Have you ever held a knife which fits perfectly in your hand? Or any other tool which once you picked it up seemed to become almost a natural part of your body? If you have experienced this then you have experienced â??goodâ?? design. Often the only way to recognize â??badâ?? design is when things do not work or work badly.
During the past days the problem of good/bad design has been an issue since I managed to crash my laptop and needed to format and re-install everything. On one level this is not a complex operation but what is difficult is getting the computer back to the feeling it had before.
Since it is the tool I use the most it has been adapted from a standard factory machine into a highly personalized artifact and therefore once it was restored to factory standard working with it for longer periods was a painful experience in much the same way as working with a bad knife is a painful experience.
The process of customization is slow and getting the machine to adapt itself to my wants and needs an exhausting experience since it requires remembering hundreds (thousands?) of small pieces of software that made my machine mine.