The timeliness of daylight savings time

Daylight savings time was last night / this morning and it was a very timely event as we are reading Norman's article on Design of Everyday Things. A problem I have twice every year is resetting all of the clocks, watches, timing devices in our home. It should be a relatively easy thing to do as they all, for the most part, afford us the same things: the ability to read time and set timing events. And of course, the ability to adjust either the time of day or the timing events you set. The reason I find it so difficult--and sometimes frustrating--is that they mostly use different design mappings to achieve the same goal. And since I only do it twice a year, I tend to forget what I have discovered in between times.

As Norman points out, the design should tell (or at least hint) at what you need to do. And then you need to get feedback when you do something as to what you did. The timing devices I am resetting do a good job of giving me feedback. I can usually see immediately what the impact of pushing buttons is. However, it is often not intuitive. Sometimes a single button has multiple functions depending upon how many times you push it or how long you hold it in when you push it. Maybe it was because I read Norman's article about design and function--and malfunction--but this time I had the easiest time of all changing things. Usually I end up turning on the alarm on my watch when I only want to change the time. And I couldn't figure out how to adjust the time--only the alarm--for the bathroom clock. But not it is all right. I guess you need to go into thinking that things are going to non-intuitive and Viola! It all starts to make sense. Thank you Mr. Norman for the instights!!