The Art of Trash

21 Sep 2022

During today’s lecture, when Daniel was on the topic of familiar organizational concepts - and he flipped to this slide on Trash <3, my brain broke for a second:

Hold up.

Allow undeletion…?

I’ve been hosed, stressed, and not acting like myself lately, so I (reasonably) started doubting my basic reading skills. Isn’t it supposed to say “Allow *deletion*?” So I just stared at the screen to re-read it a few more times.

Daniel gave us that moment to reflect.

Then, he broke the silence by he explaining how the concept of Apple’s Trash bin allowed for users to store files ready to be discarded in a designated folder. He went on to wittingly point out that there were numerous ways to delete files, and doing so through Apple’s trash bin wouldn’t be so efficient for the sole purpose of deletion. Rather, it was made to cleverly allow *undeletion*.

With this morning’s discussion of combatting illegal trash dumping in Philadelphia from 11.138 (Civic Tech Prototyping: Crowd Sourced City with Prof. Sarah Williams), and constant real-world interactions with trash bins, I couldn’t step out of myself. I stuck to my Urban Design principles and viewed the concept of trash bins purposed to allow for getting rid of items for city dwellers - with the implication of permanently discarding items.

But wait! Even in the physical design of the bin, you’re able to somewhat recover the item. That is, unless you yeet it in there:

This inconsistency in the same label of concepts reminded me of Don Norman’s quote from The Design of Everyday Things:

“How can one person work across so many different domains? Because the fundamental principles of designing for people are the same across all domains.”

With how un-intuitive Apple’s concept of a trash bin, synced as a folder, or Gmail’s version of trash, synced as a label, was in comparison to the real world’s version of trash (or the urban designer’s), I’m starting to see how 6.1040 dismantles Norman’s claims that “fundamental principles of designing for people are the same across all domains.” And I’m excited to further dismantle this quote as Software Studio unfolds~

-

Quick shoutout to Apple. Especially for the crunching noise - a sound so satisfying that my friend would purposefully create empty folders to delete them, just to hear it again. Sometimes I’m too eager to empty my trash bin, that I’ve accidentally deleted some important files, due to my ears craving the crunchy noise. Is that just me?

–

Also, I wanted to quickly include a tangential note: if only I knew that for a majority of slideshow creation sites and apps, the designers loosened the presentation mode feature…! (Lol, I caught myself - I was going to initially say that the apps themselves loosened the feature, but I already personified the Gmail’s search function in class today >.<) Anywho, as I was saying, app designers loosened the presentation mode feature!

In 2021, Google Slides allowed for presentation mode in the current window frame. Knowing about this option for partial screen presenting would’ve been extremely useful for all my Zoom class presentations. Instead, I searched through my closet to drag out and set up an old monitor, so that I could still see my Zoom audience on one screen while presenting full-screen in the other… Welp, at least I know now!