The Interface is The System
by DanMy family is participating in the Guest at Your Table again this year. It’s a program that collects money for social justice causes. The cardboard box that you put money into sits on your dinner table, and on one side of the box is a panel about people not having access to clean drinking water. As I explained this to my six-year-old daughter, her response was, “Wow, we’re so lucky to have faucets!” For her, the whole system of reservoirs, pipes, plumbing, sewage treatment, etc. was completely summarized by the one visible part of the system: the faucets.
How often this is true, especially with digital products. What users physically experience represents the system to them, and how it works. The interface is the system. You can have the greatest interaction design or information architecture in the world, but wrapped in crappy industrial or visual design with poor affordances, the entire system is perceived to be bad.
If only this worked in reverse! How many nice-looking objects do you own that function terribly?