RSS feedDesign - not always sexy
I bought several books to increase my design knowledge, including Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, which I’m currently ploughing through. What these books don’t mention is that, as a by-product of their excellent instruction, they turn you into a picky, irritable design bore, eager to point out why everything in the world is shit.
Case in point: my flatmate Jos has a ‘gaming chair’, donated over Christmas. In short, it’s a mattress bent at 90°, with speakers behind the head and a substantial sub-woofer under the seat. Plug some phono cables in and you’re away.
The challenge was set. We had to test this with some serious software. Something cutting edge, using the latest in audio technology. We settled, of course, on World Championship Snooker 2004. The audience coughs could be heard halfway down the A52. A shot into a pack of reds was like a set of firecrackers going off inside your heart.
Despite its obvious (?) quality, it has a silly design flaw that bugs me far more than it should. The volume controls - below - clearly create an expectation (a mental model, if you will) that volume is the ‘master’, controlling the overall sound level, and bass is just a tone control, adjusting how tinny or meaty it sounds.
Beyond the misleading labelling, there’s also a circle around the volume, further reinforcing its primacy, and it doubles as an on/off switch - turn beyond zero and it clicks off - in a way common to many master volumes.
Not so. They’re actually two separate circuits - Volume for the tweeters behind your head, Bass for the sub woofer. Totally independent. So when little Johnny sneaks into the living room for a covert midnight game of, I dunno, Manhunt, he wakes up the entire street despite the volume switch being on zero.
Expect more of these truly anal gripes over the coming months.
Categories: design, sound, volume, controls
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