Week 7 Session: Hostile Object Safari

Leaving the screen — doors, chairs, packaging and vending machines that tell you the wrong thing about how to use them

19 April 2027

Before the session#

Go looking, ideally on campus or on your way in: doors, chairs, packaging, transport, bathrooms, signs, vending machines, road layouts, furniture and kitchen appliances all count.

In the session#

Hostile Object Safari: for each of five objects, answer what it looks like you should do, what you actually have to do, and why the difference is confusing rather than merely awkward. Affordances and expectations exist everywhere design does — this is the week the course stops pretending “interface” means “screen.”

Afterwards#

Hold onto your five objects; week 8 treats an entire process the same way you just treated a door.