Last Friday, before the first week started, we got an email from John Zimmerman. He asked us to bring in a product we loved and one we hated.

The first day of his class, Introduction to Interaction and Visual Interface Design, we all explained why we made our choices. This resulted in some interesting discussions about where a product??????s value comes from and where it fails.

It also led to rants from John like:

Why do we have can openers? Why do we have cans? Are cans the problem? Would you buy ketchup in a can? Should we be cooking? Should we just have a lot of cheap restaurants?

“Are cans the problem?”

I can’t get this one out of my head.

Question Everything

John asks a lot of questions. And in asking them, he??????s instructing us to ask questions ourselves. He seems to want us to consider all the angles. I mean, how else to do go from someone thinking can openers don??????t work very well to a solution where so many cheap restaurants exist that canned food isn??????t necessary, and can openers become obsolete?

Some other questions I found particularly interesting include:

• What is the relationship between the product and your values?
• What makes a product ??????purse-worthy?????????????something you feel like you can use in public?
• How do you make something that has tremendous reuse?
• How does a product grow a relationship with a person through use?
• How do you not get caught up in the usability and find a product of value?

Now if only I had all the answers.