Before introducing concerns, a related concept "signifier" is introduced.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, various rules in daily life are designed as various "signs"-traffic rules and instructions.
The remote control has an understandable text description and buttons that can be pressed. These are all "information" provided by logo. People "pick up" these "information", process them more or less, and then interact with them and get corresponding feedback. This process is a complete cognitive process.
People need to spend some "efforts" in the process of processing these signs. I believe many students have encountered obstacles when using these objects in their daily life-we don't know how to use them until we see the logo on the remote control clearly, and some of them are even complicated, so we can't use them flexibly after understanding them.
However, some information does not need much "effort" to deal with. Many good designs can make us more efficient and experience better. People can easily pick up all kinds of information from these environments or things, and they can know how to use these information to achieve specific goals without processing and understanding. In fact, these unconscious "designs", or these informative object attributes, have always existed.
The picture below shows a fire box in a subway station, which is used to store and protect all kinds of emergency fire fighting equipment. The front of the box says "fire extinguisher box", the red paint also shows its importance and warning significance, and the seal on the lid also shows that you can't touch it at will. These understandings are all obtained after people process "logo".
However, a tired passenger waiting for the subway to enter the station got on the bus ... Aside from ethics and laws and regulations, why did someone get on this box with obvious warning significance?
As you can imagine, because the passenger was really tired after shopping, he saw that the surface of the box was flat and solid, and the length and width were just right. In a word, the properties of these boxes provide a message that "you can sit on them". Passengers picked up this message and naturally sat on it.
The word "prejudice" was coined by cognitive psychologist James Jerome Gibson. He used a floor to explain his affection: if a ground plane is horizontal, flat, hard and wide enough, then animals can stand, walk or run on it. For animals, these four properties of the floor provide characteristics that allow animals to stand, walk and run. The attribute provided by this environment or object to animals is called affection, which is "availability".
The attributes of the fire box in the above picture, such as flatness, firmness, length and width, provide an excuse for sitting, that is, the attributes of sitting.
So, what is the difference between "logo" and "availability"?
Sign is a common conscious behavior, which requires people to actively process and analyze all kinds of information, such as red lights, zebra crossings, horns and so on. "People" here include designers and users (users). The designer processes logos, and then the user receives and analyzes it. In addition, when receiving these messages, the user's attention is attracted to the information. For example, on the road, always pay attention to all kinds of signals.
Emotion emphasizes the pulling effect of environment or objects on human behavior. People can easily use some attributes provided by the processed object to complete the task and achieve the goal without "effort".
The difference between the two lies in the "intensity" required by the cognitive process-the intensity of feelings is below the threshold, which is unconscious.
In the book Design for Design = Best Design, Naoto fukasawa, the product designer of MUJI, said that affection is "the environmental nature of animals, which reveals what people already know but have not yet discovered". He founded a workshop called "No Thoughts", which conveyed a lot of thoughts on this unconscious behavior. In many articles and speeches, he emphasized that the relationship between people and things should be natural and unthinking, and too many useless details should not be added to stimulate users, just "just right".
There must be good and bad, and the better the affirmation, the stronger the pulling force on people's behavior. The same stone, when you are tired, which one will you choose?
It's raining recently, so everyone takes an umbrella. The picture below shows an ordinary umbrella barrel that we can see in many places. It is often mistaken for a trash can or even an ashtray. This is a good accident case-a bucket can be picked up by different people with different scenes, different information and different attributes.
Do we have any other design methods for putting umbrellas?
The picture below shows an umbrella stand designed by a Korean company, which is relatively simple and pure.
Many times we will insert the umbrella in the gap of the tile and lean against the wall. Through this gap and wall, naoto fukasawa can provide the property of "holding an umbrella", cut a small hole in the wall of the porch and design an inconspicuous "umbrella stand".
The wisdom of working people is infinite. The company's flower trough instantly becomes an umbrella stand, and it is necessary to design wool. Moreover, whether there is a hook or not, you can hold it. At this time, the umbrella handle and the flower slot provide properties that can be linked.
More than a year ago, driven by Windows Phone and iOS 7, there was a wave of flattening. At that time, I was speechless when I saw the overwhelming spit on the flattening.
I have been thinking that in some scenes, as long as the product can automatically provide or complete some specific requirements and let users complete the task without thinking, the details such as the bump of the highlight will become meaningless and redundant "logos". I began to look for cases about unconscious design, especially in the field of UI design.
Apple's iOS keyboard will provide different AIDS according to different input scenarios. For example, if you activate the keyboard in the search box, the "Back" button in the lower right corner will become "Search"; Keyboards with different characters will also be called, such as alphabetic keyboards and all-numeric keyboards.
Regarding the keyboard of Apple's iOS, there is also a black technology. This is apple's No.7,900, 156 keyboard patent, which probably means that when a user wants to input the word apple, after typing the letter "A", the system will predict common words such as Apple and action according to the dictionary, determine the positions of the next letters "P" and "C", and enlarge the triggerable areas of these letters for users to click.
Another good example recently is the "short look" and "long look" modes of Apple Watch.
When Apple Watch receives a new message, it will notify the user through vibration. After the user raises his wrist, Apple Watch will activate the "short-sighted" mode of displaying messages on the screen-only providing the simplest message title, application name and icon. If the user feels that this information is useless to him in the current scene, he will inevitably put down his wrist and ignore it. At this time, Apple Watch will ignore this message, mark it as unread, and then close the screen; If users think the notification information is useful, they usually want to know more information, so their wrists will not be put down so quickly. At this time, the system will recognize this situation, adjust the notification information to "long view" mode, display all the details of the information, and provide some simple response buttons through the recognition of the information. For example, if the message is "Where to eat tonight? Amaranth or Lanzhou canteen? " , the system will provide users with three buttons: Fujian cuisine, Lanzhou canteen and ignore.
The enlightenment is not yet mature, and there are still many places to be improved. Just as a tool or methodology in daily design work is not enough, and it is not recommended for you to do so, because if you don't grasp it well, it will become an "excuse tool". But I suggest you use it as a way or angle to observe the world, especially in your daily life. I hope you can pay more attention to the good examples around you by understanding your family.