Have you ever wondered...

Have you ever wondered how you can accurately open the car window without looking at the car window button? 

The pictures below are examples of the window buttons in two different cars. 

Although these two cars have slight different designs of car window buttons, I think that layout of controls and displays of the car window buttons are good examples of mapping because the (layout of) the buttons and displays are spatially correspondent to the devices being controlled, which are the car windows (Norman, 2013). Due to the mapping, users will easily know how to use the them. 

So, to give you a more vivid image in your head of why the car windown buttons are the good examples of mapping, I would slowly explain a step-by-step procedure of you driving the car while opening the windows. Before explaining the procedures, please look at the picture below. 

Image 1

Then, now assume that you are sitting in the driver seat (remember that in Malaysia the driver seat is always at the front right hand side, so imagine that you are sitting in the front right hand side), and you want to open the window that you are sitting at. To open the window, you have to either look at the buttons and put your hand to the window button or just touch the buttons and guess which button is correspondent to which window. Thus, to illustrate on the good examples of mapping, I would like you to assume that you are now busy looking at the road outside while touching the window buttons, Then, when you have put your hand on the window buttons, try to locate the button which is at the upper right end, which has been labeled as “A” in the image above. After locating the upper right end button, press on it, and your side of the window will open!

Since you have successfully open your side of the window, now assume that you want to open the window of the left passenger’s seat while still busy looking at the road outside. Similarly, you need to put your hand on the window buttons, but now rather locating the upper right end button you need to locate the bottom left button, which the button has been labeled as “C” in image 1. Press on it and the window of the left passenger’s seat will open. Thus, even if you want to open the window of the right passenger’s seat or front left seat, you just need to try to touch where the four buttons are, and just press on the particular button according to the layout of the car window because the layout of the car windows are correspondent to the layout of the buttons. Hence, if you want the front left window to open, just press on the top left button; if you want the right passenger's car window to open, just press on the bottom right button; if you want the front right window (which is the driver seat's window) to open, just press on the top right button; lastly, if you want the left passenger's car window to open, just press on the bottom left button. 

However, even though the buttons have good mapping design, the buttons are not effective enough for everyone to use them effortlessly because the four buttons are almost similar to each other (refer to the image 1); unless you are looking at buttons directly, with the sense of touch many users are highly unlikely to effortlessly distinguish the differences, and you can see that most users, including me will just simply press the buttons until their goal has achieved. For example, sometimes, ridiculously, I will open all the four windows, but in fact I may just want to open the window of the left passenger’s seat. 

Reference:
Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things: revise and expanded edition. Available from http://cc.droolcup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Design-of-Everyday-Things-Revised-and-Expanded-Edition.pdf