I lived in a townhouse style dorm my sophomore year of undergrad at Tufts. The yellowing plastic domed cover over the ceiling light made the room too dark, so I took it off. I would probably need to replace it after the school year, so I used the same two screws and screwed it into the wall, sideways, by the light switch. It became a catch all for my keys and wallet. Later that day, my housemate, Kevin walked in and said “you should look at majoring in Ergonomics.” That one sentence led me to learn a framework for understanding every failure as an opportunity for creating a better design.
Ergonomics at Tufts is taught half in the psychology department, so that you understand the user, their motivations, expectations, and assumptions. The other half in mechanical engineering, so that you can design and fabricate a solution. The principal of ergonomics is to change the machine to meet the user. To me, that means a design is wrong if the user makes a mistake.
Therefore, I never blame the user. Take something like a common car accident. Fast forward in your mind 50 years. There are no car accidents because networked cars now drive in unison. Once cars communicate with each other, being distracted by your phone or falling asleep is encouraged.
How do I apply this ideal? I look to make everything better. My family calls these ‘Walterations.’
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