Sitting in the passenger seat of a friend's car, I noticed his car clock was an hour early. I tempted to fix the time for him while he was driving, but the buttons were too small to press. Then, he told me that the buttons can only be pressed with a small pointed tool like a pen or a pencil. I looked around me and there weren't any sharp tools to use in his car. Before knowing that I needed a sharp tool, I was using my little finger and trying to make it fit. I figured that there is a strong possibility that this design was not usable.

The design as you can see already fails the conceptual model of clock buttons in a car or any clock for that matter. The buttons are not a coherent system and inconsistent. The design also fails affordances because there is no proper affordances that exist to make the desired action of pressing something. With no proper affordances, a signifier occurs due to the uncertainty and feedback that wasn't properly communicated after trying to press the button.

Able to fix this problem, a simple solution could be changing the button's size and their texture to be more plastic or rubbery, in which, I think rubbery button might have more of a gentle click than a plastic one. But, I think its important that a different size and texture of the button can make a difference to people being able to actually change their clocks in a car instead of having to keep planting on it.

I noticed that my friend's TV remote has a different design for the battery slot. I was surprised that it was different than a traditional TV remote. At first I could not open the slot for the batteries, so I gave up and asked my friend how he usually opens it. Even he struggled to open it because he never had to change the batteries. Finally, he opened it and the batteries came out flying after applying so much force. Inside, the batteries fit in similar to shotgun bullets.

Although, this TV remote design has good mapping of how to open the battery slot it fails our conceptual model of a TV remote. The remote does not provide a coherent system image of how a TV remote battery slot should look like. The TV remote also fails two constraints; semantic and cultural constraints. No one who has ever seen this design can be sure what it does and knowing the amount of force it needs to open.

A solution can be redesigning the TV remote battery slot to look more like a traditional TV remote and easier for consumers to use without applying so much force. That is, so the TV remote will no longer look like if you are putting bullets in and allowing the slot to slide up. This will allow the consumerism to know right away how to open the slot and easily be able to by sliding it with a little amount of force.

When I first used a Paper Mate Sharpwriter led pencil borrowed from a friend, she told me that I had to twist the top to get the led out. Automatically, I knew it had some type of bad design. Even though she told me how to use the led pencil, it made sense to twist the top because the led pencil had grooves showing some type of affordance.

Although, the design of this led pencil passes most of seven principles of design, it fails the conceptual model of a led pencil. A conceptual mode shows consistency and a coherent system image of led pencils. That is, you have to twist the top of the led pencil to the right for the led to go up and twisting it to the left it goes down. Also, you can not buy led for this type of led pencil because they do not sell them in the market. The led pencil uses one long led for each pencil and when it is done you throw it out. The whole point people use led pencils is so that they can reuse that same pencil and not have to buy a new one.

A basic solution could be changing the way the led pencil twists because most of the time I would forget witch way to go since my mental model of twisting a bottle or a screw is "lefty loosey righty tighty." When twisting it to the left it should go up and when twisting it to the right it should go down. Also, the company should provide extra led and erasers when buying the pencil, so costumers are able to reuse the pencil.

The chairs in the dorm rooms are surprisingly unwell adjusted. In my dorm the chair is shaped like a rocking chair in the back of the chairs' legs. Even though the chair is simply designed and comfortable to sit on, still faces a usability problem. When I fist moved in the dorms, I took a seat on the chair and tried to lay back about half an inch and it felt like I was falling. Of course I did not fall because the chair was made to stop at a certain point. Also, when I go to place my back-pack behind the chair it causes the chair to tip back and fall. That is because of the fact that the back pack puts too much weight behind the chair that it falls backwards.

The chair fails to include any type of mapping to the users. It would be much more easier for the purpose of the users to know that the chair is also a rocking chair and to be cautious when trying to stand on the chair. This chair is unfamiliar to most people, so I do not think it was the best design to go with. Perhaps the best way of fixing this problem would be making the legs of the chair normal and not rocking when trying to do homework.