In The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman describes design flaws in everyday objects that he, after failing to operate the object correctly, would blame his own mechanical ineptitude. He realized that it was not his own fault, but the fault of the designer. Norman defines a good design as “objects we could use easily and efficiently – with delight and fun. And without having to read complex instructions or ask for help.” The book has pictures and diagrams of bad and often ridiculous designs that help emphasis his point.
On page 102, Norman explains how sound can be useful to make invisible things visible. This would be great for a tracking beacon. Once the balloon unit has successfully landed hopefully still intact, the accuracy of GPS can only give the position of the location to within 30 meters. That means that for the most likely case, which would be landing in a large field, it could still take a while to search the area of half a football field to find the beacon if it was under deep grass or behind shrubs. In this case, we can use Norman’s suggestion of using sound for visibility. Many sounds are identified with actions being done properly. For instance, the with the clicking of the keyboard you identify that you pressed the button down correctly or the zip of a zipper you can tell it worked properly. Norman says, "Sounds should be generated so as to give information about the source." With the balloon unit, an emitted beep could give the information about the location if it was not in line of slight.
Our balloon launch has many similarities to an airplane takeoff or a space shuttle launch. We have to wait for the weather to cooperate, get permission from an airspace authority, and there are social and economic issues to consider. These are just a few coincidences, so studying errors in takeoffs or shuttle launches could help us avoid the same types of errors in our launch. Norman speaks about how social pressure can lead to mistakes in the To Err Is Human section. Here he states that social structure is as important as physical structure and social pressures lead to mistakes, misinterpretations, and accidents. In this section he recounts two tales of airlines that had fatal crashes because of fear of punishment from an error or time and economic pressure. Errors cannot be avoided, but what we can do is design so that errors can be minimalized or when they do occur, make sure they can be reversed. These are more general statements of design, but one thing we will be sure to do is not force a launch because of time or economic stress. It would be much better, if conditions were not right, to cancel the launch causing people to waste time and money than to have the payload break or even worse, somebody got hurt [Norman].
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