Pilot

      Over the past two weeks since taking CSC318 we've talked about a lot about interactive media and I've been noticing design implications of objects in my day to day life much more since I have been taking this course. Two things that really stood out to me is an implementation of a crosswalk and this water bottle at a Korean restaurant. These are examples of bad designs which I think could be drastically improved.

      Pictured is the cross walk that I am talking about. Instead of being implemented as a normal crosswalk it's implemented so that the lights above flash yellow signalling the cars to stop for the passengers instead of flashing green yellow red. At first I didn't think much of the set up of the intersection until I tried to cross the road. If you position yourself at the street corners by the buttons you need to cross you cannot actually see if the lights are flashing or not. I think this poses a major inconvenience to the pedestrians as they do not have an indicating signal telling them that it is safe to cross. They actually have to look at the cars to see if they are coming to a halt instead of trusting that the light is signalling that they are safe to cross. Even at the angle the picture is taken a pedestrian cannot see if the lights are actually flashing or not. It feels like this predicament can be easily overcome just by angling the light across the pedestrian so that they can see it.

     This is a video of me pouring water from a bottle which many Korean restaurants give to their customers. As you notice the lid of the bottle falls down due to gravity onto the opening inhibiting the water from being poured into the cup. I just though that there could have been many ways that this lid could be made to not do this. The designer of the cup could have made it so that the lid snaps onto the back of the cup so that this does not happen. They could have just made it some sort of turning lid. For such a simple activity it seems very silly to me that there could be a design that has a flaw of this magnitude. This just empathizes the importance of human design decisions and forethought that is required to make sure that there are no flaws or inconveniences in the design of interactive media.