Jul 05 2008
Design for politeness
In the field of ‘interaction design’ it is common to to define the interaction between user and product. This can be done in all kinds of qualifications; gentle, subtle, complex, straightforward etc. Taking the user as a starting point the product gets defined and questions like ‘which functions will the user need’ and ‘how to they fit in the life of the user’ are answered. In the end the designer knows exactly how the user will operate, use and understand the product. We would like to add another dimension to this spectrum called ‘design for politeness’ adopted from software design.
What is design for politeness?
Design for politeness is bringing societal norms and agreements back into product design. It is a norm to shake hands when we meet new people and we consider it normal if someone informs us if he can’t make it to an appointment. Standards are part of our culture and helps us know how to behave amongst other. Now consider some examples of products;
“A printer who just stopped printing has a red flashing light next to a paper icon”
“A computer saying ‘please wait’ when installing a program”
“A copier giving a blinking error light”
“A blinking ’service’ light of the car dashboard”
“Internet explorer asking if you want to remember the password for this site, every time you use it!”
Al examples seem perfectly normal, they inform the user that ’something’ is wrong or that the user has to take a ‘certain’ action. But it does not specify this at all, it leaves users in the dark in a rude way. How would we react if such things would happen with other people. Nor does it anticipate us, the car, copier could have known service is in order in a few days. The same goes for internet explorer, it should remember that I (me, this particular user) does not want to store passwords.
If I ask someone to do a task but he just stops halfway and does not inform me why he stopped. Normal? No, we consider it normal that he tells he is sick, has too many projects or that he has a problem.In case of the printer, it could have known that there was not enough paper to execute this print job. Also if the computer has software on it the program says ‘please fill paper’ or ‘out of paper’. And there we get at the fundamental core why most products / services are impolite. Most engineers / designers think that adding ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ is polite but in fact it is a way of saying, sorry no can do and good luck with that, is that polite? No. A polite answer would be; ‘your print job has started but to complete it you might want to refill the paper supply as there is not enough paper to complete it’.