Life's Annoyances

Given on 14 Jan 2008.

A core theme of this class is creating designs that are usable and useful. One of the most useful things to design is a solution to a problem in your life.

The first step is to become sensitive to bad design experiences around you. You task for the next 2 weeks is to carry a camera with you and photograph at least 1 annoyance a day until the next class. That is a minimum of 14 photographs. Bonus points for bringing in additional photos of good experiences and where others have tried to fix bad experiences. (Sure, of course there are bonus points.)

Now, lots of things are annoying. You might think this assignment is one of them. This assignment is not a good example, but carrying a camera around all the time is a swell annoyance to document.

Your annoyances must conform to one of the following:
- You didn’t have the proper information to do what you wanted to do
- Something is harder to do than it should be
- An object is confusing or frustrating
- If something makes you say “Well that’s just stupid” or “This is taking forever.”

And some rules:
- Your annoyance must be able to be photographed. (And a not be a computer screen)
- Your annoyance can not be a person (or any living thing)

Due: 21 Jan 2008.

After we review your annoying photographs, You will be assigned a photograph from one of your classmates to solve their annoyance. Anh and James will also be taking photos, so if yours is not appropriately annoying, we may use ours instead.

More to follow…

Bring in at least 6 solutions for your assigned annoyance.

Due on 11 Feb 2008. Refine your solution and create document so your solution can be understood without verbal explanations. The simplest way to do this is diagram the problem and the solution with 2 images (the problem and the solution) and text explaining key parts of each image.

There are other ways to document your solution that may be more appropriate. It depends on what your solution is.