Sunday, 20 January 2008
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Assignment 0 : Bad Design
Bum Rests at MRT Stations
User's Reaction - My feelings towards these bum rests
I still remember the first time I notice those bum rests. It looks smooth and inviting. After a long day in school, I was worn out and I really wanted to sit down somewhere. So imagine my pleasure when I found empty seats (though I should have been suspected something when no one wanted to sit on these seats).
I walked towards the seats happily, and found that I couldn't just sit on them as they were very tall. Feeling short, I looked around to ensure no one was notcing me, and I had to propel myself onto them as they were simply too tall. To my dismay, my bum started to slide off the seats. I couldn't support myself with my feet as they didn't even reach the ground. At the end of the humiliating slide down those seats, I didn't even dare look around to see if anyone was laughing at me. I was simply too embarrassed and from then on, everytime I see them, feelings of distress and chagrin will surface again.
Lesson I learnt from the interaction with the bum rests
Ironically, the lesson I learned from using these bum rests is to never attempt to use them again. No matter how much my legs were aching, I never ever tried to sit on those bum rests again. Bearing with aching legs and heavy bags beats embarrassing myself in public. My mortifying experience with the bum rests have also created a bad impression of SMRT, as they are responsible for the installation of these bum rests. I guess the bottomline is: A one-time bad experience/interaction is enough to make a permanent bad impression and also enough to make one dislike the product design to the extent of not using it anymore.
My Reflection of the bum rests and my reaction
Although the outer appearance of the bum rests looks nice and shiny, it is not a good product to interact with. As mentioned on the wikipedia link that Reddy provided us with, a design should consider "moments of engagement" between users and the "ideas, emotions, and memories that these moments create". The design of the bum rests did not consider that. My perception of them is a bad one just after one interaction with it. The result of this interaction was a bad memory, bad feelings and a bad experience, which is why I feel that this design is a really bad one.
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