There’s a book called “The Design of Everyday Things”. Very boring book.
The gist of it is your brain doesn’t memorize how to manipulate the outside world, it figures it out every time from scratch using environmental clues. So if a door has a pull bar and a sign that says push you will do the wrong thing every time and feel stupid. Your VCR will flash “12” because there isn’t “time set” “hours” “min” buttons and “stop” “play” aren’t intuitive. So you feel dumb. Yet you can program your car stereo which has more buttons than your VCR while driving down the highway at 80 miles per hour.
You have a bank of light switches side by side but your lights are not side by side. I flip the wrong light switch all the time even though I have lived in my house for 6 years. It’s not my fault. The dumb light switches are installed dumb.
We had this same issue in our “new to us” home … after incorrectly guessing which switch belonged to which light fixture approximately 3 times (and screaming in horror at my stupidity after each time), I simply labelled each switch with its corresponding light. Perfect fix! No more stupid!!
Why are you writing cartoons about my life?
Lol! Glad you can relate! : )
There’s a book called “The Design of Everyday Things”. Very boring book.
The gist of it is your brain doesn’t memorize how to manipulate the outside world, it figures it out every time from scratch using environmental clues. So if a door has a pull bar and a sign that says push you will do the wrong thing every time and feel stupid. Your VCR will flash “12” because there isn’t “time set” “hours” “min” buttons and “stop” “play” aren’t intuitive. So you feel dumb. Yet you can program your car stereo which has more buttons than your VCR while driving down the highway at 80 miles per hour.
You have a bank of light switches side by side but your lights are not side by side. I flip the wrong light switch all the time even though I have lived in my house for 6 years. It’s not my fault. The dumb light switches are installed dumb.
Ah ha! Thanks, Jeffrey!
We had this same issue in our “new to us” home … after incorrectly guessing which switch belonged to which light fixture approximately 3 times (and screaming in horror at my stupidity after each time), I simply labelled each switch with its corresponding light. Perfect fix! No more stupid!!