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Locks, Failed Locks
The battery in the room safe dies and the house manager turns up to reset it. He brings with him electronic key, a physical key two electricians and a member of the security team. There's failure and then there is elegant failure. Given the frequency of people forgetting the numbers of the safe or the batteries running out, this didn't fail particularly elegantly.
In system design is it better to block a task from being started or to let the user experience and then report inevitable errors? Same question, but this time imagine a more (or less) networked world. In what contexts and for what tasks is it advantageous to let the user report the error?
Writing from Shanghai | April 26, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
>>In system design is it better to block a task from being started or to let the user experience and then report inevitable errors?
*Yes, sometimes it is. This is called a "forcing function". When a known habit or behavior informs the design decision- constraint is often more elegant a solution.
Definition of "forcing function":
http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/forcing_functions.html
Posted by: Frank Spillers at May 4, 2006 1:24 PM