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.