User Pain and prodct design

Whenever I boot my machine, it plays the welcome music. I muted my audio as I don't like it. Later, I started listening to songs, and plugged in my headset. At that point of time I didn't realize that Win 7 detected the headphones and unmuted my audio automatically. As I was listening to music, I was getting late for a call, so I unplugged the headset from my machine and plugged it into my phone. And that’s when it struck me... as soon as I removed the headset, the system muted itself. It restored the audio settings to the same point where it was before I inserted the headphone jack

This small experience highlights a very important point..... Someone thought about this and put it into the system...... small things does matter..... Things like these are taken for granted by people. This feature ensured that I didn’t get annoyed when my speakers started playing my music... a lot of time we love things that DON’T annoy us. We don’t realize it, but it’s a fact that we tend to like such things more. And it’s this fact that is at the root of the proverb, "books are men's best friends”.

A very big fact is that, people like to take things for granted. We tend to take a lot of things in life for granted. Almost all the essentials have been taken for granted by us. And when we find a product, whose features are very simple and can be taken for granted we start to want it. It’s like the GPS device. 10 years earlier people in the US didn’t have it, but still found their ways while driving to new areas. Today, this small device has been taken for granted. It’s always in the car. Earlier, these devices didn’t speak. And a lot of people used to get annoyed when they missed a turn as the traffic didn’t let them spot a turn or didn’t let them glance at the device in time. So what did a smart product designer do, (s)he added voice to it. The voice will direct you to take turns. And there you are; now you don’t have to look at the device at all. It keeps on telling you.

Not going any further, I would just say… when we think of the usability, we need to ensure that we are reducing user’s pain... and this is the key to a great product design