Ergonomic Camera Design: The problem with likes

 

When I started to explore ergonomic design in cameras I somewhat naively imagined that a useful way to evaluate a camera would be to hand it to some people, ask them to hold and operate it then seek their feedback. This seemed like a perfectly logical course of action.

In due course I discovered that logical it might be but useful it is not. Why ?

The problem lies in the nature of individual likes, wants and preferences.

These have five characteristics which severely limit their usefulness to a designer.

1. They are idiosyncratic. In other words they are particular to that individual and reflect that person's experience and predispositions, whatever they may be. For instance when Panasonic released the GH3 there was a storm of adverse comment about it from contributors to user forums and some bloggers. It was "too big", "too heavy", it "lacked a soul" (whatever that means) and so forth. Some people were presumably expecting something different and the GH3 may have taken them by surprise. I have one and find it to have the best ergonomics of any camera I have used in 60 years.

2. They are transient. People's likes change with experience. That which a person likes today may be out of favour next month when something potentially more appealing is discovered.

3. They are often unformulated. By this I mean that a person may say they really like or dislike some thing or person or movie or whatever but have difficulty putting the reason into words.

4. They usually do not represent the outcome of a systematic evaluation, rather a snap judgement.

5. They are essentially retrospective in nature. They reflect the present state of a person's experience, which by definition is in the past. Thus they are not very useful as an aid to planning new ideas for the future. They may have something to say about the value of old ideas however. Henry Ford is reputed to have said "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses".

So I stopped asking people for their opinions about various cameras' holding, viewing and operating characteristics, because the answers I was getting were entirely unhelpful to the ergonomic design process.

I realised that I would have to proceed by developing an understanding of camera ergonomics based on human functional anatomy and physiology. I would have to develop a language and taxonomy so the subject could be clearly identified, discussed and analysed.