage I thought was interesting from The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman was...

"Now consider Tom's point of view. "I really had a hard day," Tom explains. "I woke up late because when my clock radio turned on, I tried to hit the snooze bar to give me five more minutes' sleep; instead I reset the time so that I overslept for a whole hour. That wasn't my fault-- the radio's badly designed.""¹

Interestingly enough I got an email yesterday from a website called uncommongoods.com I found out about them a couple years ago from one of my high school teachers. It's a website that designs a lot of cool items. Some are just very cool looking art wise, some are things you would never think to make, and some are things that are designed well to replace today's products with new ways of thinking. (everyone should definitly take a look at the website. It's pretty cool. www.uncommongoods.com )

Okay, but back to the topic. So the email was one of the ones i get every month or so about new products on the website. The main product advertised in this email was an alarm clock. It was described as an alarm clock that will ring at whatever time you set it, but then if you hit snooze, the clock has an interesting feature to get you up. The clock has wheels on the bottom and once you hit snooze will quietly roll away to some place in your room. It will always choose a new direction and "go hide". Then the next time it rings (5-10 mins), you actually have to get up and find the alarm clock. It's a creative way to get people up in the morning and I'm sure is probably designed well so that you accidently can't reset the time or something like happened to Tom in the story.

If you want to see the clock and product description...
http://www.uncommongoods.com/item/item.jsp?source=main_hp_image&itemId=15888

it's a unique product, but i'd be intriqued to see how it actually works.


1. Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 41.

kate's opening blog

well I just finished the rest of the homework for our class, so now on to bogging.

Well, personally I love our seminar. It's a lot of fun, but it is surprising how many people have never heard of it. At least 50% of people I talk to (whether they're freshman or not) have never heard of the class and hav no idea what it would even be about.

And since I don't know what else to write, how about an overview of me...

-My name is Kate
-I'm from Berkley, MI
-I have one sister(back at home) and two best friends (1 back at home, and 1 at Hope)
-I want to be an econ major at K
-I spend most of my free time hanging out with people, watching seasons of friends (I own all 10), grey's anatomy, or sports
-I absolutely love sports- both playing and watching- The Red Wings are my favorite team
-I tend to be pretty quiet until I get to know people
-I want to be an entrepreneur one day
-In high school I played tennis, soccer, and I was a figure skater. I'm going to play tennis here at K and do a bunch of other sports for fun, and I still plan to seek out the closest ice rink and hit the ice from time to time. (if anyone ever wants to go skate, leave a message)

ok that's all for now